Tribal Tales: 38 Fascinating Facts About Native Tribes

From 1956 to 1996 the Mormon Church operated a program where Native American kids would be baptized and placed in Mormon foster homes, thinking it would "lighten" them. It was based on the Mormon belief that Native Americans were originally white until God punished them by making them darker.

27. 1 in 4 children born on the Pine Ridge Native American Reservation is born with fetal alcohol syndrome.

28. The Native American Yuki people of California use base 8 instead of 10 because they don't count with their fingers, but with the spaces between them.

29. Magellan’s expedition claimed to have encountered giants in South America. While anchored near modern-day Argentina, Magellan’s men reported encountering 8-foot-tall men on the beaches of Patagonia. Historians have surmised that the "giants" were actuality members of the Tehuelche tribe.

30. A nomadic tribe lived over 12,000 years ago in Turkey and built massive megaliths over a 25-acre area. At that time mankind only knew how to make fire but had not discovered the wheel yet. Excavations are still going on today.

According to the 1995 census, the majority of American Indians prefer the term "Indian" over "Native American" in referring to them.

32. The Bayanzi tribe of the Congo had a unique way of execution via decapitation. While alive, the condemned was made to sit down and his/her head was connected to a springy tree branch with a cord and the legs and body were tied to stakes, so that when the head was cut off, it would be thrown through the air "With the force of a bomb".

33. An isolated tribe (Toulambi tribes) in Papua New Guinea met a white man for the first time in 1976 and thought that the white man is covered in dirt/sand.

34. A black fur trader in the American West got captured by a band of Crow Indians and got mistaken for a Chief's long-lost son. He eventually became their Chief (James Beckwourth) himself.

35. There is an Indian tribe (Shipibo Indians) in South America that makes psychedelic designs that can be read as music.

There is a tribe of people in an almost inaccessible Himalayan valley that made a decision to bring their own race to extinction by choosing to not have children. If you broke the no breeding tribal rule, you would be banned from the village, which was, in essence, a death sentence.

37. There is a tribe in Papua New Guinea where the women ambush men for sex and can urinate on him and bite off his eyebrow and eyelashes if they aren't satisfied.

38. The Hualapai Tribe in Arizona agreed to allow the builder of the Grand Canyon Skywalk to operate it for 25 years to recoup his $30 million investment. In 2012, just 5 years after it opened, the tribe seized control of the Skywalk. They lost in court and now must pay the builder $28.5 million.