Native Tribes of North America Mapped The ancestors of living Native Americans arrived in North America about 15 thousand years ago. As a result, a wide diversity of communities, societies, and cultures finally developed on the continent over the millennia. The population figure for Indigenous peoples in the Americas before the 1492 voyage of Christopher Columbus was 70 million or more. About 562 tribes inhabited the contiguous U.S. territory. Ten largest North American Indian tribes: Arikara, C