Skip to main content

Understanding Native American History and Culture in the United States

This quiz covers key historical facts, significant events, and cultural aspects related to Native Americans in the United States. It includes various topics from pre-Columbian history to modern day implications, enhancing the understanding of Native American heritage.

1 Some groups on the region's mesas developed irrigation techniques, and filled storehouses with grain as protection against the area's frequent ________.

2 ________ believed that while Native Americans were the intellectual equals of whites, they had to live like the whites or inevitably be pushed aside by them.

3 In 1965, American ________ Henry Dobyns published studies estimating the original population at 10 to 12 million.

4 Some tribes, such as the Winnemem Wintu of ________, feel that casinos and their proceeds destroy culture from the inside out.

5 What does the following picture show?  Cultural areas of pre-Columbian North America, according to Alfred Kroeber.   Bronze medals struck at behest of Virginia governor Thomas Jefferson and carried by Joseph Martin to give to Cherokee allies of colonial forces. Notice peace pipe atop the medal   Mishikinakwa ("Little Turtle")'s forces defeated an American force of nearly 1000 U.S Army soldiers and other casualties at the Battle of the Wabash in 1791.   Native Americans flee from the allegorical representation of Manifest Destiny, Columbia, painted in 1872 by John Gast

6 The ________ (1876) was one of the greatest Native American victories.

7 Much later, on April 5, 1614, Pocahontas married Englishman ________, and they had a child called Thomas Rolfe.

8 ________ of Native Americans was a charted purpose for some European colonies.

9 During the ________, the artist John White made watercolors and engravings of the people native to the southeastern states.

10 What is the metropolitican population of Native Americans in the United States?

đź’ˇ Interesting Facts

  • local lore in Salem, New York, has it that one of the first people buried in the Revolutionary War Cemetery was an unknown local Indian who wandered into town and died.
  • in the 1700s and 1800s, Tocowa, Mississippi, was home to a natural spring that Native Americans visited for its reputed healing powers.
  • the 1972 case of Yvonne Wanrow, a Colville Indian, charged with the murder of a child molester, brought about changes in U.S. criminal law as it affects women and Native Americans.
  • the buffalo jump at Madison Buffalo Jump State Park in Montana was used for approximately 2000 years by various Native American tribes.
  • the endangered cui-ui sucker fish was a staple of the Native American Paiute tribe for over a millennium.
  • the bulbs of Utah's state flower, the Sego Lily, were an important food source for Native Americans and the Mormon pioneers.
  • in 1971, the Indian Claims Commission ordered US$74,856.50 to be paid to the Lower Skagit tribe to pay for land lost as a result of the Point Elliott Treaty.
  • in 1899 Isaac Seneca became the first Native American to be named as an All-American football player while playing halfback for the Carlisle Indian School.
  • after the 1832 Native American attack at Ament's Cabin (pictured), a 16 year old boy was sent to Hennepin, Illinois by horseback for help.
  • Fulton County Route 112, the continuation of New York State Route 309, was once the site of an old Indian trail in the Adirondacks.
  • archaeologist Vance Haynes challenged the right of Native Americans to rebury Kennewick Man—skeletal bone fragments about 9,000 years old—which Haynes said should be studied further.
  • at the Battle of Stone Houses in 1837, a band of American Indians defeated a group of Texas Rangers by smoking them out of their shelter.
  • despite over 85% of American Indian students giving it their support, the mascot controversy at Humboldt High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota resulted in the abandonment of its Indians mascot.
  • the Native American Sheshequin Path along Lycoming Creek, Pennsylvania was prone to such bad weather that an evil spirit was believed to reside there.
  • the Battle of Yellow House Canyon in 1876 marked the last battle between Texans and hostile Native Americans on the High Plains of Texas.
  • the city of Anadarko in the U.S. state of Oklahoma is named for the Nadaco, a Native American tribe from Texas.
  • the area known as the Wisconsin Heights Battlefield has been inhabited by at least five Native American tribes.
  • the two tracts of Oliver Lee Memorial State Park in New Mexico preserve archeological sites associated with Native Americans and a late 19th-century ranch.
  • the wife and children of Idaho Territorial Governor Edward A. Stevenson were killed during an Indian attack.
  • there are stories of Metacomet, sachem of the Wampanoag Indians, meeting with allies near Bear's Den Falls to plan attacks on Massachusetts towns during King Philip's War.
  • the 1803 Treaty of Fort Wayne dictated that the Native Americans were given up to 150 bushels of salt.
  • the Stockbridge Militia was the first Native American unit in the Continental Army.
  • the Dunns Pond Mound in Ohio may have been used for Native American burials for nine centuries.
  • the Chetco (pictured) were once one of the largest Native American tribes on the southern coast of Oregon, but now only about 40 of their descendants remain.
  • the Koshare Indian Dancers are a Boy Scouts of America Scout troop that travels the United States promoting the appreciation of American Indian culture through Indian dances.
  • the Memorial Arch of Tilton, symbolizing the "victories of peace", is constructed in Northfield, New Hampshire on the site of an old Indian fort.
  • the Pine Creek Path, a Native American trail along Pine Creek in Pennsylvania, was later used by lumbermen, then its course was followed by a railroad, and today it is a rail trail (pictured).
  • Annette Nelson's performance (pictured) as The Mountain Sylph in Washington, D.C. in 1837 was highly appreciated by a group of Native American chiefs.
  • Yavapai is an over-arching term for four distinct tribes of Native Americans from central Arizona.
  • Cardinal Mahony petitioned Rome to name Padre Serra Church after Junipero Serra despite controversy over his treatment of California Indians.
  • Oklahoma historian Angie Debo won numerous honors for her books on Native American history, but never found a permanent position in an academic history department.
  • Spanish artifacts excavated at Citico, Tennessee suggest that the historic Native American site may have been the village of "Satapo" visited by the Juan Pardo expedition in 1567.
  • Camillo Ynitia was the only Native American on the northern frontier of Alta California to secure a large land grant for his tribe.
  • Carol Jean Vigil was the first Native American woman to be elected as a state district judge in the United States.
  • Native Americans occupied the Rogue River around the Rogue River Ranch (pictured) over 9,000 years before European settlers arrived.
  • Native Americans lived at the Canfield Island Site (pictured) on the West Branch Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania for thousands of years, and now hold an annual pow wow there.
  • artifacts discovered at Mound Bottom, Tennessee show that the site was part of a vast Native American trading network extending to the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Appalachian Mountains during the Mississippian era.
  • Alexander Hamilton's son William S. Hamilton helped recruit Native Americans to join the U.S. against Sauk Chief Black Hawk during the 1832 Black Hawk War.
  • Native American Thomas Wakeman organized the first Sioux Indian YMCA at Flandreau, Dakota Territory on April 27, 1879.
  • Native American activist Robert Robideau was acquitted in the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents, for which his cousin Leonard Peltier was later convicted and is serving two life sentences.
  • Native American sculptor Willard Stone became a master wood carver despite an accidental explosion that cost him his right thumb and two fingers when he was 13 years old.
  • Egushawa, principal chief of the Ottawas, was one of the most influential Native Americans of the Great Lakes region in the late eighteenth century.
  • Elakala Falls (pictured) may derive its name from the legend of Elakala, the story of a Native American princess who threw herself over the edge of the first waterfall when her lover scorned her.
  • Savanna Portage State Park preserves a historic portage trail used by Native Americans, fur traders, and explorers to cross between the watershed of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.
  • Rachel Plummer wrote the first book about being a slave to the Comanche Native Americans.
  • Tantiusques, a graphite mine which John Winthrop the Younger purchased from the Nipmuck tribes in 1644, became the basis for today's Dixon Ticonderoga pencil company.
  • Wessagusset Colony was the site of Miles Standish's real-life attack against Native Americans as depicted in Longfellow's poem The Courtship of Miles Standish.
  • Wyandanch, the sachem of the Montaukett, in 1659, sued Jeremy Daily in the colonial court in one of the first trials in North America with an English defendant and a Native American plaintiff.
  • Malheur Reservation in Oregon was set aside for Native Americans in 1872 and opened to European American settlement by Ulysses S. Grant in 1876.
  • KILI-FM started broadcasting in 1983 as the first Native American-owned radio station in the United States.
  • Hanging Rocks (pictured) at Wappocomo, West Virginia, on the South Branch Potomac River was the site of both a battle between Delaware and Catawba Native American tribes and an American Civil War skirmish.
  • Frank Grouard, a famous scout during the Indian Wars, was believed by many to be an American Indian but actually came from the Society Islands in the South Pacific.
  • Harlington Wood Jr. is credited with helping to negotiate a truce between federal officers and Native Americans during the Wounded Knee incident in 1973.
  • Jerome Tiger, a Native American painter from Oklahoma, was a high school dropout and worked as a laborer and prize fighter.
  • John James was awarded the Medal of Honor for "gallantry in action" after defending the Lyman Train from Indian attacks for three days.
  • "urban Indian" activist Bernie Whitebear was the brother of groundbreaking health care administrator Luana Reyes and of sculptor, curator and memoirist Lawney Reyes.