Lost Tribes

Consisting of 10 of the 12 Hebrew Tribes of Canaan which ruled after Moses’ death and formed the ancient Kingdom of Israel in the 10th Century B.C. before being “lost,” exiled, or assimilated at the hands of the Assyrians in the 8th Century B.C. Throughout history, various scholars and theorists have proposed locations and cultures which could have been, respectively, the new home of the tribe, or the people themselves. One common theory during the early colonial era was that Indigenous Americans were one of the Lost Tribes. The Lost Tribes was often included in origin stories in the postconquest histories of a wide range of Indigenous peoples in the Spanish, and later British and French, colonies, as well as many of the African peoples who were forcibly brought to the Americas