Indian Homeland Indians live all over America for thousands of years before the arrival of the first Europeans. They don't yet have horses, and won't until the Spanish bring them. The Great Plains, where many western Indians live, receive little annual rainfall, compared to the East. In the satellite image of America above, the West is brown, while the East is green.

	Indians Everywhere As shown above, there are about 20 large tribes, inhabiting extensive areas but sharing a single language (identified above with tribe names). Many of these are in the western half of America, where roaming buffalo herds are the only dependable source of sustenance. In the middle of the continent, and along the West Coast, are hundreds of much smaller tribes, each with a distinct language (tribe names omitted). The ORANGE dots indicate known stone-age settlements.
	Not Like Europeans Indians come in many flavors, but they all share a common ancestry. They are all descended from stone-age humans that originally lived in and around Mongolia, in northern Asia. For this reason, they do not resemble the northern Europeans who later arrive in America. This helps cement a fundamental distrust between settlers and Indians which is never overcome.