Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples from the regions of North America now encompassed by the continental United States, including parts of Alaska. They comprise a large number of distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which still endure as political communities. There is a wide range of terms used, and some controversy surrounding their use: they are variously known as American Indians, Indians, Amerindians, Amerinds, or Indigenous, Aboriginal, Original Americans, or Red men.

Not all Native Americans come from the contiguous 48 states. Some come from Alaska and other insular regions. These other indigenous peoples, including Alaskan Native groups such as the Inupiaq, Yupik Eskimos, and Aleuts, are not always counted as Native Americans, although Census 2000 demographics listed "American Indian and Alaskan Native" collectively. Native Hawaiians and various other Pacific Islander American peoples, such as the Chamorros (Chamoru), can also be considered Native American but it is not common to use such a designation.

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In the nineteenth century, the incessant westward expansion of the United States incrementally compelled large numbers of Native Americans to resettle further west, often by force, almost always reluctantly. Under President Andrew Jackson, United States Congress passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which authorized the President to conduct treaties to exchange Native American land east of the Mississippi River for lands west of the river. As many as 100,000 Native Americans eventually relocated in the West as a result of this Indian Removal policy. In theory, relocation was supposed to be voluntary (and many Native Americans did remain in the East such as the Choctaw who were first to be removed), but in practice great pressure was put on Native American leaders to sign removal treaties. Arguably the most egregious violation of the stated intention of the removal policy was the Treaty of New Echota, which was signed by a dissident faction of Cherokees but not the elected leadership. The treaty was brutally enforced by Jackson, which resulted in the deaths of an estimated four thousand Cherokees on the Trail of Tears. About 17,000 Cherokees along with approximately 2,000 black slaves owned by Cherokees were removed from their homes.

The explicit policy of Indian Removal forced or coerced the relocation of major Native American groups in the Eastern United States, resulting directly and indirectly in the deaths of tens of thousands. The subsequent process of assimilations was no less devastating to Native American peoples. Tribes were generally located to reservations on which they could more easily be separated from traditional life and pushed into European-American society. Some southern states additionally enacted laws in the 19th century forbidding non-Indian settlement on Indian lands, intending to prevent sympathetic white missionaries from aiding the scattered Indian resistance.

At one point, President Jackson told people to kill as many American Bison as possible in order to cut out the Plains Indians main source of food. In 1885, there were fewer than 500 bison left in the Great Plains. Conflicts, generally known as "Indian Wars", broke out between U.S. forces and many different tribes. U.S. government authorities entered numerous treaties during this period but later abrogated many for various reasons. Military engagements include Native American victories at the Battle of the Wabash in 1791 and the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Massacres include the Minnesota Massacre in 1862, the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864 and the Wounded Knee in 1890. This, together with the near-extinction of the bison that many tribes had lived on, set about the downturn of Prairie Culture that had developed around the use of the horse for hunting, travel and trading.

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