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Many American places have been named after Indian words. In fact, about half of the states got their names from Indian words. Here are some:

American Indian Loan Words

From their earliest contact with traders and explorers, American Indians borrowed foreign words, often to describe things not previously encountered. The language exchange went both ways. Today, thousands of place names across North America have Indian origins - as do hundreds of everyday English words.

Many of these "loan words" are nouns from the Algonquian languages that were once widespread along the Atlantic coast. English colonists, encountering unfamiliar plants and animals—among them moose, opossum, and skunk—borrowed Indian terms to name them. Pronunciations generally changed, and sometimes the newcomers shortened words they found difficult; for instance, "pocohiquara" became "hickory."

Some U.S. English Words with Indian Origins:

anorak from the Greenlandic Inuit "annoraq"

bayou from the Choctaw "bayuk"

chipmunk from the Ojibwa "ajidamoon," red squirrel

hickory from the Virginia Algonquian "pocohiquara"

hominy from the Virginia Algonquian "uskatahomen"

igloo from the Canadian Inuit "iglu," house

kayak from the Alaskan Yupik "qayaq"

moccasin from the Virginia Algonquian

moose from the Eastern Abenaki "mos"

papoose from the Narragansett "papoos," child

pecan from the Illinois "pakani"

powwow from the Narragansett "powwaw," shaman

quahog from the Narragansett "poquauhock"

squash from the Narragansett "askutasquash"

succotash from the Narragansett "msickquatash," boiled corn

tepee from the Sioux "tipi," dwelling

toboggan from the Micmac "topaghan"

tomahawk from the Virginia Algonquian "tamahaac"

totem from the Ojibwa "nindoodem," my totem

wampum from the Massachusett "wampumpeag"

wigwam from the Eastern Abenaki "wik'wom" Natives.

Population

While the Indian population was never dense, the idea that the Indian has held his own, or even actually increased in number, is a serious error, founded on the fact that most official estimates begin with the federal period, when the native race was already wasted by nearly three centuries of white contact and in many regions entirely extinct. An additional source of error is that the law recognizes anyone of even remote Indian ancestry as entitled to Indian rights, including in this category, especially in the former "Five Civilized Nations" of Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), several thousand individuals whose claims have always been stoutly repudiated by the native tribal courts. Moreover, the original Indian was a full-blood, while his present-day representative has often so little aboriginal blood as to practically a white man or a negro. Many broken tribes of today contain not a single full-blood, and some few not even one of half Indian blood. The Cherokee Nation, officially reported to number 36,000 persons of pure or mixed Cherokee blood contains probably not 4000 of even fairly pure blood, the rest being all degrees of admixture even down to one-sixty-fourth or less of Indian blood, besides some 7000 claimants officially recognized, but repudiated by the former Indian Government. In Massachusetts an official census of 1860 reported a "Yartmouth tribe" of 105 persons, all descended from a single Indian woman with a negro husband residing there in 1797. It is obvious that the term Indian cannot properly be applied to such diluted mixtures.

The entire aboriginal population of Florida, of the mission period, numbering perhaps 30,000, is long since extinct without descendants, the Seminole being a later emigrations from the Creeks. The aborigines of South Carolina, counting in 1700 some fifteen tribes of which the Catawba, the largest tribe, numbered some six thousand souls, are represented today by about a hundred mixed blood Catawba, together with some scattered mongrels, whose original ancestry is a matter of doubt.

The same holds good upon the plains, The celebrated Pawnee tribe of some 10,000 souls in 1838 is now reduced to 650; the Kansas of 1500 within the same period have now 200 souls, and the aborigines of Texas, numbering in 1700 perhaps some 40,000 souls in many small tribes with distinct languages, is extinct except for some 900 Caddo, Wichita, and Tonkawa. The last-named, estimated at 1,000 in 1805, numbered 700 in 1849, 300 in 1861, 108 in 1882, and 48 in 1908, including several aliens. In California the aboriginal population has decreased within the same period from perhaps a quarter of a million to perhaps 15,000, and nearly the same proportion of decrease holds good along the whole Pacific coast into Alaska. Not only have tribes dwindled, but whole linguistic stocks have become extinct within the historic period. The only apparent exceptions to the general rule of decay are the Iroquois, Sioux, and Navaho, the first two of whom have kept up their number by wholesale adoptions, while the Navaho have been preserved by their isolation. The causes of decrease may be summarized as: (1) introduced diseases and dissipation, particularly smallpox, sexual disease, and whiskey; (2) wars, also hardship and general enfeeblement consequent upon frequent removals and enforced change from accustomed habitat. The present Indian population north of Mexico is approximately 400,000, or whom approximately 265,000 are within the United States proper.

Other native Americans

The Eskimo (Inuit and Yupiit) and Aleuts are people of the treeless shores and tundra-covered coastal hinterlands of northernmost North America and Greenland and the eastern tip of the Chukchi Peninsula of Siberia. Custom alone designates them Eskimo and Aleuts rather than American Indians like all other native Americans, from whom they are distinguished principally by their language.

The Eskimo are an Asian people who are distinguishable from the American Indians by their more Asian features, by the relative smallness of their hands and feet, and by a few less obvious traits.

Eskimo culture was totally adapted to an extremely cold, snow- and icebound environment in which vegetable foods were almost nonexistent, trees were scarce, and caribou, seal, walrus, and whale meat, whale blubber, and fish were the major food sources. The Eskimo used harpoons to kill seals, which they hunted either on the ice or from skin-covered, one-person canoes known as kayaks. Whales were hunted using larger boats called umiaks. In the summer most Eskimo families hunted caribou and other land animals with the help of bows and arrows. Dogsleds were the basic means of transport on land. Eskimo clothing was fashioned of caribou furs, which provided protection against the extreme cold. Most Eskimo wintered in either snow-block houses called igloos or semisubterranean houses of stone or sod over wooden or whalebone frameworks. In summer many Eskimo lived in animal-skin tents. Their b asic social and economic unit was the nuclear family, and their religion was animistic.

Eskimo life changed greatly in the 20th century owing to increased contacts with societies to the south. Snowmobiles have generally replaced dogs for land transport, and rifl es have replaced harpoons for hunting purposes. Outboard motors, store-bought clothing, and numerous other manufactured items have entered the culture, and money, unknown in traditional Eskimo economy, has become a necessity. Many Eskimo have abandoned their nomadic hunting pursuits to move into northern towns and cities or to work in mines and oil fields. Others, particularly in Canada, have formed cooperatives to market their handicrafts, fish catches, and ventures in tourism.

Aleut - a native of the Aleutian Islands and western portion of the Alaska Peninsula of northwest North America. Aleuts speak three mutually intelligible dialects and are closely related to the Eskimo in language, race, and culture. The earliest people, the Paleo-Aleuts, arrived in the Aleutian Islands from the Alaskan mainland about 2000 BC. The Aleuts hunted seals, sea otters, whales, sea lions, sometimes walrus, and, in some areas, caribou and bears. Fish, birds, and mollusks were also taken. One-man and two-man skin boats known as bidarkas, or kayaks, and large, open, skin boats (Eskimo umiaks) were used. Aleut women wove fine grass basketry; stone, bone, and ivory were also worked. Ancient Aleut villages were situated on the seashore near fresh water, with a good landing for boats and in a position safe from surprise attack from other Aleuts or neighbouring tribes. Villages were usually composed of related families. A chief might govern several villages or an island, but there was no chief over all Aleuts or even over several islands.

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