Talk:Classification of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas

Duplicate Non-exact Series Found & Need Help to Untangle
Oh dear. I really wish I had read the Talk page first, before diving into this so boldly and spending so much time. A lesson to me. Again. Okay, well...I started out interested in Shoshoni people...Got sidetracked into the Eastern Woodland section. I went ahead & posted my changes, finally, just to save the work, but there seem to be some confusing partial overlaps surrounding the Wappinger Wappani, Wappani Confederacy ? and Munsee and Quinnipiac and Mahicans of the Classification of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Feel free to revert it entire before I tangle up the previous work hopelessly. Here are my major stumpers: Lenape led me to Metoac, which confuses things further still, and according to talk page there, may be completely(?) BS due to Silas Wood source. last gem on its talk page: "in fact, most want it ignored in the hopes it will largely be ignored on Wikipedia by readers"
 * from Munsee language "Munsees east of the upper Hudson were the Wappinger; below them going north to south on the east bank of the Hudson were Kichtawanks; Sinsinks; Rechgawawanks; Nayack; Marechkawieck, with the Canarsee and Rockaway on western Long Island" Goddard, Ives, 1978a, p. 213-216 ...This last sentence I also intended to, (but am not sure how to) integrate all of its information into this classification scheme.  I added the apparently different spellings for same people, (Kichtawanks; Sinsinks; Rechgawawanks) still got some redlinks...no surprise... and this is where the duplicates emerged, between:
 * Wappinger- Is Wappinger the same as Wappani? the same as Quinnipiac? They have a LOT of overlap. Are these two or three different confederacies? Different places or times?  All Delawaran or no?  Munsees or Unami?
 * Canarsee (from the Munsee language page redirects to Lenape, where there is no mention of Canarsee, so where do the dangling people names (or are they place names or are they other languages?) on that first * fit in? (Nayack; Marechkawieck, Canarsee and Rockaway)
 * over on Eastern Algonquian languages @ Delawaran & Common Delawaran sub-sub grouping on that page.-puts Mahicans also into Delawarans.  And, on the Mahican page, The Mahicans become Stockbridge, move to Wisconsin, band with the Munsees to form the Stockbridge-Munsee Community.  Which Munsee group? All?  All are now Delawaran? on THIS page the Mahicans are also a confederacy: Mahican Confederacy which includes the Wappinger Wappani...All of them from the Wappinger confederacy noted at ^  Encyclopedia Americana. 1920. p. 256.   ?? or just some of those groups?
 * Also from Eastern Algonquian languages: "The closely related Delaware languages Munsee and Unami form a subgroup, with the two languages descending from an immediate ancestor called Common Delaware (CD)." footnoted from ^Goddard, Ives, 1978, p. 74; Goddard, Ives, 1982 So do or do not these two languages descend from Lenni-Lenape?  Lenni-Lenape is the correct name for Common Delaware, and Delaware is an exonym?  Is there a later Goddard, Ives that works all this out?

That's a lot of questions, I know. I am still not entirely clear on my understanding of THIS talk page's directional pointing. I obviously need a primer on sorting out my headspace into people, places, and languages...but I appear to be in interesting company. So...how much damage and how much help did I really do? =) Duff (talk) 19:20, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Circum-Caribbean to South America?
The Handbook of South American Indians Volume 4 The Circum-Caribbean Tribes, obviously, classifies the Circum-Caribbean 'tribes' as South American. This definition of Circum-Caribbean includes Central America from the southern edge of the Mayan culture area in Honduras through Panama and along the Pacific Coast of Colombia, northwest South America, consisting of much of Colombia and Venezuela, and the Antilles. I propose then to move the Circum-Caribbean section from North America to South America in the article. Does anyone know of a reliable source that would support a different way of placing or otherwise organizing this section? -- Donald Albury 04:28, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your work on this section. I just made it its own heading, instead of being under Mexico/Mesoamerica or South America. -Uyvsdi (talk) 04:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi

South American cultural areas
I cannot find consensus in English-language literature about the best way to divide South American cultural areas. There was some discussion about this on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Indigenous peoples of North America. Talks with User:Diego Grez yielded the following proposed cultural areas:


 * Altiplano and Andes
 * Amazon Basin
 * Atacama Desert
 * Brazilian Highlands
 * Gran Chaco
 * Guianas
 * Llanos
 * Pampas
 * Pantanal
 * Patagonia
 * Southern Chile

Are there further suggestions? Currently the Amazon is divided into three sections - could these be united? They are fairly small in comparison with other sections. Any thoughts and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. -Uyvsdi (talk) 04:24, 18 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi


 * I've been wondering about that myself. I have access to only Volume 4 of the Handbook of South American Indians, which indicates just 4 broad culture areas: Circum-Caribbean, Andean, Tropical Forest, and Marginal. The Caribbean or Circum-Caribbean area is supported by other sources. Tropical Forest and Marginal are not helpful. Sub-divisions in the Tropical Forest area include Montaña (eastern slope of the Andes), Guianas and Amazonia. There apparently are others not mentioned in Volume 4. The Guianas area is fairly large and, among other things, the putative home of the Arawakan languages. The Montaña area might include the "Amazonian civilizations" that have been in the news recently. I wish we knew the source for dividing Amazonia up in this list. Beyond that, I don't know. I think we should document sources that support particular culture areas, but we may have to make some selections to present a coherent whole. -- Donald Albury 11:39, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the Guianas should be classified as a subregion within Circum-Caribbean? I agree that Julian Steward's four regions is too broad. The National Museum of the American Indian has workable set of seven cultural regions (also ): Circum-Caribbean, Amazonia, East Brazil, Gran Chaco, Pampas/Patagonia, Southern South America, and Andes. They include the eastern Ecuadorian and Peruvian tribes in Amazonia and combine Pampas with Patagonia. At least in 1982, National Geographic divides the region into six regions: Circum-Caribbean, Amazonia, East Brazil, Gran Chaco, South (Southern Cone), Andes. I wish I could find scholarly published sources for these cultural areas, but I'm not finding them. The various cultural areas are mentioned in books and articles but not clearly laid out. -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:43, 18 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * Even the language divisions are in a hodgepodge (Category:Languages of South America). The regional divisions there include: South America (Central), Andes, South American Chaco, South American Cone, South American Northeast, Northern Foothills, South American Northwest, and Southern Foothills. So far NMAI's model seems the best. -21:37, 18 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * I wish I could get a look at the other volumes of Handbook of South American Indians. The maps in the volume I'm looking at show Guianas, Northwest Amazon and Montaña as sub-areas in the Tropical Forest culture area. On one hand, the Handbook was issued by the Smithsonian and deserves serious consideration. On the other hand, it is 63 years old, and more recent work may have altered the scholarly consensus. Oh, it looks like the NMAI map puts the Guianas in the Amazonia area. -- Donald Albury 00:36, 22 February 2011 (UTC)


 * And I found a scanned image of Volume 1 here. There is a map of more than 20 groupings in the "Marginal" culture area on page 12. -- Donald Albury 01:31, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I ordered them from Abebooks, and they'll be useful but yes, they are seriously out of date. Since most contemporary cultural divisions include Andes, Amazon, Gran Chaco, and Eastern Brazil, I've started categorizing based on those. We could separate Pampas from Patagonia, or combine all of the south under the "Southern Cone." -Uyvsdi (talk) 03:06, 22 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * Looking at the maps (pp. 12 & 15) in vol. 1, I notice that southernmost Chile, Tierra del Fuego, and most of Argentina including the Pampas are classified as "Southern hunters". "Gran Chaco" is a single sub-area. Some areas in northernmost Argentina and Uruguay (and adjacent Brazil) falling between the Southern Hunters and the Gran Chaco seem to be included in the Southern Hunters in the text. The common cultural theme of the Southern Hunters appears to be that they were hunter-gatherers. The other groups in vol. 1 are either very small areas clustered in the highlands near the southeastern Brazilian coast, or scattered through Amazonia. So, Steward supports classifying southern Chile (south of the Auracanians), Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and the Pampas, and possibly the Allentiac (northwestern Argentina), the Minuan (Parana delta) and the Charrúa (Uruguay and adjacent Brazil), as Southern Hunters or Southern Cone. The Comechingón of northern Argentina were agricultural, and don't fit in the southern group, but I don't know if they can be included in Gran Chaco. Anyway, it looks like we can make sense of most of South America referring to reliable sources. -- Donald Albury 13:11, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'll email NMAI to find out how their cultural divisions are determined. Perhaps Southern Cone could be the major division (as it already is in the article), and then divided into sub-divisions of "Pampas/Patagonia," "Chilean coast," and "Tierra del Fuego"? -Uyvsdi (talk) 19:13, 22 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * One thing to consider is that the map on p. 15 of vol. 1 shows just two tribes (Chono and Alacaluf) in southern Chile, three (Ona people, Yahgan and Haush) in Tierra del Fuego, three or four (Teusch, Southern Tehuelche, Northern Tehulche and Poya (tribe)) in Patagonia, and maybe five (Puelche, Het and Querandi on the pampas proper, and Pehuenche and Chiquiyami on the eastern slope of the Andes) in the pampas. -- Donald Albury 22:47, 22 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds good - leaving Southern Cone as a main cultural area and subdivide only if needed later. Category:Indigenous peoples of Eastern Brazil has enough tribes to warrant being a subdivision. A curator from NMAI got back to me (they are quick!) and said they were unsatisfied with how broad Steward's categories were so they used cultural regions as defined by National Geographic, and then determine subdivisions based on river systems and other natural boundaries. One final loose end, should Guianas stand as a cultural area or should it a subregion of the Amazon? -Uyvsdi (talk) 01:24, 23 February 2011 (UTC)Uyvsdi
 * Found a scanned copy of Steward vol. 3 [here]. The map shows 5 areas in "Tropical Forest", Guianas, Western Amazon Basin, Montaña and Yungas, Mato Grosso and eastern Bolivia, and Coastal and Amazonian Tupi. The Tupi group is a bit of a problem, with 2 main areas, one in the lower Amazon basin and the other along the southeast coast of Brazil. If we include the Guianas in an Amazon area, then it would be hard to justify keeping the Mato Grosso and eastern Bolivia and Amazonian Tupi areas separate, which gives us basically Steward's Tropical Forest area, which may be too broad. I see the biggest problem in the southern part of Brazil and Paraguay. The Brazilian highlands seems to be a natural area or sub-area. I have no clear idea about the non-Tupi non-Highlands people of southern Brazil or the peoples between the Southern Cone and Mato Grosso. -- Donald Albury 12:38, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Let me take that back. Steward's classification of cultural areas in the tropical forests and savannas is given at the end of vol. 3, [here]. So, an undivided Amazonian area seems best, including the Guianas, Montaña, Mato Grosso and eastern Bolivia and the Amazonian Tupi. The Tupi of coastal and southernmost Brazil I guess need to be listed separately. There are also various "marginal" and "sub-marginal" groups scattered throughout the Amazonian area. Eastern and southeastern Brazil, aside from the Brazilian Highlands and coastal Tupi areas, makes a convenient area. So, outside the Andes, I would say Circum-Caribbean, Amazonian, Brazilian Highlands, coastal Tupi, an area of uncertain name covering eastern and southern interior Brazil and Paraguay and adjacent areas, and the Southern Cone. One question is what did National Geographic base their classification on? It also sounds like NAMI used geographical criteria as well as cultural affinities to classify areas. It is unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a scholarly consensus on these cultural areas. -- Donald Albury 14:51, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Mayo people
Well, I can't see where you've put the mayo |87.231.96.179 (talk) 21:33, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I added them to the Aridoamerica section. -Uyvsdi (talk) 22:02, 20 May 2014 (UTC)Uyvsdi

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Move to Classification of Indigenous peoples of the Americas (Capitalize Indigenous)
Per AP, Chicago, and CBC style guides, Indigenous is capitalized when referring to ethnicity/peoples. If there's no substantial objection, I'm going to move the page so it aligns with the other Indigenous pages on WP. - CorbieVreccan  ☊ ☼ 19:59, 11 March 2022 (UTC)
 * 3 months with no objection. Moving now. - CorbieVreccan  ☊ ☼ 19:41, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Page name
Is there a better name we could use for this? I just find it... reminiscent of older, anthro things like cataloguing species of plants and animals. It doesn't feel respectful or up to date. - CorbieVreccan  ☊ ☼ 20:02, 9 September 2023 (UTC)


 * "Cultural affinities of .."? I have a nagging feeling, though, that I may later think of a reason that it wouldn't be much of an improvement. Donald Albury 00:36, 10 September 2023 (UTC)