Baltic Americans are Americans of Baltic descent.
Balts |
The Balts east of a slight ridge at Viļaka were gradually Russified from the 15–16th centuries, but the philologists August Johann Gottfried Bielenstein and Kārlis Mīlenbahs, conducting linguistic field research in the area in the late 19th and early 20th century, found that many people, called "Russian Latvians" by the local Russians, still spoke the High Latvian dialect.
Gintaras Beresnevičius also points out that a white horse had a sacral meaning to Balts.
In the 9th and 10th centuries, the area was likely inhabited by Lechitic tribes in the south, Baltic (Yotvingian) tribes in the north, and Ruthenian tribes in the east.