In October 1492, Christopher Columbus encountered the native people of a small island in the Caribbean. He thought he was in the East Indies, so it made sense for him to refer to the people he met as “los Indios,” or Indians. Even after Europeans realized that Columbus was mistaken, the name stuck. Thus the native people of the Americas are, collectively, Indians. But the people of the Americas had no collective term for themselves. The names Native Americans call themselves often can be translated as “The Real People,” “The Principal People,” simply “The People,” or perhaps the people of a particular place.