To hell with logic and reasoning, Musick, let's me and you play a mind game.
Fine, I suspected that you would cooperate if I put my words into your mouth, so let's begin...

Indian tribes are neat little units of culture.
Most American indian tribes are kinda like the Jews
in that their name for themselves is "the chosen ones" or,
simply, "the people". As we would expect, each tribe of "chosen ones" has evolved distinctive traits,
skills, and customs that serve to re-enforce the
idea of their own uniqueness among mankind,
sometimes to extent of denying manhood to all other
tribes and considering them as we consider dangerous
animals - sometimes killing them for sport and food.

Now here is the thought experiment: consider the
individual indians in a tribe as individuals cells in a human body,
each a part of a organized whole working towards the continuation of the larger unit, i.e., the tribal body.
The social machineries in place either allow or disallow
the tribe to continue to exist through time by virtue
of the aptness of their particular construction.

A single indian, like a single cell, can not continue through time.
So why not consider each tribe an entity within itself, after all that is what we do when we consider
the "I" in a collection of cells that is ourselves.

After intergrating this collection of thoughts
and after some practice at referring to indian tribes
as, for example, Mister Cherokee and Mister Choctaw,
you will then find the answer to your own questions.