Scientists think thousands of years ago, no people lived in North America and South America. Birds and animals roamed freely among the trees, bushes, and tall grasses. Then, some time between 50,000 and 25,000 years ago, a very great change took place in the world's climate. This change led to another change -- people came to North America from Asia.

The first people to come to North America probably arrived from Asia. Today, 56 miles (80.5 kilometers) of icy water, called the Bering Strait, separates the two continents. But for a while a large strip of land linked the northeastern tip of Siberia in Asia to Alaska in North America. How was this land formed?

About 50,000 years ago when the last Ice Age was just beginning, glaciers, or huge masses of ice and snow, spread slowly across the earth from the north. These huge glaciers lowered the sea level, and land then appeared at the Bering Strait. This land now connected Asia to North America, and it is called a land bridge.

The width of the land bridge changed during the last Ice Age. Sometimes it was wider than Alaska, that is, more than 1,000 miles wide. At other times it was much smaller. The size of the land bridge changed as the earth's climate changed. During long periods of very cold temperatures, the glaciers increased in thickness and width. Their increased weight caused them to spread southward, where there was less ice. As this happened, the ocean level fell and land appeared. At times the climate grew warmer and caused the glaciers to melt. The sea then rose and covered many lands again.

The land bridge between Asia and North America appeared several times during the last Ice Age. It probably was there from 50,000 to 40,000 years ago, from 36,000 to 32,000 years ago, and from 28,000 to 10,000 years ago. People from Siberia, in northeastern Asia, may have crossed the land bridge during each of these periods. However, scientists believe that most of the early American crossed the Bering Strait during the last period, between 28,000 and 10,000 years ago.

During that time, the land bridge was a large plain covered with lakes, ponds, trees and tall grasses. Herds of animals moved back and forth in search of food. Hunters followed these animals until the last Ice Age ended, about 10,000 years ago. Then the glaciers melted, and millions of tons of melted water again raised the sea level. The land bridge was covered completely. The way back to Asia was also closed off.

The hunters who crossed to North America were nomads. Nomads are people who move from place to place in search of food. Nomads have no permanent homes. Those who crossed the land bridge were hunters and gatherers of food. They wandered freely across the vast lands of northern Asia. It was probably by chance that they moved onto North America.

These early people knew how to use fire, and they also learned to make flint spear points and various tools from stone and the bones of animals. They knew how to make clothing and simple shelters from animal hides. However, they often lived in caves when they could find them. The dog was domesticated or tamed by them.

These earliest people did not know how to farm. Therefore, they had to hunt animals and gather food to survive. This meant that they spent much of their time looking for animals and gathering wild fruits, roots, nuts, and vegetables.

For a long time, these nomad hunters remained in the far north, in what are now Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada. A huge glacier, or sheet of ice, blocked the way to the south.

Then, more than 12,000 years ago, some of the ice melted and a corridor, or pathway, appeared in the ice. This ice-free corridor was about 100 miles wide. Yet large herds of wild animals made their way through it. The hunters followed them across this corridor. It led them along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains onto the grass-covered plains in the center of North America.

Bands, or small groups, of hunters made their way slowly southward following herds of animals. Eventually, the wanderers followed the animal trails to all parts of North and South America. About 10,000 years ago, hunters finally reached the southern part of South America.

The first arrivals from Asia brought with them a primitive Stone Age culture and knowledge of how to use fire. In time, some of them learned how to work metal. Others never advanced beyond stone weapons and tools. New skills like basket weaving, new weapons like the bow and arrow, and new domesticated plants like corn appeared. But these developments were only a small part of fantastic splendors to follow.

Topic 1:1A Review

1. Define or identify the following: glaciers, land bridge, Nomads, stone age culture.
2. Why did early nomadic peoples move from Asia to North America:
3. What types of culture did the early peoples bring with them to North America?

Essay:  Imagine that you are one of the early peoples that moved to North America more than 20,000 years ago. What is life like for you? What survival skills do you need. Write a short essay about your life as an early Nomad.

Early Civilizations

In the jungles of Central America the Valley of Mexico and the Peruvian highlands, great civilizations flowered. The Aztec and Inca empires rank highly in the story of human achievement.

No such empires ever came into being in the vast territory that was to become the United States and southern Canada. Here in the year 1492 the Indian population numbered no more than a million. There were perhaps 15 million in Central and South America. The North American tribes were diverse and spread apart. They ranged from the peaceful Pima of Arizona to the Iroquois of New York. Some were town dwellers like the Pueblo, others nomadic hunters like the Apache. Even when they lived close to each other, as in the case of the Hopi and Navaho, they did not necessarily look alike, speak alike, and live alike or even pray alike. They lacked horses, and their weapons and tools were primitive. Most of them could not unite, which meant that an organized invader had the advantage in battle.

There were hundreds of different patterns of North American Indian life. Scholars have proposed seven cultural areas of Native Americans: Southwestern, Plateau, California, Northwest Coast, Plains, Eastern Woodland, and Southeastern. These regions overlapped, and within each there were many variations in the ways of living. Each of the seven areas had unique customs and characteristics.

Southwestern

About 7,000 years ago, the Indians of northern Mexico began to farm. They planted beans, squash, and many kinds of corn. Farming gave the people the food they needed. As a result, the Indians began to settle in villages and developed rich cultures.

The Maya of southern Mexico were one of the early Indian groups who became skilled farmers, organizers, and mathematicians. They built large buildings of stone in the rain forests of Yucatan and in many areas of what is now Guatemala. Their splendid palaces and temples were decorated with jewels, gold, and fine sculptures. The greatest achievements of the Maya culture took place from about 1000 B.C. to about 800 A.D.

The Aztecs, who began to build a great empire in Mexico in about 1428 A.D, developed another great culture. The Aztecs were a warrior people who came from the north and settled in the highlands of central Mexico. They borrowed the skills and muscle power of many of the peoples of the area to build their great capital city, Tenochtitlan. This city was on a lake, high in the valley of Mexico.

The Aztec empire depended on agriculture. Foods and other items were brought into the capital city from all parts of Mexico. People were taxed to support the rulers and to pay for the very large army that the Aztecs needed to stay in power.

The dry Southwestern Area was a land known for its settled farming tribes. In southern Arizona the Pima and Papago arose from an ancient and peaceful farming tradition. Their Hohokam ancestors had built elaborate networks of irrigation canals in the Gila River-Salt River country as early as 800 AD. This assured the success of their staple crops of corn and squash. The peaceful Pueblo farmers of the "Four Corners" section (where present-day Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet) built their lives around simple farming and basket making. They improved upon their talents until around 1000 A.D. At this time the ancestors of the Pueblo moved to large community houses set on the ledges of cliffs or canyons. They did this to protect themselves against attack by invading tribes. Subsequently, their descendants deserted the cliffs, built homes of stone masonry or adobe, and created a settled village life. They grew cotton and wove it into beautifully patterned textiles. Roving bands of Apache and Navaho gladly traded meat for this cloth and for corn. But still, the Pueblo were fearful of attack by these fierce nomads.

Plateau

In the harsh Plateau Area north of the Pueblo were the primitive Shoshoni, who lived in comparative isolation, hunted deer, and gathered wild seeds and pinon nuts. In strong contrast to the communal Pueblo life, Shoshoni organization rarely rose above the family level. Even more isolated were the tribes of the California Area. They were acorn eaters, hunters of small game, occasional fishermen and even less frequent farmers.

California

Over 100 different groups of people lived in what is now California. The Yukis and others to the north developed ways like those of the Indians of the Northwest Coast. The Serranos and other groups to the south did many things like the people of Northern Mexico. None of these groups farmed, however. Most of them fished and ground acorns into a flour which they used as a main source of food.

The California Indians made beautiful baskets, blankets, and pottery. They lived in many different kinds of dwellings. Some groups built special houses used for holding ceremonies and for steam baths.

Northwest Coast

Farther north, life was more complex. The Indians of the Northwest Coast Area, who ruled the region from the Columbia River up into Alaska, were a maritime people. They fished for salmon in the great rivers, plied the coast in their dugout canoes and carved their towering totem poles into fantastically detailed stories. They also developed elaborate social structures. The Kwakiutl, for example, had a many-layered social order. From the chiefs and nobles at the top, to the luckless slaves and war captives at the bottom, their system was highly structured. In economic activities, the Northwest Coast people believed in the institution of private property. A tribesman could acquire wives, houses, fishing stations, and even names by purchase, inheritance, or by force.

Among the many Pacific Coast tribes, from Oregon to southern Alaska, the accumulation of wealth rather than the display of bravery was the business of life. Tribes lived in wood-planked mansions decorated with carved paneling and coats of arms. A class of artists grew up that made elaborate totem poles, canoes and masks. Tribe fought tribe for prisoners, and the most desirable prisoner was a skilled artist whose creations became the focal point of a strange ceremony, the potlatch. The word originally meant "gift-giving," but in the rite one chief would give away or even destroy all his possessions before the eyes of a rival chief. To save face, the second chief had to outdo the first chief. This kept the artists working busily to supply new treasures for destruction.

Plains

Separated from the rainy forests of the Northwest by the massive palisades of the Rockies, the Plains Area stretched east and southeast, an almost limitless expanse of grasslands rolling all the way from the mountains to the Mississippi. Until the horse was introduced by the Spaniards in the Southwest, the plains were quiet. Farming tribes like the Mandan and the Arikara settled along the rivers of the region and occasionally hunted buffalo. Nomads like the Comanche also followed the huge herds of buffalo that wandered through the region. Buffalo hunting afoot produced too small a reward either to attract or to sustain a large population. But the quietness of the Great Plains would be shattered when horse-mounted tribes like the Blackfoot and the Sioux moved in to make the grasslands their hunting range and battleground.

Eastern Woodland

East of the plains, the forests of the Eastern Woodland Area reached all the way from the Mississippi to the Atlantic coast. Here were the tribes whose names and deeds were to become famous. Most widely dispersed and numerous were the tribes linked by the Algonquian group of languages. These were Abnaki; the Mohegan; the Narraganset; and the Delaware who formed a powerful Middle Atlantic confederacy. This group also included the strong Powhatan confederation of Virginia. The Algonquian group ranged from Canada to Virginia and from the Atlantic to the Appalachian Mountains. They occupied territory west of the mountains around the Great Lakes to the northern plains. The men stalked deer and rode the streams and lakes in their birch bark canoes, while the women tended small plots of corn, squash and beans. They lived in villages made of domed wigwams. They also built fortifications of tree trunks.

The Algonquian Indians needed these wooden walls to save them from the wrath of the Iroquois, who gradually pushed their way north along the Appalachian chain. At the time the white Europeans arrived, the Iroquois still had a hold in upper New York. Here sometime in the 16th Century, the legendary Hiawatha preached unity to the Iroquois and ultimately convinced them of the advantages of a peaceful confederation. The five Iroquois tribes -- the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk -- showed an unusual talent for organization. Banding together, they built a political system superior to anything ever created by other Indian peoples of the Northeast. The league endured for at least two centuries. While they never fought each other or member tribes, they often disagreed with each other and pursued their own policies. This weakened the power of the Iroquois confederation.

Southeastern

Scarcely less fierce than the Iroquois were the warlike Muskhogean tribes of the Southeastern Area. The proud Creeks, numbering about 30,000 people in 50 loosely knit farming communities, dominated the greater part of present-day Georgia and Alabama. To the west, in what is now Mississippi lay the lands of their relatives, the Chickasaw. The warlike Chickasaw battled not only against the Creeks but also against the related Choctaw, who farmed the river bottomlands in Alabama and Mississippi. North of these quarreling Muskhogean tribes, in the mountains of what was to become Georgia and the Carolinas, were an agricultural tribe who spoke an Iroquoian language. They called themselves "Cherokee".

One tribe of the Muskhogean family group, the Natchez, inherited a mound-building tradition that began over 2,000 years ago in the Ohio Valley. They were called "Mound Builders" because of the great ceremonial mounds that they dug up for religious purposes. Later another similar culture centering on little city-states, rose up between present-day Cairo, Illinois, and southwestern Mississippi. Now the sprawling earthen mounds became the more elaborate, flat-topped pyramids that served as foundations for temples. These "Temple Mound" people were better builders than organizers. Their weak confederacies grew the same crops, played the same ball games, paddled the same dugout canoes, but never shared a common allegiance. The Natchez were perhaps the most well known of these tribes. They were a complex, class-structured society and were the only absolute monarchy known among the North American Indians.

Native Americans Meet Europeans

The American Indian, in the eyes of the white men who first met him, was puzzling. The Indian was generous yet he was cruel and dearly loved war. For efficiency in combat he kept his body strong and hard. In battle he was courageous, and if captured he endured torture by taunting his captors and singing his war songs until death silenced him. These qualities were highly valued by the war-loving Europeans who came to America in the early 16th Century.

The Culture of Eastern Coastal Tribes

On the Eastern Seaboard, from the Florida Keys north to Maine, were a host of small Indian tribes which scholars now group by language families -- Muskhogean, Iroquoian, Algonquian. They lived in tiny villages, perhaps a few hundred Indians to a group. They grew corn, tobacco, squash and other crops unknown to Europe. The men fished and hunted deer. For war or great occasions they adorned their hair, painted their cheeks and dressed in colorful fashions. They had stylized ways for praying to their gods and for feasting. Often they raided each other's villages, taking scalps and prisoners. This both increased the victim's rage and invited a return attack. This caused death and grieving and, tribes developed ceremonies to show their mourning.

The Importance of Buffalo

Buffalo, properly called bison, roamed more widely than is usually supposed, coming eastward as far as Georgia and Maryland. Before the Spaniards brought horses to America, buffalo were taken by stalking them on foot, by driving them into traps or by stampeding them over cliffs. After the Indians captured and learned to ride their first horses, buffalo hunting became even more important. Besides furnishing life's necessities in meat, clothes, moccasins, fuel and tent coverings, buffalo were powerful spirits. In the Indian religion, they could be angry or benevolent. They could teach medicine men how to cure the sick. The best pictures of what the buffalo meant to Indians were made years later by George Catlin, an American artist who devoted a lifetime to seeking out and recording the ways of those tribes, which had least contact with Europeans. In 1832, Catlin painted Mandan life in North Dakota. Within a few years this tribe was almost wiped out by smallpox spread by incoming whites.

Warriors of the Great Plains

The Plains Indians had pleasures, even quite sensual indulgences, but the core of their lives was war and hunting. This can be best explained in economic terms. The Dakota tribes fought to hold the best buffalo country in the upper Missouri basin. They fought not only against their historic foes, the Cree and Chippewa, but also against their own near relatives. But Indians thought in non-economic terms. The young Dakota warrior dreamed of captives and scalps that would bring him fame and glory in the tribe. So he fought other Indians, white settlers, and eventually General George Armstrong Custer, and the U.S. Calvary.

Native Rituals

For all Indians the pursuit of war involved elaborate ritual. In some tribes, the young brave went off into the wilderness to fast and pray. There his guardian spirit whispered to him the design he must paint on his shield and the song he must sing in combat or while dying. In other tribes, the warrior took emetics to purify himself for the fighting. Everywhere they painted themselves in colorful patterns and danced with their medicine men to obtain magical powers for battle; afterward, they danced to boast of their deeds.

The warriors' buffalo-hide shields and medicine men's shirts are now in museums. The war party creeping through the forest, the great herds of buffalo thundering over the plains with hunters on their flanks, now live only in storybooks. It took the white man 300 years of cultural invasion to destroy the world of the Indian.

Topic 1:1B Review

1. Be familiar with the location of the following tribes: Aztec, Inca, Pueblo, Apache, Navaho, Shoshoni, Tukis, Kwakiutl, Mandan, Arikara, Camanche, Blackfoot, Sioux, Abnaki, Mohegan, Algonquian, Iroquois, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Muskhogean, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Cherokee, Natchez.
2. Define the following: staple, ancestors, totem poles, potlatch, confederation, Mound Builders, scalps, ritual.
3. What were some of the activities of Southwestern peoples that allowed them to survive?
4. Why were American natives do puzzling to the first white man who met them?
5. How did the appearance of the horse change the lives of the plains Indians?
6. Why do you think that Northwest Coastal Indians were able to develop complex art, religion, and social structures?

Who are their friends? Enemies?

Map Activity:  Label the tribes located in question #1 on a map of North America.

Learning Links:  If you want to learn more about North American Natives click on the links below.

First Nations Histories
(Recognized Educational site)

Central Council of the Tlingit
and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska

National Museum of the Native American
Smithsonian Institute

List of Native American Sites

Indian Circle Web Ring
Federally recognized American Indian Tribes

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