Native American Facts for Kids

Believe it or not, before Columbus arrived, North America had massive cities! Cahokia, near modern-day St. Louis, was the biggest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico.

Around the year 1100 CE, Cahokia covered about 6 square miles and had a population between 15,000 and 20,000 people.

That's as big as a major European city like London was at that time! They built huge earth mounds, like Monks Mound, which is the largest earthwork structure in the US!

This fact is super sad, but it's important to know. The Trail of Tears was the forced removal of over 60,000 Native Americans, including the Cherokee, between 1830 and 1850.

For the Cherokee Nation, an estimated 4,000 men, women, and children died on the 1,200-mile march to Indian Territory (Oklahoma).

That means about one out of every four people on that specific journey did not survive due to exposure, starvation, and disease.

You use these things every day, but they were invented by Indigenous peoples! Arctic Native Americans created the kayak, originally built with animal skin over a frame.

They also carved snow goggles from materials like whale bone to protect their eyes from the bright glare off the snow and ice.

Plus, healers mixed ground plants to create an early form of sunscreen to protect their skin from the sun!

The incredible diversity of Native American nations is shown in the official count! As of January 2023, the US government recognizes 574 American Indian and Alaska Native tribal entities.

These aren't all one group-they are inherently sovereign nations with their own laws and governments!

Of those, 347 are in the contiguous 48 states, and 227 are located in Alaska, showing huge geographic variety.

Wampum beads, made from the white and purple parts of the Quahog clam shell, weren't just pretty jewelry or money for many tribes like the Haudenosaunee.

These beads were woven into belts like The Hiawatha Belt to visually record important events, laws, and treaties. They were a living record!

A designated 'Wampum Keeper' would memorize the story and then 'read' the belt aloud to ensure everyone remembered the original agreement perfectly.

Totem poles are stunning art from the Pacific Northwest coast, carved from massive trees like Western Red Cedar!

The current tallest one recorded is in Alert Bay, British Columbia, standing at an amazing 173 feet (53 meters) tall.

To give you an idea, that’s taller than a 17-story building stacked up! Some are carved from a single log, but the tallest one was made of a few pieces joined together.

While the Cherokee ancestry count is huge, the Navajo Nation is the largest single federally recognized tribe in the US, with about 399,567 citizens reported in 2023!

Their homeland, the Navajo Nation, covers land in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.

That's a land area bigger than the state of West Virginia—that’s a LOT of territory to manage!

You might have seen it in school, but Lacrosse, often called Stickball by various Native American groups, is one of the oldest team sports in the world!

Games could involve hundreds of players on fields that stretched for miles, sometimes two or three miles long!

It wasn't just for fun-it was a deeply spiritual event often played to settle disagreements or give thanks, not just for sport!

Long before modern medicine, Indigenous peoples developed clever tools for healing! They created a precursor to the syringe to help with medical needs.

They used a cleaned animal bladder to hold fluids and attached a sharpened, hollow bird bone to act as the needle.

This tool helped them inject medicine or irrigate wounds, proving incredible early knowledge of anatomy and sterile-ish practices for kids!

A powwow is a massive, vibrant gathering for Native American people to socialize, sing, dance, and honor their cultures today.

Some of the largest events, like the Gathering of Nations, can bring in about 80,000 visitors and 3,000 dancers from hundreds of tribes!

These gatherings are important for intertribal friendship and celebrating shared identity, even if they have fun contests with cash prizes!