Native Americans of North America

III

Earliest Peoples

Most anthropologists believe the ancestors of Native Americans were hunter-gatherers who migrated from northeastern Asia during the last part of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.6 million to 10,000 years before present). From about 25,000 to 10,000 years ago a now-submerged land bridge, called Beringia, linked northeastern Asia and northwestern North America. At that time, sea levels were lower than they are today because more of the world’s water was frozen in glaciers. The early colonizers who crossed this natural land bridge were surely unaware they had arrived on a new continent. Scholars may never know why ancient peoples ventured to the Americas. Perhaps they were in pursuit of wide-ranging game; perhaps they were driven by the enduring human urge to explore unknown territory. Whatever their motivation, these peoples, or their descendants, pushed south toward what is now the continental United States. Eventually, they made it all the way to the southern tip of South America.

Traveling south during the late Pleistocene would have been no easy task. Massive glaciers buried much of present-day Canada and parts of the United States. By about 14,000 years ago, however, the glaciers had retreated far enough to open a passable southern route down the Pacific Coast. Then, about 2,500 years later, a habitable ice-free corridor opened in the continental interior, along the eastern flank of the Rocky Mountains. Many scholars suspect that both routes were used by ancient peoples migrating to the Americas.

A

The First Americans

For much of the 20th century, the earliest archaeological evidence of a human presence in the Americas was of the Clovis people, who first appeared about 11,500 years ago. For decades archaeologists believed these early Americans were fast-moving hunters who singularly pursued mammoth, mastodon, and other large, now-extinct Pleistocene-age animals. There is little doubt Clovis groups were highly mobile and spread rapidly, for their distinctive fluted stone spearpoints occur throughout North America in the centuries after 11,500 years ago. However, there is now evidence that Clovis people relied on a variety of food resources and were less dependent on big game than once supposed. It also appears they were not the first Americans.

Excavations in the late 20th century at the site of Monte Verde, in southern Chile, testify to an earlier human presence in the Americas, one dating to at least 12,500 years ago. Archaeologists had long suspected a pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas, but no site achieved wide acceptance until Monte Verde. The artifacts unearthed at Monte Verde include well-preserved remains of leaves and seeds, meat and bone, and ivory, as well as stone tools that are quite different from those produced by Clovis peoples. For some archaeologists, these findings suggest that Monte Verde’s ancient inhabitants were descendants of a separate, pre-Clovis migration to the Americas—possibly one that traveled down the Pacific Coast.

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B

Paleo-Indians

The early colonizers of the Americas, known as Paleo-Indians, faced the challenge of adapting to vast new lands with a great diversity of local environments. These lands were themselves undergoing dramatic changes as the great ice sheets melted off and global climates rapidly warmed. Living in small bands of perhaps 25 to 75 people, Paleo-Indians had to learn how to survive in the new lands and to maintain contacts with distant kin. For this reason, they were highly nomadic, moving regularly and camping in easily transported animal-skin tents or other lightweight shelters. Equipped with an assortment of tools made from stone, bone, and wood, they hunted a variety of animals, from small prey such as turtles and birds, to large game, including deer and the occasional mammoth. They probably also relied on wild plant foods as well, although evidence of this is rarely preserved.

By about 10,000 years ago the descendants of the first Americans had left traces of their presence in virtually every corner of the Americas, from high in the Rocky Mountains down to lush tropical lowlands near the equator. After that time, regionally distinctive ways of life began to appear throughout the Americas as Paleo-Indian groups adapted to local environments. In North America these environments included deciduous woodlands and evergreen forests, vast deserts, grassy prairies, fertile river drainages, and coastal lowlands. Paleo-Indians living in desert country became adept at collecting wild plant foods because game animals were scarce. Buffalo- (or bison-) hunting cultures appeared on the Great Plains, where large herds of the animals lived. People living in forests hunted woodland game animals, while those near rivers and lakes fished and hunted waterfowl. Along the coasts, Paleo-Indians fished and gathered shellfish. In time, agriculture spread to North America from Mesoamerica, where cultivation of food crops began as early as 7,000 years ago, and sophisticated farming cultures appeared in the southwestern and eastern regions of what is now the United States.

For more information about the peopling of the Americas, see First Americans.

David Meltzer contributed the Early Peoples section of this article.

IV

Culture Areas

When European explorers first arrived in North America, they encountered a great diversity of Native American peoples with widely varying customs. Over time, these indigenous peoples had developed different cultural practices that were suited to their local environments. Scholars find it convenient to group Native Americans who shared similar cultural patterns before European or Euro-American contact into regions known as culture areas.

Culture areas are applied to distinct geographic regions. Each region has a characteristic habitat made up of the prevailing climate, landforms, and natural resources, including plant and animal life. Prior to European or Euro-American contact, habitat profoundly influenced how Native Americans lived. Indigenous peoples adapted to the available resources in each habitat to obtain foods and materials for shelter, clothing, tools, and arts. The environment shaped how they organized their communities and how they viewed the world around them. Peoples living where land was suitable for farming but rainfall was limited, for example, were likely to develop similar types of agricultural practices and to share mythological themes surrounding their farming. Similarly, peoples living in areas with large herds of migrating game were likely to have nomadic or seminomadic lifestyles and to celebrate the animals they hunted in their mythologies.

Culture areas may also help provide a framework for understanding Native Americans after European or Euro-American contact, as non-Indians made inroads onto indigenous lands and influenced indigenous culture. One culture area in particular—that of the Great Plains—came to be defined long after the first Europeans had arrived in North America. Horses brought to the Americas by Spanish colonizers transformed aboriginal ways of living on the vast North American Plains.

Scholars have devised a number of different systems for defining culture areas. The most common system divides North America north of Mexico into ten culture areas. These include the Southeast culture area, Northeast culture area, Southwest culture area, California culture area, Great Basin culture area, Northwest Coast culture area, Plateau culture area, Great Plains culture area, Subarctic culture area, and Arctic culture area.

Whichever culture area system is used, it should be kept in mind that each tribe or group had its own distinctive customs, making cultural generalizations difficult. It is also important to remember that many Native American customs and behaviors that originated in pre-contact times are still practiced today. The Native American saga is ongoing.

A

Southeast

A

1

Land and Habitat

The Southeast culture area is a semitropical region north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Middle Atlantic-Midwest region. Humid and well-watered, the area extends from the Atlantic coast westward approximately to what is now central Texas.

The terrain and vegetation of the Southeast culture area consists of a coastal plain along the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, with saltwater marshes, grasses, and stands of cypress. Especially rich soils are found in present-day Alabama and Mississippi in a narrow belt, called the Black Belt, and along the Mississippi River floodplain. The region also includes the vast swamplands, hummocks (rounded hills), and high grass of the Everglades in present-day Florida, and the rolling mountains of the southern Appalachian chain.

At the time of early contacts between Native Americans and Europeans, much of the region was woodland, with southern pine generally thicker near the coasts and more broadleaf trees further inland. Because of these extensive forests, some scholars refer to this region as the Southeast Woodlands culture area. Others combine the Southeast culture area with the Northeast culture area—another heavily wooded region—and refer to it as the Eastern Woodlands culture area.