How many Native American tribes are extinct?

by Nolasmells
ahalenia

There's no way to tell, since introduced diseases traveled faster than Europeans. Outside of Mesoamerica, tribes didn't have writing at the time of contact, so much information is not recorded.

When groups were been destroyed by disease, survivors banded together to form new groups, so many individual tribes might be extinct but they still have living descendants.

Many federally recognized tribes today are actually confederacies of tribes (Caddo Confederacy, Creek Confederacy, etc.). For instance the "Wichita Tribe" is really the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes, which includes the Wichita proper, the Kichai, Waco, Tawakoni, and Taovaya peoples. Some tribal members know which of these they descend from and others don't.