There were numerous tribes scattered all across the United States long before they were discovered by foreigners The white man. The period of the Indians was long when they lived within the confinement of the lands they called home. These lands that they cherished, their beliefs they cherished. They were one with the almighty one and free for hundreds of years but in a blink of an eye, they lost it all. They were hunted and annihilated ridiculed and persecuted. They were a race indifferent to us but they were a race the foreigners on their lands didn't want and by what ever means possible they meant to disperse these people from their homes and take from them everything they owned and they did just that.
When Christopher Columbus born 1451 the son of Domenio Columbus stepped ashore on American soil on the 12th October 1492 everything changed for the Indians. By the time De Sota and Ponce De Leon arrived searching for gold and slaves many an Indian had died at their hands. At this time there were supposedly some 10 million Indians inhabiting the land but after three centuries this number was reduced by 90%. The English arrived then the French and the Dutch every Sovereign wanted a piece of the land to claim as their own and the Indians succumbed to diseases imported by the whites. Famine and warfare were directed at them as the white people pushed them further and further away from their own lands so they could claim and prosper by them.
Before 1600 there were about one million Indians who lived north of the Rio Grande speaking some 2,000 languages but most of these languages are dead now. These people lived mainly of the land growing maize, fishing and hunting to feed their people. When the Europeans arrived that all changed and destruction quickly followed as these intruders wanting what the Indians had and what was on their lands.
In New England the tribes were hit by diseases brought by the white men which wiped out thousands. The Indian people were cheated by the Quakers, disgraced by the Iroquois and defeated by the Dutch in the Esopus wars of 1660. They never stood a chance against these people and hundred's of years later they still didn't stand a chance.