In the adventure novels of Fenimore Cooper and Mayne Reid, which most of us read as children, the Indians appear as bloodthirsty, uneducated savages. But altogether on the continent settled more than 2,000 nationalities with their own culture, language, and customs. And the differences between the tribes were often drastic!
There are many hypotheses as to where the first settlers came from in North America. Some scholars suggest that they were descendants of the Egyptians, who by some unknown means of the sea reached the neighboring continent. Others put forward an extravagant version that the Indians are the descendants of the survivors of the Trojan War soldiers. Researchers of the vanished tribes of Israel insist on Jewish roots. There is a version that people inhabited the New World from 50 to 20 thousand years ago, coming from Siberia over the so-called Beringian Bridge - the later disappeared isthmus between Asia and America. As for the name... We all know the story of Columbus, who accidentally discovered America and thought he had arrived in India.