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 How did Indigenous cultures in the Americas get their names? Cultures in the Americas get their names from various places. For example, the names of many Indigenous cultures are translated to mean The People, The People of This Place, or The Ancient Ones. The People, First Men, and Original People are the most common translations for various Indigenous groups in the Americas. When early Europeans first came to the Americas, they recorded names for different group of Indigenous peoples based on what was told to them by the individuals they encountered (which often ended up being different than the names actually used by members of the group itself). In other cases, anthropologists gave names to living cultures (or attempted to ascertain the names), while archaeologists gave names to the material remains of past cultures they encountered in the archaeological record.
There was never a group of people who called themselves Anasazi. Anasazi is a descriptive term of Navajo origin. For years, archaeologists identified all ancient peoples from the Four Corners region of the American Southwest as Anasazi—a Navajo word sometimes translated as ancient enemies. Many modern Puebloan people dislike the term Anasazi, and it has largely been replaced with Ancestral Puebloans, which encompasses the different peoples who are ancestors of today’s Hopi, Zuni, and other Puebloan peoples. The Story of the Hopewell Archaeologists often call societies by the modern names of important discovery sites. For example, archaeologists recognize peoples who created earthworks in the eastern woodlands of North America as “the Hopewell.” This name comes from one of the earliest mound groups to be excavated, which was located on land owned by Captain M.C. Hopewell. His name was adopted for the site and the society in general. We don’t know what Hopewell people called themselves because there are no written or oral records of their language. Identifying with a cultural, or any other type of membership group can be extremely complex, in the past and in the present. Many Indigenous peoples identify with various cultures and ethnic categories, and move from one identity to another, depending on the context. |
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