The expression 'Native Americans' refers to the populations that inhabited the American continent before European colonization, and their modern-day descendants.
According to the most widely accepted hypothesis, 13,000 years ago humans migrated from Asia to America across Beringia, the narrow land bridge that connecting the two continents. These people then moved gradually south until they were scattered across the entire continent, diversifying into thousands of tribes and ethnic groups.
In Central and South America, the indigenous Americans organized themselves into great civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs in modern-day Mexico and the Inca in the Andes cordillera, while in North America they remained as nomadic or semi-nomadic populations.
Native Americans display physical features similar to Asiatic peoples: elongated eyes, prominent cheekbones, plus an almost complete lack of facial hair and their hair tends to be dark and smooth. These characteristics led anthropologists to postulate their origins in ancient Asians who crossed the Bering Strait in prehistoric times, a hypothesis later confirmed by linguistic and especially genetic studies.
In the 1800's few American artists chose to portray indigenous peoples as the subjects of their image of the Old West;
in the 20th century, however, a number of American artists, after brief studies in Europe, would return home with the desire to depict this realities that, it was well known, were in the process of vanishing forever from the face of the earth.
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