First Americans

There is considerable controversy and little consensus on the questions of when, where, and how human beings first arrived in and peopled the Americas. For much of the 20th century (c. 1920s–80s) the views of Aleš Hrdlicka (1869–1943) of the United States National Museum dominated the discipline of physical anthropology in the Americas. Hrdlicka and his followers maintained that all indigenous peoples of the Americas originated in north Asia from Mongoloid stock.

His theory dovetailed with the so-called Clovis-First hypothesis, a pre-1990s consensus among North American archaeologists and physical anthropologists that the ancestors of all peoples who inhabited the Americas prior to the European encounter in 1492 had migrated across a land bridge at the Bering Strait (called Beringia) and south through an ice-free corridor near the end of the most recent (or Wisconsin) glaciation, around 10,000 b.c.e. These early Paleo-Indians then dispersed across the Americas.

Their immediate descendants, the Clovis culture, employed a characteristic lithic chipping technique (first discovered near Clovis, New Mexico, in the 1930s), which then became widespread across North America. In this Clovis-First hypothesis, the Clovis culture was followed by the Folsom culture and subsequent late Paleo-Indian cultures.


Numerous pre-Clovis sites excavated from the 1990s conclusively demonstrate human habitation of the Americas well before the Clovis horizon. New subdisciplines (including paleobotany, paleoparasitology, paleoclimatology, paleoecology, and mitochondrial DNA [mtDNA] analysis) and new dating technologies (especially more refi ned radiocarbon dating procedures and optically stimulated luminescence [OSL]) have pushed back the date of human habitation in the Americas to at least 16,000 BP (before present).

Paralleling the torturous history of paleoanthropology in Africa and Asia, however, credible schools of thought regarding the peopling of the Americas are varied, multiple, contradictory, and a matter of fierce debate.

In North America, and despite these disagreements, one consensus to emerge by the early 2000s was that the U.S. South and the Mid-Atlantic region south of the Wisconsin glaciation were major sites of human habitation in the pre-Clovis era. Numerous sites there predating the Clovis culture have been carefully excavated since the 1980s.

These include the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in southwestern Pennsylvania, a project directed by James M. Adovasio of the Mercyhurst Archaeological Institute, which has yielded firm dates of 16,000 BP; Cactus Hill, Virginia, led (in separate projects) by Joseph McAvoy of the Nottaway River Survey and Michael Johnson of the Archaeological Society of Virginia, whose human artifacts were also dated to around 16,000 BP; Saltville, Virginia, dated to 14,000 BP; and the Topper site in South Carolina, dated to at least 16,000 BP.

Another important project from the 1990s has been the Gault site excavation in central Texas, supervised by Mike Collins under the auspices of the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory, which has unearthed more than half a million Clovis artifacts and shed new light on this mysterious culture.

In South America sites antecedent to Clovis include the Monte Verde project in Chile, undertaken by U.S. archaeologist T. D. Dillehay in the 1980s and 1990s; the Taima Taima project in Venezuela, led by Canadian archaeologists Alan Bryan and Ruth Gruhn from the 1970s; and the Pedra Furada project in northeastern Brazil, directed by Brazilian anthropologist Niède Guidon of the Fundação Museu do Homem Americano (FUMDHAM) since the 1980s.

Dillehay’s findings at Monte Verde demonstrate that humans inhabited the southernmost parts of South America at least 12,500 years ago and suggest dates as far back as 33,000 BP. The findings of Guidon and colleagues at Pedra Furada appear to push the date of human habitation of the Americas back even further.

Radiocarbon dating of hearth samples and other artifacts (using accelerator mass spectrometry [AMS] and a procedure called acid-base-wet oxidation followed by stepped combustion [ABOX-SC], developed in 1999) has yielded dates ranging from 35,000 to 55,000 b.c.e. for the Pedra Furada site.

Some purported anthropogenic specimens have yielded ages greater than 56,000 BP, the outermost limit of radiocarbon dating. Guidon and her colleagues therefore hypothesize that humans inhabited Pedra Furada and adjacent sites some 60,000 years ago, and perhaps before. Few scholars accept these very early dates.

Other evidence suggests South Asian, African, and possibly European migrations to the Americas in the pre-Clovis era. Among the most controversial findings is the so-called Kennewick Man, plucked out of the Columbia River in Washington State and dated to around 9,300 BP, to which some attributed "Caucasoid-like", or non–Native American Indian, anatomical features, sparking a huge debate and much litigation.

Less disputed is the skeleton dubbed "Luzia" in Brazil, which dates to around 10,000 b.c.e. and is considered to exhibit either African or South Asian morphological features.

Other reputable studies provide evidence of close anatomical affinities between contemporary and pre-Columbian Amerindians in the Baja California Peninsula and South Asian/South Pacific populations.

MtDNA analysis likewise elicits complex depictions of the genetic heritage of various pre-Columbian indigenous peoples of the Americas, suggesting not only North Asian but also South Asian, African, and European genetic links.

Other anomalies not explained by the Clovis-First hypothesis are the greater antiquity and relative abundance of pre-Columbian remains and artifacts in zones furthest from the Beringia land bridge and the more recent provenance and relative dearth of such remains in the zones nearest to it.

Linguistic analyses, too, suggest that people arrived in the Americas in several distinct migrations, not all from North Asia, the earliest dating to at least 15,000 b.c.e.

One plausible theory, that people arrived in waves of migrations over many millennia, beginning with watercraft migrations from Asia to the Pacific coasts of North and South America sometime between 30,000 and 20,000 BP, cannot be confirmed except through undersea archaeological digs (which do not exist in this field) or chance discovery, since the then-littoral was inundated by rising seas at the beginning of the Holocene (10,000 BP).

The most significant obstacles to further advances in this field include academic infighting among the proponents of various schools of thought, and linguistic and cultural barriers between North and South American scholars.

Some also view the 1990 U.S. Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) as a significant impediment to scientific research in North America, since it requires all pre-Columbian human remains and artifacts be repatriated to the closest culturally affiliated American Indian tribe recognized by the U.S. government, thereby precluding scientific testing, as occurred in the case of Kennewick Man.

Others point to the long history of routine mistreatment of unearthed human remains by physical anthropologists and archaeologists and to the spiritual well-being of contemporary Indian communities as necessitating NAGPRA.

Among the most reputable English-language scholarly journals in this rapidly expanding and contentious field are American Antiquity, Nature, Science, Athena Review, and North American Archaeologist.

Migration Patterns of The Americas

Migration Patterns of The Americasn

Native Americans inhabited every region of the Western Hemisphere, from arctic North America to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. There are more than 500 distinct Native American tribal groups or nations in North America alone. Native people showed a remarkable ability to adapt to the different physical environments throughout North America.

They organized themselves into communities, governments, and cultures that were adapted to their local environment and were recognized as distinct tribes or nations by the people within the tribe as well as by the other Native nations. Native Americans’ own stories of how they arrived in their homelands are as varied as the tribes themselves.

There are some common themes, however, to these creation stories and oral traditions. All tribes have a creation story; most tell of humans being brought up from the ground by spiritual powers, and each culture tells of its own tribe as being the original people. This is usually a positive story, with humans being brought into this world with joy, companionship, and laughter.


Native cultures have a strong sense of distinct male and female powers and principles in the universe, and often these creation stories tell of the male spirits of the sky and Sun bringing humanity up from the female counterpart, the womb of Mother Earth. Sometimes these stories tell of the women pushing the men to venture out of the earth (or up from a lake or to embark on a long journey) to find the new world in the light.

Some tribes’ creation stories tell of their people emerging from the earth directly into their homeland. But many of them tell of a long migration: The people emerge and travel a great distance to their eventual homeland. Some tribes’ creation stories contain both subterrestial and terrestrial journeys.

The San Juan Tewa tribe of New Mexico tells of human beings first living in Sipofene, a dark world beneath a lake far to the north. The first mothers of the Tewa, Blue Corn Woman and White Corn Maiden, directed a man to travel to the world above the lake, where he eventually obtains the gifts that allow the Tewa to live in the terrestrial world.

The Potawatomi of the southern Great Lakes are another example. The Potawatomi are culturally, politically, and linguistically linked to the Ojibwa and Odawa people in the northern Great Lakes, and many stories link the Potawatomi to the Great Migration of the Ojibwa from the Atlantic seaboard to the Great Lakes.

But Potawatomi creation stories also tell of the original people arising from the St. Joseph River southwest of Lake Michigan. Native creation stories always carry a sense that it was a journey of great distance to arrive at the homeland, whether it was a journey from underground or a journey over land. And the goal is always to arrive at a distinct homeland for the original people.

This is a question that puzzled the European immigrants and settlers, beginning with the early explorers (once they realized they had not reached Asia as they had expected). Some Europeans speculated that the Native Americans were the lost tribes of Israel cited in the Bible.

The Jesuit missionary José de Acosta in the late 1500s proposed the theory that the Native Americans traveled from Asia following the great herds of animals that they hunted. Anthropology grew as a science in America in the 1800s, focusing on Native cultures and their origins.

Most contemporary evidence points to a migration of the Native American people from Asia, coming from north-eastern Siberia into Alaska sometime between 25,000 to 11,000 years ago. But there is still much debate about the exact time of this migration and whether it was one migration by a single group of people or different migrations by different groups.

The geological record points to an ice age that occurred from 40,000 to 11,000 years ago. There are two factors that would have influenced this migration. First, tying up so much of the earth’s water into ice would have resulted in a drop in the level of the oceans.

About 60 miles of water presently separate Alaska and Siberia, but in the last ice age, the ocean would have been low enough for these two landmasses to be connected, permitting easy migration from Asia into North America.

Studies of the fossil record indicate that this type of migration has occurred among the great herding animals. Caribou, mammoths, elk, and moose apparently traveled from Asia to North America, and horses and camels migrated the opposite way.

Secondly, the scarring of rock strata indicate that the ice sheet covering North America in this time period was vast, stretching south to the Canadian Pacific coast and across to the Atlantic Ocean. While migration from Asia into Alaska was feasible as early as 25,000 years ago, the ice sheet would have blocked further overland travel into the interior of North America until 14,000 years ago.

Some scientists argue that travel would have been possible along the Alaskan and Canadian coastline, but no evidence has been found as yet to indicate boats or a fishing-based culture in this region prior to 11,000 years ago.

Anthropologists have applied modern language theory and biological techniques to the question of migration. There are more than 1,000 Native American languages, and the North American languages are commonly recognized as falling into eight large, related groups.

Anthropologists have attempted to determine migration patterns tribes based on the dispersion of these language groups. Most agree that three or more migrations occurred, with the first beginning more than 11,000 years ago. The largest language group, the Amerind, links many languages in all regions of North America and is believed to be the earliest.

This migration was then followed later by the Na-Dene group, which is found in the U.S. Southwest and Northwest Coast (some 9,000 years ago), and still later by the Inuit and Aleut speakers of the Arctic (less than 8,000 years ago). Studies of dental traits and blood-group traits among Native Americans also tend to support the concept of three large migration events.

Once Native Americans did become established in central North America, they began to spread out to every region of the continent, and cultures and lifestyles began to evolve and adapt to the various regions. Scientists refer to these earliest cultures as Paleo-Indians. One artifact common to these people is a distinctive flint spear point referred to as the Clovis point.

A number of archaeological sites along the Great Plains have been dated to 11,000 years old, and they show evidence for the use of the Clovis point for hunting the great herds of mammoth, bison, and other animals. Other studies indicate that use of the Clovis point spread throughout North and South America as far north as the Yukon and as far south as the Andes.

Gradually, the climate warmed in North America. The huge herd animals of the ice age, such as the mammoths and mastodons, died out, the vast lakes in the U.S. West dried out and turned to desert, and deciduous forests became widespread in the East.

Native Americans adapted to their new environments and established new ways of life different from their Paleo-Indian ancestors. This second wave of cultures is referred to as the Archaic Tradition.

Archaic-period cultures developed more specific, regionalized characteristics. People of the western deserts utilized the lowland seasonal marshes and rivers for their sustenance or became hunter-gatherers in the foothills and mountains. People of the Northwest developed into great ocean and river fishers.

California Archaic people developed hunting-foraging cultures utilizing the abundance of resources in their region and practiced controlled burning to encourage plant and animal populations, particularly for oaks and acorns. The people of the Great Plains developed a greater reliance on the bison.

Eastern groups began to adapt to the growing woodlands. One particular cultural group is referred to as the Poverty Point culture. This group was first studied based on the Poverty Point earthworks in Louisiana, dated between 4,000 and 2,000 years old.

Poverty Point includes several earthen mound constructions, with the largest taking the form of a bird with outstretched wings. Artifacts uncovered at Poverty Point reveal trade materials originating as far away as the Great Lakes. Clay figurines, stone beads, and other ornaments are distinctive to the Poverty Point culture.

The Woodland culture was the next stage to develop. This term as used by archaeologists refers to a specific Native American cultural pattern that became common about 3,000 years ago and spread from the edge of the Great Plains to the Atlantic Ocean.

The Woodland culture had three main characteristics: a distinctive style of ceramics, community-based agriculture, and the construction of burial mounds. Mound building is perhaps the most recognized Woodland culture feature. Mound structures from this stage have been discovered from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the southern Great Plains to Ontario.

The Woodland groups again were not a single vast tribe or nation but instead were distinct communities that centered on local village or city sites often with mound structures. The mounds were usually burial structures but also frequently served ceremonial and political purposes.

The Woodland culture showed local variations, but certain practices were common to all. Trade was extensive throughout the network of mound communities, and a certain commonality of cultural practices likely served to unite these communities and help maintain the trade routes.

Elements of both the Archaic and Woodland stages existed in Native cultures up to 1600 c.e. For example, the Archaic fishing cultures of the Northwest and the hunter-gatherer-fishers of California inhabited some of the richest regions on the face of the earth.

Their life-styles never experienced any pressure to change their cultural practices. The early Spanish explorers reported city-states of the Woodland mound culture in the 1500s. The Iroquois tribes in New York are also organized on Woodland culture patterns.

The size of the Native population prior to 1492 is also subject to much debate. Scientific studies in the early 1900s relied on the reports and estimates of the European explorers and American settlers from the 1500s forward. These studies generally agreed on a figure of about 1 million Native Americans north of Mexico at the time of European contact.

More recent studies have begun to take into account additional factors, particularly the effect of Old World diseases. Diseases such as smallpox, chicken pox, the plague, and measles did not exist in the Native American population prior to 1492.

The disastrous effect of these diseases in Mesoamerican and Central and South American Native populations was well documented by the Spanish conquistadores in the 1500s. Given the existence of the extensive Native trade routes and the virulence of these diseases, it is reasonable to assume that these diseases had a similar devastating effect in interior North America as well.

More recent population studies, taking into account the effects of disease and the estimated carrying capacity of the various regions of the continent, have revised the Native American population estimate upward. Some studies have ranged as high as 18 million, but most recent estimates project Native population in North America prior to 1492 as closer to 5 million people.

The indigenous people of North America, their governments, and cultures were incredibly varied, with great adaptation to their respective regions, and they showed a great awareness of and respect for their physical environment.

Native American cultures were not static and had been undergoing cultural changes independent of and prior to European contact. But by 1600 a radical transformation had begun resulting from Old World immigration. At that point disease had begun to decimate Native populations, and this would be one of the key factors in opening the Atlantic seaboard to English colonization in the 1600s.

Native Americans Chronologies and Peoples

Native North American tribes had sets of beliefs describing the origin of Earth and the universe, the laws of that universe, how humans interacted with the rest of that universe, and the relationship between the physical world and the spiritual world.

Prior to the incursion of Europeans, Natives in North America organized themselves into distinct self-governing units that functioned with an independence and sovereignty that was recognized both within the tribe and by outside groups.

It is often estimated that there were more than 500 Native nations at the time of European contact, and as independent communities there was a remarkable variety to the beliefs and customs from tribe to tribe. There are, however, certain commonalities and patterns in languages, cultures, and beliefs across these 500 nations.

Creation Stories

Native Americans predominantly had creation stories telling of their arrival from the underworld into the physical world. Typically, this was a hero story for the tribe, telling of the first man’s (or first woman’s) adventures and trials in winning the way for all of humans to live in the current physical world.


Male and female principles were very important to Native people. The underworld was typically a female realm, and whether this community was first under the earth or under water, it was associated with being within Mother Earth.

The journey into the current world was often long and difficult and often involved a migration either up from the underworld or over land to arrive at the tribal homeland. And always, the community thought of themselves as the First, or True, People.

Native American tribes in North America closely integrated their spiritual practices with their community conduct, their cultural practices, and their decision making. Indians often believed in a strong tie between humans, the other living things in the world, and the elements in the world.

The powers and forces of the spiritual realm were ever present in every day existence, and the laws of the spiritual world were just as important to the events of life as the laws of the physical world.

Social Structure

Most North American tribes were egalitarian, with little social stratification, and their spiritual beliefs reflected this. Humankind was recognized as a distinct type of being, but the other entities in the world all had spirits and were generally considered as being on equal footing spiritually with humans; there was no "spiritual hierarchy" to creation.

This extended not just to the mammals but to birds, reptiles, fish, and often to stones, water, and the landscape. The fact that these other entities had spirits did not preclude hunting or harvesting them for food or using them for tools or shelter; it was considered that each entity had a purpose within creation and that using these other entities or harvesting them was within the purpose of creation.

But it was important to acknowledge the spirit of these other entities and recognize their place in creation. For example, the tribes of the Algonquin language group in the Northeastern woodlands of North America referred to the animals as their "brothers".

When hunting and killing an animal, it was important to offer a prayer of apology and thanks to the brother animal for taking its spirit and to explain to the brother spirit that its life was given up so that the human tribe could continue on its path in the world.

Frequently, a spirit guide would be identified for the individual, such as an animal like the bear, the eagle, or the sturgeon, or a force of nature such as the thunders, and the attributes of this spirit would serve as a guide to an individual throughout their adult life. Many tribes organized themselves into clans associated with specific animals, and the clan families would serve specific roles in the life and decision making of the tribe.

For example, the tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy to the south of the St. Lawrence River divided their communities into nine clans, including the Turtle, Wolf, Heron, Hawk, Snipe, Beaver, Deer, Eel, and Bear. Clans were quite widespread throughout the tribes of North America and often were respected across tribal boundaries.


Connection with The Natural World

This belief in the spirit within living creatures carried to the plant world as well, and the cultivated food plants of the Native Americans were particularly important. Corn was significant throughout the southern half of North America.

The pueblo-dwelling tribes of the Southwest cultivated strains of corn that were adapted to the marginal semidesert climate, and the tribes had ceremonies to honor the spirit of the corn, to mark the times of year for planting, rainfall, and harvest, and to give thanks for the continuing cycle that led to the annual harvest and to the production of a new seed bank to begin the cycle again. The Iroquois tribes revered corn along with beans and squash as the Three Sisters.

Their agricultural practice combined the three plants into symbiotic garden plots that minimized weeding and maximized production. Similar to the Pueblo people, the Iroquois honored the growing cycle and the spirits of the Three Sisters in their ceremonies.

Many plants were used for spiritual purposes as well. In ceremonies smoking was considered a way to offer prayers to the spirit world. Smoking pipes have been found in burial sites and village sites dating back thousands of years and range from very simple and humble clay pipes to elaborate carved artworks of pipestone and other precious materials. Various plants were used for smoking mixtures, with tobacco being used almost universally throughout the continent.

Other plants were eaten, used in teas, or burned as incense for spiritual purposes. For instance, the Algonquin people in the Great Lakes considered sage, sweetgrass, cedar, and tobacco the four primary spiritual plants, and their use was common among many other tribes across North America.

Healing and Spirituality

Healing and spirituality were closely linked. Many plants were used for their medicinal and healing effects on the body. But many of the Native healing practices aimed at the spiritual problems as well as the physical. The Navajo in the Southwest speak of the Navajo Way, an outlook of having one’s life and physical body in harmony with the community, the physical world, and the spiritual world.

Many illnesses are considered to be a manifestation of actions or desires in one’s life that are in conflict with the physical and spiritual order of the universe, and healing these illnesses is a matter of restoring the person to balance with the rest of creation.

This notion of balance and a cyclical order to the spiritual and natural worlds is widespread. The Sioux of the Great Plains speak of existence as the Sacred Hoop, delineated by the four cardinal directions. Tribes across the continent revere this concept of the Circle and the Four Directions.

Rather than viewing time and existence as a linear march of event following event, Native people looked at existence as cycles: the cycle of the year and seasons, and the cycle of birth to death leading to rebirth. The archaeological, geologic, and genetic records point to the First Americans migrating from Siberia into North America sometime between 25,000 to 11,000 years ago.

These people then spread throughout the American continents, adapted to changes in climate and the varied American landscape, and arrived at their wide variety of cultural and cosmological worldviews prior to contact with the European colonists.

Hunting and Agrarian Treditions

In studying Native American spiritual practices, modern anthropologists trace these Native beliefs back to two major traditions. The first is referred to as the Northern Hunting tradition, linked to the big-game hunters of the ice age migration from Siberia.

The spirits of the animals and the cycles of the hunt are the focus of worship, with the cult of Bear worship being particularly common. Shamans, individuals within the community who are considered to have gained great power and wisdom carry out ceremonies and healing rituals.

The younger tradition is the Southern Agrarian tradition, believed to have spread northward from Central America, traveling with the introduction of corn and organized agriculture. The Southern Agrarian tradition links the power of creation and rejuvenation with plant life and the growing seasons, with Corn Mother becoming a central force in the cycles of the world.

Priesthoods and cults directed the ceremonial practices in agricultural communities, particularly among the city-states of southern North America. Aspects of these two traditions mingled among the tribes over the centuries, with most tribes retaining portions of the old hunting tradition while incorporating elements of the newer agrarian tradition.

Both traditions indicate a people closely linked to nature and to the other living entities of the world. The force of life, spoken of by some tribes as the fundamental power of movement in the universe, was seen to be present in all things and was to be respected and acknowledged, particularly in the most central living things that give up their life-force so that humans could eat and live, whether that sacrifice was recognized in the corn plant or the bear.

All other life and movement in the world, whether it was the hopping of the rabbit, the push of the seedling from the ground, the movement of the wind, or the turning of the Great Circle of Life itself, all related back to this central power, and by acknowledging the spirit in the Bear or the Corn Mother, the community acknowledged the presence of the spirit within itself and the community’s own place in creation.

Native Americans Regional Adaptations

Native Americans in North America had an enormous range of customs prior to the coming of Europeans. Their ancestors had first migrated into North America from Asia more than 10,000 years ago, hunting the huge herds of giant ice age mammals.

As they spread throughout the continent, Native Americans adapted to take advantage of local resources and to cope with the local climate and geography. Community organization ranged from nomadic family units in the harsh deserts and the frigid Arctic, to elaborate city-states in the Temple Mound culture of the Southeast.

The Southwest Region

A common way to study Native North Americans is to group them according to geographic region. The Southwest region includes the upper Rio Grande River westward to the Colorado River.


This is a hot, arid, and rugged area with limited plant and animal life. Paradoxically, a culture of permanent villages began developing 3,000 years ago, using farming to provide a steady food supply where little was available naturally.

Influenced by the farming practices of Central America, Southwest people developed sophisticated irrigation systems and refined plant strains. They also developed permanent villages, the most striking of which are the large apartment-like pueblos.

These clusters of rectangular rooms stacked one upon another could include 500 and more rooms. Some of these agricultural tribes are the Pima, Zuni, Hopi, and Tewa. The Apache and Navajo entered the region later as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Over time they began to adopt some of the cultural practices of the Pueblo tribes.

The Southeast Region

The tribes of Southeast North America also practiced extensive agriculture. Their land, however, was more bountiful because of greater rainfall and richer soils, which allowed them to continue to combine hunting and foraging with organized farming.

Mound-building cultures began developing about 3,000 years ago and spread inland from the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys. These were also likely influenced by the city-states of Central America, as evidenced by the farming practices, the shape of the temple mounds, and a cultural obsession with death.

By 1600 c.e. these mound-cities were largely gone, likely decimated by European diseases. The Natchez of the lower Mississippi River were the one mound-city people to survive into the 1700s. One hereditary leader ruled them, the Great Sun.

The center of their city was the large temple mound, which hosted the religious ceremonies and where the nobility had dwellings. Artisans, farmers, and other citizens lived in small structures spread around the temple mound. The Natchez reported to French colonizers that as many as 500 city-states had once existed, ruled by Great Suns.

Most of the people in the Southeast, however, lived in smaller, semi-permanent villages. Linguistic and agricultural patterns point to many of these tribes, such as the Muskogee, Choctaw, and Cherokee, as being the descendants of earlier mound-building cultures.

The Northeast Region

The Northeast includes the area of the Ohio River, New England, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence River. It was also a region of dense forests similar to the Southeast but with a colder climate and shorter growing season. Northeastern Indians practiced a similar combination of agriculture and hunting-foraging, but the mound-city culture was not common here.

The tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy along the St. Lawrence established permanent villages of arched-roofed longhouses surrounded by log stockades. An extended family would live in one longhouse, which could extend for several hundred feet. The main food crops were the Three Sisters of corn, squash, and beans.

Most of the other tribes in the Northeast were of the Algonquin language group. The peoples of the Atlantic coast often had palisaded villages similar to the Iroquois and also formed cooperative unions, including the Abnaki Confederacy and the Powhatan Confederacy.

Among the Great Lakes tribes fishing formed a significant part of the diet. The Indians in the western Great Lakes tended to a more mobile culture, building smaller, semi-permanent villages of dome-shaped wigwams.

The Great Plains

The Great Plains were more arid than the Southeast and Northeast, with vast grasslands and with trees mostly restricted to river valleys. Indians here evolved a lifestyle of farming and foraging along the river valleys. Horses had become extinct in North America along with many other large ice age mammals but by 1600 were being reintroduced through contact with the Spaniards.

Over the next 200 years this would lead to a revolution, as many tribes would use the horse to once again become nomadic hunters, relying on the herds of buffalo. Eventually, the tribes of the new horse culture would live side by side with other tribes, such as the Mandan, who remained village dwellers in the river valleys.

The Great Basin, to the west of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains, is a harsh, arid land. Rainfall is sparse, and the few rivers flow into salty, alkaline lakes and sinks, unfit to drink.

The people here, mainly of the related Ute, Paiute, and Shoshone tribes, lived in nomadic family groups, foraging for desert plants and shrubs and hunting small game. Families would often gather together for communal hunts, then scatter to forage again.

To the north of the Great Basin is the elevated Plateau region, including the upper Columbia River and upper Fraser River. While still dry the Plateau region is not as harsh as the Great Basin. The rivers supported huge runs of salmon that were the staple food.

The people also hunted other large game such as deer and elk, as well as gathering edible plants. Some of the tribes in the south of this region included the Klamath, the Modoc, and the Nez Perce. Northern tribes were mainly of the Salish language group.

California and The Pacific Northwest

California and the Pacific Northwest were both rich, bountiful regions. Most of California gets enough rainfall in the winter months to support abundant vegetation.

The numerous rivers supported many varieties of fish and shellfish, and game was plentiful. The Pacific Ocean provided a wealth of plant life, fish, seals, and other aquatic mammals. With year-round mild temperatures the tribes here lived a rich life with little adaptation from that of their ancestors.

California has areas of large oak savannas, and many tribes relied on ground acorn meal as a staple. The rugged terrain of the region combined with the rich natural resources encouraged the development of numerous independent communities, and, as a result, there were more than 100 distinct language dialects spoken in California.

As one travels from California along the Pacific Ocean to the Northwest Coast, rainfall gradually increases, with some areas near Puget Sound classified as true rain forests.

The Northwest Coast’s temperate and extremely wet climate produces a profusion of plant life and giant trees, and the region supports one of the great fisheries of the world. The Indians here built plank houses of cedar and developed a life of permanent villages without resorting to agriculture.

One notable community practice was the potlatch, where a family or individual would mark a significant event by hosting a big feast and holding an elaborate giveaway of gifts and belongings to the rest of the village. The only plant cultivated in the region was the ubiquitous tobacco.


The Sub-Arctic Region

To the north, stretching from east to west across the continent is the Sub-Arctic region. The region experiences cold winters and a short growing season that prohibits agriculture. The region is largely forested with pine, spruce, and fir.

The people here relied on hunting (especially caribou), fishing, and trapping. They were nomadic and built simple lean-tos and tipis. The Cree were widespread here, from the eastern shore of Hudson Bay to the northern Great Plains.

The Arctic is the northernmost fringe of the continent, a rolling plain of moss and lichen. The soil never thaws out. Winters are harsh, with little daylight, and winds can rage because of the lack of trees and relatively flat landscape.

Despite these extreme conditions the Native people developed a rich culture. The Aleut and Inuit (or Eskimos) lived from Greenland to Alaska and into eastern Siberia. They were relatively late migrants to North America, coming across from Asia as recently as 3,000 years ago.

The people of the Arctic lived in nomadic family units relying on hunting and fishing. Sea mammals and caribou were the primary game. The people developed ingenious clothing, warm and watertight, to allow them to handle the elements, such as lightweight raincoats made from the stomachs and bladders of walrus and seals.

They extensively ornamented their clothing and implements and practiced community ceremonies with music and dancing. Double-pitched brush lean-tos were used along the Alaskan coasts, and the famous domed snow igloos were common in the north-central Arctic.

Native communities throughout North America had a sense of kinship with the elements of their universe and showed an enormous respect for the plants, animals, and the land in their ceremonies and their practices. For the most part they lived with minimal impact on their environment. The mound culture, with its ruling Great Sun, nobility, and social castes, is in some ways an aberration.

Most Native communities were egalitarian, and the individuals, notoriously independent. Father LeJeune, a French missionary on the St. Lawrence River, observed in 1634 that Indians would not "endure in the least those who seem desirous of assuming superiority over others".

This egalitarianism and the ways that Native communities managed the interactions and disputes between their nations through the Iroquois Confederacy would later provide an inspiration for the United States Constitution.