Native American history is not one story. It is the history of hundreds of distinct nations, each with its own government, language and homeland, and this section is a starting point for exploring several of them.
Why learn about Native nations as distinct peoples?
Treating “Native American” as one culture erases real differences between nations that have their own governments, languages and traditions. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian teaches that there is no single American Indian culture, and that Native nations govern themselves as sovereign nations within the United States (Native Knowledge 360°).
This section does not attempt a full picture of any nation’s culture. It covers specific topics, several current nations, and points you toward the nations’ own websites and museum resources for anything deeper.
How many Native nations are there today?
As of a January 2026 Federal Register notice, 575 tribal entities are federally recognized in the United States and eligible for services from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (Federal Register).
That count changes over time as nations gain federal recognition, and it does not include nations recognized only by a state, or communities outside the United States. It is a floor, not a full census of Native peoples on the continent.
How to use this section
Start with a topic or a nation below, then follow its own links to go deeper. Each page names its nation and links back here, so you can always find your way to the rest of the section.
This section does not cover every nation. It covers the ones we have researched and written pages for. If a nation is not listed here, that is a gap in the section, not a comment on that nation’s importance.
Topics: symbols and horses
Two pages here look at specific topics that cross many nations. Native American symbols looks at the meanings carried by design and imagery in different traditions. Horses in Native American culture covers how the horse changed life on the Plains after it arrived from Spanish colonization, and what it means to Native communities today.
The Ohlone peoples of the San Francisco Bay Area
The Ohlone section is a hub of its own, covering the Ohlone peoples whose homeland is the San Francisco Bay Area. From there you can read about San Francisco before European settlement, and an education page on Ohlone life and history that includes a record of a 2003 tule reed canoe event at Lake Merced.
This section does not cover every California nation. It covers the Ohlone specifically.
The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy hub introduces the Six Nations, also called the Iroquois Confederacy, and explains why we lead with the name the nations use for themselves. From there, the Mohawk Nation (Kanien’kehá:ka) and the Seneca each have their own page, and two pages cover culture in more depth: Iroquois art and Iroquois false face masks, which carries a caution from the Confederacy about how the masks should and should not be taught.
The Confederacy has six member nations in total. This section currently covers two of them, Mohawk and Seneca, along with the shared Confederacy history and art.
Sources
- Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Native Knowledge 360°: Essential Understandings
- Bureau of Indian Affairs. Indian Entities Recognized by and Eligible To Receive Services From the BIA
- Haudenosaunee Confederacy. The League of Nations