Argentina is a country in South America, the continent's second largest by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.

Argentina's continental area is between the Andes mountain range in the west and the Atlantic Ocean in the east. It borders Paraguay and Bolivia to the north, Brazil and Uruguay to the northeast, and Chile to the west and south. Argentine claims over Antarctica, as well as overlapping claims made by Chile and the United Kingdom, are suspended by the Antarctic Treaty of 1961. Argentina also claims the Falkland Islands (Spanish: Islas Malvinas) and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, which are administered by the United Kingdom as British Overseas Territories.

Prior to European colonization, the Andean region of Bolivia was a part of the Inca Empire – the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century. During most of the Spanish colonial period, this territory was called Upper Peru and was under the administration of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which included most of Spain's South American colonies. After declaring independence in 1809, 16 years of war followed before the establishment of the Republic, named for Simón Bolívar, on 6 August 1825. Bolivia has struggled through periods of political instability, dictatorships and economic woes.

Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal. Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.

Prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the 16th century, northern and central Chile was under Inca rule while the indigenous Mapuche inhabited southern Chile. Chile declared its independence from Spain on 12 February 1818. In the War of the Pacific (1879–83), Chile defeated Peru and Bolivia and won its current northern territory. It was not until the 1880s that the Mapuche were completely subjugated. Although relatively free of the coups and arbitrary governments that blighted South America, Chile endured the 17-year long military dictatorship (1973–1990) of Augusto Pinochet that left more than 3,000 people dead or missing.

The territory of what is now Colombia was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples including the Muisca, Quimbaya, and Tairona. The Spanish arrived in 1499 and initiated a period of conquest and colonization ultimately creating the Viceroyalty of New Granada (comprising modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, north-western Brazil and Panama), with its capital at Bogotá. Independence from Spain was won in 1819, but by 1830 "Gran Colombia" had collapsed with the secession of Venezuela and Ecuador. What is now Colombia and Panama emerged as the Republic of New Granada. The new nation experimented with federalism as the Granadine Confederation (1858), and then the United States of Colombia (1863), before the Republic of Colombia was finally declared in 1886. Panama seceded in 1903.

Colombia was the first constitutional government in South America, and an important promoter of the Pan American organizations, initially through the Congress of Panama and later, during the 20th century as founder of the Organization of American States. The Liberal and Conservative parties, founded in 1848 and 1849, are two of the oldest surviving political parties in the Americas.

The main spoken language in Ecuador is Spanish. Ecuador straddles the equator, from which it takes its name, and has an area of 275,830 km2 (106,500 sq mi). Its capital city is Quito, which was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in the 1970s for having the best preserved and least altered historic center in Latin America. The country's largest city is Guayaquil. The historic center of Cuenca, the third largest city in the country, was also declared a World Heritage Site in 1999, for being an outstanding example of a planned inland Spanish style colonial city in the Americas. Ecuador is also home—despite its size—to a great variety of species, many of them endemic, like those of the Galápagos islands. This species diversity makes Ecuador one of the 17 megadiverse countries in the world. The new constitution of 2008 is the first in the world to recognize legally enforceable Rights of Nature, or ecosystem rights.

French Guiana (officially just Guyane) is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department located on the northern Atlantic coast of South America.

The addition of the adjective "French" in English comes from colonial times when five such colonies existed (The Guianas), namely from west to east: Spanish Guiana (now Guayana Region in Venezuela), British Guiana (now Guyana), Dutch Guiana (now Suriname), French Guiana, and Portuguese Guiana (now Amapá, a state in far northern Brazil). French Guiana and the two larger countries to the north and west, Guyana and Suriname, are still often collectively referred to as the Guianas and comprise one large shield landmass.

Guyana previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and (for over 200 years) the British. It is the only state of the Commonwealth of Nations on mainland South America, and the only one on that continent where English is an official language. It is also a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which has its secretariat headquarters in Guyana's capital, Georgetown. Guyana achieved independence from the United Kingdom on 26 May 1966, and became a republic on 23 February 1970. In 2008 the country joined the Union of South American Nations as a founding member.

Historically, the region known as "Guiana" or "Guyana" comprised the large shield landmass north of the Amazon River and east of the Orinoco River known as the "Land of many waters". Historical Guyana is made up of three Dutch colonies: Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice.

Peruvian territory was home to ancient cultures, spanning from the Norte Chico civilization, one of the oldest in the world, to the Inca Empire, the largest state in Pre-Columbian America. The Spanish Empire conquered the region in the 16th century and established a Viceroyalty, which included most of its South American colonies. After achieving independence in 1821, Peru has undergone periods of political unrest and fiscal crisis as well as periods of stability and economic upswing.

Suriname, officially the Republic of Suriname, is a country in northern South America. It borders French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, Brazil to the south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the north. Suriname was a former colony of the British and of the Dutch, and was previously known as Dutch Guiana. Suriname achieved independence from the Netherlands on 25 November 1975.

At just under 165,000 km2 (64,000 sq mi) Suriname is the smallest sovereign state in South America (French Guiana comprises less territory, but is French territory). It has an estimated population of approximately 490,000, most of whom live on the country's north coast, where the capital Paramaribo is located.

Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities.

Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522, overcoming the resistance from indigenous peoples. It became the first Spanish American colony to declare independence (in 1811), but did not securely establish independence until 1821 (initially as a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia, gaining full independence in 1830). During the 19th century Venezuela suffered political turmoils and dictatorship, and it was dominated by regional caudillos (military strongmen) well into the 20th century. The country first saw a democratic rule from 1945 to 1948, and, after a period of dictatorship has remained democratic since 1958, during which time most countries of Latin America suffered one or more military dictatorships. Economic crisis in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which saw hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former career officer Hugo Chávez, and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution, beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.

In Pre-Columbian Mexico many cultures matured into advanced civilizations such as the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec before the first contact with Europeans. In 1521, Spain conquered and colonized the territory from its base in México-Tenochtitlan, which was administered as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. This territory would eventually become Mexico as the colony's independence was recognized in 1821. The post-independence period was characterized by economic instability, the Mexican-American War and territorial cession to the United States, a civil war, two empires and a domestic dictatorship. The latter led to the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which culminated with the promulgation of the 1917 Constitution and the emergence of the country's current political system.

A diverse and multifaceted cultural and educational enterprise, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) is an active and visible component of the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex. The NMAI cares for one of the world's most expansive collections of Native artifacts, including objects, photographs, archives, and media covering the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego.

The museum provides a variety of materials for use in the classroom. All have been developed by the museum's education staff in collaboration with Native community members. These materials offer rich Native perspectives on the history and contemporary life of many different Native tribes.

Picturing United States History: An Interactive Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence is a digital project based on the belief that visual materials are vital to understanding the American past. This website provides online "Lessons in Looking," a guide to Web resources, forums, essays, reviews, and classroom activities to help teachers incorporate visual evidence into their classrooms. The Picturing U.S. History site will also serve as a clearing house for teachers interested in incorporating visual documents into their U.S. history, American studies, American literature, or other humanities courses.

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening. According to the instrument classification of Hornbostel-Sachs, flutes are categorized as edge-blown aerophones.

A musician who plays the flute can be referred to as a flute player, a flautist, a flutist, or less commonly a fluter.

Aside from the voice, flutes are the earliest known musical instruments. A number of flutes dating to about 40,000 to 35,000 years ago have been found in the Swabian Alb region of Germany. These flutes demonstrate that a developed musical tradition existed from the earliest period of modern human presence in Europe.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.

Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States. Among the significant artists represented in its collection are Nam June Paik, Jenny Holzer, David Hockney, Georgia O'Keeffe, John Singer Sargent, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Albert Bierstadt, Edmonia Lewis, Thomas Moran, James Gill, Edward Hopper, Karen LaMonte, and Winslow Homer.

The art of Tuvan throat singing is a style in which one or more pitches sound simultaneously over a fundamental pitch, producing a unique sound. The history of Tuvan throat singing reaches very far back. Many of the male herders can throat sing, but women are beginning to practice the technique as well. The popularity of throat singing among Tuvans seems to have arisen as a result of geographic location and culture. The open landscape of Tuva allows for the sounds to carry a great distance. Ethnomusicologists studying throat singing in these areas mark khoomei as an integral part in the ancient pastoral animism that is still practiced today. Often, singers will travel far into the countryside looking for the right river, or will go up to the steppes of the mountainside to create the proper environment for throat-singing.

Inuit throat singing or katajjaq, also known as (and commonly confused with) the generic term overtone singing[citation needed], is a form of musical performance uniquely found among the Inuit. (There used to be a similar style, Rekuhkara, practiced by the Ainu in Hokkaidō, but that has since died out.) Unlike the throat singers in other regions of the world, particularly Tibet, Mongolia and Tuva, the Inuit performers are usually women who sing only duets in a kind of entertaining contest to see who can outlast the other. However, at least one notable performer, Tanya Tagaq, performs throat singing as a solo artist and as a collaborator with non-throat singing musicians such as Björk. The musical duo Tudjaat performed a mixture of traditional throat singing and pop music.

American Journeys contains more than 18,000 pages of eyewitness accounts of North American exploration, from the sagas of Vikings in Canada in AD1000 to the diaries of mountain men in the Rockies 800 years later.

Read the words of explorers, Indians, missionaries, traders and settlers as they lived through the founding moments of American history. View, search, print, or download more than 150 rare books, original manuscripts, and classic travel narratives from the library and archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Before the 1860s, most of the people living on the Great Plains were Native Americans. In 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act, allowing men or women who were 21 years old or older to "stake a claim" to 160 acres of land. Homesteaders agreed to build a home within six months and then live there for the next five years.

People who dreamed of owning a farm of their own or a bigger farm came from all around the country and the world to try to build a better future for themselves and their families.
The land the settlers found was flat and treeless. Many people said that it looked like an ocean of grass. Without trees or rocks to build houses with, settlers used sod, a tough combination of dirt and the roots of grass.

Many countries in the New World and elsewhere celebrate the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas, which occurred on October 12, 1492, as an official holiday. The event is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States, as Día de la Raza in many countries in Latin America, as Discovery Day in the Bahamas, as Día de la Hispanidad, Fiesta Nacional in Spain, Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural (Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity) in Argentina and as Día de las Américas (Day of the Americas) in Uruguay. These holidays have been celebrated unofficially since the late 18th century, and officially in various areas since the early 20th century.

On September 14, 1814, U.S. soldiers at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry raised a huge American flag to celebrate an important victory over British forces during the War of 1812. The sight of those "broad stripes and bright stars" inspired Francis Scott Key to write a song that eventually became the United States national anthem. Key’s words gave new significance to a national symbol and started a tradition through which generations of Americans have invested the flag with their own meanings and memories.

The Flag Maker is a story about Caroline Pickersgill helping her mother, Mary Pickersgill, create the Star-Spangled Banner and her emotions as she sees that the flag has survived the Battle of Baltimore.

For two and a half years, Americans fought Against the British, Canadian colonists, and native nations. In the years to come, the War of 1812 would be celebrated in some places and essentially forgotten in others. But it is a war worth remembering—a struggle that threatened the existence of Canada, then divided the United States so deeply that the nation almost broke apart. Some of its battles and heroes became legendary, yet its blunders and cowards were just as prominent.

Beginning in 2009, the United States Mint began minting and issuing $1 coins featuring designs celebrating the important contributions made by Indian tribes and individual Native Americans to the history and development of the United States. The Native American $1 Coin Program was created by the Native American $1 Coin Act (Public Law 110-82).

The decades between the close of the Civil War and the beginning of World War II were a time of profound social turmoil in the United States. While baseball as a sport was becoming tremendously popular around the still-young nation, Americans experienced the sport in various ways reflecting their social and ethnic backgrounds.

God in America explores the tumultuous 400-year history of the intersection of religion and public life in America, from the first European settlements to the 2008 presidential election. A co-production of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE and FRONTLINE, this six-hour series examines how religious dissidents helped shape the American concept of religious liberty and the controversial evolution of that ideal in the nation's courts and political arena; how religious freedom and waves of new immigrants and religious revivals fueled competition in the religious marketplace; how movements for social reform -- from abolition to civil rights -- galvanized men and women to put their faith into political action; and how religious faith influenced conflicts from the American Revolution to the Cold War.

The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico have been living in the upper region of the Rio Grande River for more than 600 years.

During that time, their way of life has been challenged many times, but they have managed to maintain their most basic beliefs and traditions.

The people of the Santa Clara Pueblo have the same word for clay and for people, nung, because they believe that the first people emerged from Mother Earth.

Clay is a very important part of their lives. They say prayers when removing it from its home — the earth — and while preparing it for making pottery. Creating pottery fulfills them spiritually and creatively. Selling it provides income with which they support their families.

The area where the Pueblo Indians live is hot and dry. Their ancestors made pots in which to collect and store water. Investigate the roles that pottery and water play in their lives by discovering the symbolism of two modern pots in "Explore Pueblo Pots," and by reading When Clay Sings.

Yes, there is the love story between Pocahontas and John Smith, but this collection has so much more to offer. Check out the videos, the artifacts, the PDFs, and make early American history come alive. You may begin to fall in love with Pocahontas yourself.

The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, folklore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the end of the century. After the 18th century and the push beyond the Appalachian Mountains, the term is generally applied to anywhere west of the Mississippi River in earlier periods and westward from the frontier strip toward the later part of the 19th century. Thus, the Midwest and American South, though not considered part of the Western United States today, have Western heritage along with the modern western states. More broadly, the period stretches from the early 19th century to the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920.

Through treaties with foreign nations and native peoples, political compromise, technological innovation, military conquest, establishment of law and order, and the great migrations of foreigners, the United States expanded from coast to coast (Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean), fulfilling advocates' belief in Manifest Destiny. In securing and managing the West, the U.S. federal government greatly expanded its powers, as the nation evolved from an agrarian society to an industrialized nation. First promoting settlement and exploitation of the land, by the end of the 19th century the federal government assumed stewardship of the remaining open spaces. As the American Old West passed into history, the myths of the West took firm hold in the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike.

The quilt is an art form that has been a large part of American history, a fact you will soon know after exploring this collection.

Belize (formerly British Honduras) is a country located on the north eastern coast of Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official language. Kriol and Spanish are more commonly spoken. Belize is bordered to the north by Mexico, south and west by Guatemala, and to the east by the Caribbean Sea. Belize’s mainland is about 290 kilometres (180 mi) long and 110 kilometres (68 mi) wide.

Belize is culturally unique among its Central American neighbours; it is the only nation in the region with a British colonial heritage. As a part of the Western Caribbean Zone, however, it also shares a common heritage with the Caribbean portions of other Central American countries. In general, Belize is considered to be a Central American nation with strong ties to both the Caribbean and Latin America.

The Dominican Republic is a nation on the island of La Hispaniola, part of the Greater Antilles archipelago in the Caribbean region. The western third of the island is occupied by the nation of Haiti, making Hispaniola one of two Caribbean islands that are shared by two countries. Both by area and population, the Dominican Republic is the second largest Caribbean nation (after Cuba), with 48,442 square kilometres (18,704 sq mi) and an estimated 10 million people.

Taínos inhabited what is now the Dominican Republic since the 7th century. Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1492, and it became the site of the first permanent European settlement in the Americas, namely Santo Domingo, the country's capital and Spain's first capital in the New World.

El Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country as well as Central America. El Salvador borders the Pacific Ocean on the west, and the countries of Guatemala to the north and Honduras to the east. Its easternmost region lies on the coast of the Gulf of Fonseca, opposite Nicaragua. As of 2009, El Salvador had a population of approximately 5,744,113 people, composed predominantly of Mestizos.

One way to "know" people is through their music, so enjoy this collection of audios, videos, and liner notes of music from Guatemala.

One way to "know" people is through their music, so enjoy this collection of audios and liner notes of music from Honduras.

One way to "know" people is through their music, so enjoy this collection of audios and liner notes of music from Jamaica.

One way to "know" people is through their music, so enjoy this collection of audios, lesson plans, and liner notes of music from Trinidad and Tobago.

One way to "know" people is through their music, so enjoy this collection of audios and liner notes of music from Nicaragua.

One way to "know" people is through their music, so enjoy this collection of audios and liner notes of music from Panama.