Plains Earthlodges: Ethnographic.
The past 500 years have seen a myriad of terms used as referents to indigenous Americans, including American Indian, Native American, First Nation, Eskimo, Inuit, and Native Alaskan. Some of these terms are used almost interchangeably, while others indicate relatively specific entities.
The term American Indian is often used to refer to the indigenous cultures of the Western Hemisphere in general; its constituent parts were in use from at least the early 16th century. The word Indian came to be used because Christopher Columbus repeatedly expressed the mistaken belief that he had reached the shores of South Asia. Convinced he was correct, Columbus fostered the use of the term Indios (originally, “person from the Indus valley”) to refer to the peoples of the so-called New World. The term America came into use as a referent to the continents of the Western Hemisphere as early as 1507, when the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller published a