THE LOST TRIBES

Along time ago during the last ice age, there used to be land between Siberia and Alaska. Groups of people crossed from Siberia into the American continent and spreas through North and South America. They formed tribes with names which we know from Hollywood films, like Apache, Sioux, Cherokee and Comanche. These tribes spoke their own costums. Early white settlers called them "Indians", although now in the USA they prefer to be called "American Indians" or "Native American Indians".
Before 1800, there werw over a million American Indians. They lived mainly bu hunting and fishing and growing crops. The Sioux, for example, used to hunt buffalo. The buffalo gave the Siouz everything they needed: food, clothes, tools and homes.
Then in the 1840s wagon trains carrying white Europeans began to move west across the Great Plains, looking for land to settle on and build farms. At first the Merican Indians tried to drive them away but it soon became impossible and they had to give large areas of land to the white farmers. Soon there was little and left for the buffalo to roam. Thousands of them were shot by the white hunters, just for their skins. BY 1874, the white hunters had almost completely destroyed the great herds of buffalo.
The white farmers took more and more of the land and eventually drove the American Indians onto "reservation" - areas of dry, rocky land which nobody wanted. The American Indians fought back in some small but violent battles. In the end, not surprisingly, the American Indians lost their fight. By 1900 there were only a few hundred thousand of them left. Today, half of them live on reservation and half in other parts of the USA.