What happened to Indigenous peoples after Europeans arrived in the Americas?
Long before any ships arrived from across the sea, the Americas were already full of people. Millions of them, living in thousands of nations, each with its own language, food, art, and ideas. There were great cities with pyramids, vast farms, fishing villages, and trade routes that stretched for thousands of miles. So when we ask "what happened after Europeans arrived," remember the real beginning: this was never an empty land. It was home.
Then, in 1492, ships from Spain bumped into islands the sailors had never seen. The captain thought he'd reached India, which is why he wrongly called the people "Indians." That mistaken name stuck around for centuries. But the people meeting these strangers on the beach already had their own names for themselves — Taíno, and hundreds more — names far older than any map Europe had ever drawn.
