Title: Are American Indians and Native Americans different or the same? - Quora
Headings: Are American Indians and Native Americans different or the same?
Are American Indians and Native Americans different or the same?
Matt Riggsby
Mike Nolan

Content: And so by the middle of the 20th centur
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They’re essentially the same, in that they’re inexact terms for the same batch of people. As far back as Columbus, native peoples in the New World got stuck with the name “Indians,” since Columbus thought or at least wanted people to think that he’d found a sea route to India. However, this was both confusing and inaccurate, since it wasn’t India at all, and one would often have to specify east Indians or west Indians (this was made all the more confusing by the West Indies having a more specific meaning of several of the larger islands of the Caribbean). And so by the middle of the 20th century, people started using the term “Native Americans” in place of “American Indians,” resolving the ambiguity. That said, both refer to a sometimes poorly defined set of people. Depending on context, it may or may not include native Alaskans or Pacific Islanders who, while natives of the New World defined in the broadest sense, were never regularly described as “Indians.” It may also be used to describe either all natives of the New World from Canada to Tierra del Fuego, or just natives of what is now the United States. Mike Nolan
, English Teacher (2011-present)
Answered 2 years ago · Author has 1.1K answers and 350.7K answer views
The terms are not exactly the same. Native Americans, also known as American Indians, Indigenous Americansand other terms, are the indigenous peoples of the United States, except Hawaii. There are over 500 federally recognized tribes within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations.