While a proper history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas is scarce even in postcolumbian times, modern historians understand quite a bit more about precolumbian societies than the average person might be aware. This is especially helped when native cultures took the time to write their own histories while they were still fairly strong and prevalent , such as happened in Mesoamerica and the Andes. However, do not be deceived, for pretty much the whole of the Americas was in a constant state of evolution all throughout the precolumbian period, it's just that most didn't have writing, and/or went into decline before serious historical accounts of their nations started being put to paper.

The history of Mesoamerica is probably one of the most famous indigenous American histories. It is known for a fact that Mesoamerican societies were familiar with books before Europeans arrived, through the form of codices. These were more like folds than books, but the idea is there - and the continued practice of codex production points to the established fact that Mesoamerican culture continued fairly strong through the rest of the 16th century even after conquest. As Mesoamerica also had possibly the only phonetic encryption of the precolumbian Americas, it is a place uniquely set to have its history understood and recorded, and recorded it was.

As with the Inca, Mesoamerican history was written down in surviving texts by authors shortly post-conquest, so shortly that, in fact, the conquest was still ongoing. The Nahua author Chimalpahin Quautlehuantzin was descended from the nobility of a minor Mesoamerican altepetl, and subject to the Aztec imperial ambition. He provided an indigenous perspective on the Spanish, wrote Mesoamerican history, and records both pre-contact and post-conquest historical annals. He even gave an indigenous perspective on a Japanese delegation passing through Mexico in his time, the early 17th century. He was not the only Mesoamerican historian, as several anonymous writers would provide their own Annals, and Spanish monks and friars took the time to record indigenous oral histories or to transcribe indigenous writing into Latin script or into the Spanish language. I once heard that there's more Mesoamerican historical literature than there is for the Greeks and Romans - though I cannot verify the claim, there is a point to be made that Mesoamerican history is at least decently understood by students of those cultures.

I mentioned the Inca before, too. While the Inca had Quipu, many believe these are more like mathematical records or coded meaning, rather than phonetic transcription proper. However, there is the curious case of El Inca, otherwise known as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. El Inca was a mestizo, and his mother was an Inca princess. He was born in 1539, and did not leave for Spain until 1561. For reference, the Inca Empire still held out until 1572. His father abandoned the family when he was very young, and so he was primarily raised in an Inca royal/imperial upbringing - by his mother, a daughter of the previous Inca emperor at the time of his birth, and a niece of the reigning emperor of the time. It is from his family connections and his childhood that he is often considered a fairly reliable source, even if he did exploit his deadbeat dad for some social credit in the new Spanish dominion. El Inca wrote Royal Commentaries of the Incas between 1609 and 1617, which acted as a comprehensive ethnography and historical account of the precolonial Andes as told from an indigenous perspective. The Incan national education system, its schools and teachers, has its teachings recorded herein. El Inca was not the first to write, notably being predated by one Blas Valera, but El Inca is famous for his royal connections and the wide reach of his work.

Now, when it comes to groups outside these two, historical knowledge tends to be much more archaeological in nature. Not to say the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations aren't given their fair share of archaeology, but simply put most tribal nations did not have any attempts at histories until fairly late in the game. They retained their own oral histories, which are themselves of great value in understanding precolumbian times, but archaeology helps us greatly to fill in gaps. For example, the city of Cahokia was a major center of the Mississippian civilization, a large urban cluster, a walled city, with mounds of many colors made of dirt imported from miles and miles away. We know not only of the Mississippian trade, but also the wider trade running through the majority of the west half of the modern United States and including parts of Canada and Mexico. Plains Sign Language is a significant indicator of the extent this trade network once held, but indigenous oral histories (such as those of the Karankawa, the nation I have studied in the most depth) aren't shy about telling us the great distances traveled. Early European encounters with these peoples also note this, such as captured Spaniards integrating with native life for a while - because this world did not up and suddenly disappear when Europeans showed up. It'd been stewing for a long time before, and continued for a fair time after.

These are just examples, but the point is that there is a decent amount of knowledge, a fair understanding even if not an excellent one, about precolumbian histories. There's loads of evidence left behind to be found in archaeology, and early European accounts tend to pick up in the middle of the story, either telling us directly or implying to us the things that have already happened that the Europeans were not around to write about. Some indigenous societies wrote their own histories from their own perspectives to boot, although this is tainted by bias as much as anything is, since indigenous nations were not monolithic and experienced often just as much strife and rivalry as nations and polities in other parts of the world. You might trust the English to give an accurate account of European history, but you also might expect them to slant French history, so too might we expect from indigenous nations to give us good perspective even if they slant things against their rivals.