The distinction between Vipassana as a practice to Samatha is a relatively modern one, most likely led by the Vipassana Movement. This is most likely due to the fact that cultivating the Jhana is very time consuming and probably require intensive monastic training and was not possible to be taught in a ten days meditation retreat. So the goal becomes to allow the novice meditators to at least recognize some of the three marks of existence within the practice.

But if you look directly at the Pali discourses — the earliest extant sources for our knowledge of the Buddha's teachings — you'll find that although they do use the word samatha to mean tranquillity, and vipassana to mean clear-seeing, they otherwise confirm none of the received wisdom about these terms. Only rarely do they make use of the word vipassana — a sharp contrast to their frequent use of the word jhana. When they depict the Buddha telling his disciples to go meditate, they never quote him as saying "go do vipassana," but always "go do jhana." And they never equate the word vipassana with any mindfulness techniques. In the few instances where they do mention vipassana, they almost always pair it with samatha — not as two alternative methods, but as two qualities of mind that a person may "gain" or "be endowed with," and that should be developed together. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/onetool.html

This distinction between vipassana and samatha is also not emphasized in Northern Buddhist tradition (i.e. Mahayana Chinese Zen and so forth), but cultivation of Jhana is.

The distinction between Vipassana as a practice to Samatha is a relatively modern one, most likely led by the Vipassana Movement. This is most likely due to the fact that cultivating the Jhana is very time consuming and probably require intensive monastic training and was not possible to be taught in a ten days meditation retreat. So the goal becomes to allow the novice meditators to at least recognize some of the three marks of existence within the practice.

But if you look directly at the Pali discourses — the earliest extant sources for our knowledge of the Buddha's teachings — you'll find that although they do use the word samatha to mean tranquillity, and vipassana to mean clear-seeing, they otherwise confirm none of the received wisdom about these terms. Only rarely do they make use of the word vipassana — a sharp contrast to their frequent use of the word jhana. When they depict the Buddha telling his disciples to go meditate, they never quote him as saying "go do vipassana," but always "go do jhana." And they never equate the word vipassana with any mindfulness techniques. In the few instances where they do mention vipassana, they almost always pair it with samatha — not as two alternative methods, but as two qualities of mind that a person may "gain" or "be endowed with," and that should be developed together. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/thanissaro/onetool.html

This distinction between vipassana and samatha is also not emphasized in Northern Buddhist tradition (i.e. Mahayana Chinese Zen and so forth), but cultivation of Jhana is.

In fact the distinction have led to some criticism:

A group of laypeople who had studied the Abhidhamma together came to Ajaan Fuang to try out his version of mental training, but when he told them to sit, close their eyes, and focus on the breath, they immediately backed off, saying that they didn't want to practice concentration, for fear that they'd get stuck on jhana and end up being reborn in the Brahma worlds. He responded, "What's there to be afraid of? Even non-returners are reborn in the Brahma worlds. At any rate, being reborn in the Brahma worlds is better than being reborn as a dog." http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/thai/fuang/itself.html