The first people to live in North and South America were the Native Americans, also known as American Indians. Their ways of life were varied, and they established great civilizations. They had lived on these continents for thousands of years before the first European explorers set foot on their land.
The earliest Native Americans were probably from northeastern Asia. About 20,000 to 35,000 years ago, long periods of cold weather caused ice to build up on land and sea levels to drop. As a result, land that had been under water became exposed. One such area formed a land bridge between Asia and what is now Alaska. Although the land around this was covered with glaciers, this area remained free from ice because of the dry climate. The first Asians to cross the bridge were wandering hunters, looking for new hunting grounds. They were not able to advance too far into the continent because of the surrounding glaciers. Eventually, however, warmer weather melted the ice, and people spread southward and eastward through North and South America. Historians know little about the very earliest North Americans. Many of the places where they lived at first wound up under water as the sea rose again.
Some of the earliest North Americans hunted big game animals, such as the mastodon, that are now extinct. Some of the tools used by these people, including spear points, were found near Clovis, New Mexico. The points date from about 9,000 BC. Other early peoples fished and gathered seeds and wild plants. Most had to roam from place to place in search of food. In time, people in Mexico learned to plant and harvest corn (maize). Over thousands of years, corn cultivation spread north and east. Later on, beans, squash, and other plants were also grown as crops. Groups of farmers began to establish more permanent settlements close to their fields.
Several great farming cultures, such as the Hohokam and the Mogollon, grew up in what is now the American Southwest. They dug irrigation channels to bring water to their crops. Beginning in about AD 100, the Anasazi culture was established on the plateau where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah now meet. The later Anasazi built great buildings in the sides of cliffs and made multistory houses of sun-baked mud.
East of the Mississippi River, monuments in the form of earth mounds were left by several ancient cultures. The Adena people of about 500 BC to AD 100 were hunters and gatherers but built earth mounds shaped like serpents. Beginning in about 200 BC, the Hopewell people were settled in villages in the Ohio River valley where they raised corn, beans, and squash and built large mounds. About 900 years later the Mississippian people in the South and Midwest constructed enormous earthworks where they buried the dead and probably performed ceremonies.
Over time, the Native Americans of North America spread out into as many as 240 tribal groupings. Groups that lived in similar environments may have spoken different languages, but they developed similar ways of life.
Eastern North America had plenty of rain, dense forests, and many lakes and streams. The American Indians who lived there, including the Abnaki, Cherokee, Huron, Iroquois, Mohawk, and Seminole, used tree bark and branches to make houses, weapons, tools, and canoes. They made clothing from the skins of deer and other animals. To feed themselves, they hunted, fished, and gathered wild plants. Women also planted corn, pumpkin, squash, beans, tobacco, and gourds.
A thick carpet of grass covered the vast rolling plains of central North America. The grass provided food for huge herds of grazing animals, including elk, deer, antelope, and especially buffalo (bison). Many Native Americans living on the plains obtained from the buffalo almost everything they needed to live. They ate the meat, made tepees and warm clothing from the skins, and made tools from the bone. Most of the plains groups were constantly on the move. Many were warlike. This group included the Arapaho, Comanche, Crow, and Sioux.
The land of the Southwest, in and around present-day New Mexico, Arizona, and northern Mexico, was high, dry, and cut by mountains and canyons. Many Southwestern American Indians, such as the Pueblo, learned to depend on rivers and their annual floods to farm while using very little water. The homes they built from stone and adobe (sun-dried clay) were large enough to house many families. The Navajo and Apache arrived in the region later than the others. They hunted and raided settled villages. After the Navajo obtained sheep and goats from Spaniards, they began raising animals for food and clothing.
In the dry parts of California and in the dry basins and plateaus between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada, animals that could be hunted were scarce. American Indians there could get little food by hunting. Instead, they roamed the desert, gathering berries, nuts, seeds, and roots. Their shelters were simple huts covered with rushes or bunches of grass. They also made tightly woven baskets from grass to hold seeds or even water. These people included the Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute.
In the region around the Columbia River in the Northwest the Kootenai, Nez Percé, and others relied on fishing for their food. They also hunted and gathered berries and wild roots. Their houses were tepees or structures with a frame of poles covered with reeds and mud.
Compared to other regions, the northern Pacific Coast was packed with people. This was because there was so much food. The ocean and the northern rivers that fed it provided fish such as salmon. Some groups even hunted whales. Bulbs, seeds, and berries grew in large quantities on the land. Trees grew tall and dense in forests. They provided material for large wooden houses and sturdy canoes. The men of the region were skillful wood carvers and are known for their large totem poles. The groups of this region included the Haida and the Tlingit.
In parts of present-day Canada and Alaska lived the Chipewyan, Cree, and other caribou hunters of the subarctic. These Native Americans depended on the caribou, moose, and beaver much as the American Indians living on the plains depended on the buffalo. They made their tents and clothing from animal hides. Even farther north were the Inuit, who today still live along the cold northern edges of the continent. Many Inuit depend upon seal, whale, walrus, caribou, polar bear, and other Arctic animals for their food.
After settling down in farming communities, the Native Americans of Middle America (southern Mexico and Central America) built some of the world's great civilizations. The massive sculptures of the Olmec date from about 1000 BC. More than 1,000 years later the Central American Maya built stone temples and huge monuments, carved with images of gods and sacred animals. They also created a calendar and an advanced system of mathematics. They preserved what they knew in books written in hieroglyphics (picture symbols). In what is now Mexico, the great early Native American nations included the Toltec, Zapotec, and Aztec. The Aztec are known for their beautiful art and the great buildings of their capital city, Tenochtitlán.
In South America, as in North America, American Indians developed different ways of living depending on their environment. The hunters of the southern plains of South America used clubs and bows and arrows to hunt the guanaco, an animal related to the llama, for both meat and skin. They also hunted the rhea, a large flightless bird related to the ostrich. Native Americans of the southwest coast built big canoes from beech bark to sail on the sea. They fished, hunted seals and sea otters, and gathered shellfish and wild plants. In the forested, northern tropical lowlands, women tended fields while men hunted with blowguns, fished, and made war.
In the soils of the Andes Mountains, American Indians built large villages. Farmers grew potatoes, which were native to the region. They also grew corn, beans, and squash in irrigated fields. They used llamas and alpacas to carry heavy loads. In this they were more fortunate than the North Americans, whose only domestic animal was the dog. Wool from the llamas and alpacas was made into beautiful weavings. The Andean people were also skilled in making pottery and working with metal. The Inca, the most powerful Native Americans in the Andes, once ruled a large area from northern Ecuador to northern Chile.
Europeans began to arrive in the Americas in the late 15th century. They gave the name of Indians to the people they met because they thought they had arrived in India. (See Americas, Discovery and Colonization of.)
The Europeans brought fruit trees, food plants such as wheat, and animals such as pigs, sheep, cattle, and horses. The horse in particular brought great change to Native American life, particularly on the Great Plains. Groups on horseback were able to travel long distances and hunt buffalo much more easily than before. Some groups obtained horses through trade and were skilled riders long before they ever saw a white person.
Unfortunately, the Europeans also brought diseases such as measles and smallpox to the New World. Native Americans had very little resistance to these diseases, because their ancestors had not been exposed to them. Many native groups were almost wiped out by smallpox within a few years after contact.
Native Americans welcomed European goods such as cloth fabrics, metal tools, and weapons. But European goods, and the customs and beliefs that the Europeans took with them to the New World, threatened Native American self-sufficiency and traditions.
Contact with Europeans also led to increased warfare. During their explorations of Middle and South America, the gold-seeking Spaniards overturned the Aztec and Inca empires and enslaved or killed many Native Americans. Early French colonists traded for furs with the Native Americans in the Saint Lawrence River valley and around the Great Lakes. Competition in the fur trade led to fighting among many tribes.
More than the Spanish or French, the English wanted to settle permanently in the New World. The Native Americans in eastern North America helped the English at first, but colonists continued to arrive and continued to desire their land. Unlike the Native Americans, the colonists thought that individuals could own the land.
By the end of the American Revolution (1775–81), much of the American Indian land in the Northeast was claimed by Americans. As Americans began settling farther west, Native Americans there often fought to retain their territory. Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief, tried to unite tribes against American settlement in the Ohio River valley. The movement, however, fell apart after Tecumseh's death in 1813. The Cherokee and other large Southeastern tribes also lost their lands and were forced to move west into Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in the 1830s.
In the mid-19th century, the U.S. Army staged many campaigns against American Indians of the Great Plains and the Southwest, including the Navajo, Apache, and Nez Percé. Victories such as that of the Sioux and Cheyenne at the battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 were few and only temporary. Treaties granting rights to Native American groups were frequently broken. Most of the Native Americans of the West were eventually forced to give up their traditional ways of living. Placed in reservations and not allowed to hunt freely, Native Americans came to depend on the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) for food and other needs.
In the late 19th century, the BIA tried to make Indians give up their traditional ways and adopt modern American customs. Some traditional ceremonies were banned. Native American children were sent to BIA-run schools, while the agency tried to turn western Indians into settled farmers. The federal government also divided tribal lands into individually owned plots called allotments, while taking other lands from the tribes.
The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 marked a change in U.S. government policy. The new law allowed tribes to reestablish themselves as self-governing bodies with political power. In the late 20th century a revival of traditional culture took place, and many American Indians sought more control over reservations. An activist group called the American Indian Movement (AIM) rose up in the late 1960s. In 1973, AIM supporters attracted worldwide attention by staging a 71-day occupation of the town of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Wounded Knee was where U.S. troops had killed more than 200 Sioux men, women, and children in 1890, in the last major episode of the Plains Indian wars.
Less than half of the American Indians in the United States now live on or near reservations. Most reservations look like small towns. They are often on farming, grazing, or forested land and may include tribal offices, schools, stores, community colleges, and churches. Tribal lands are considered to be outside the reach of many state laws. This special status has allowed groups to open bingo halls and gambling casinos. These businesses raise money for the groups and provide jobs for their members.
The population of Native Americans (including Aleut and Inuit) in the United States increased dramatically in the second half of the 20th century. At the end of the century there were more than 2 million Native Americans, compared to only 343,000 in 1950. More than half of all Native Americans of the United States live in the West. The states with the highest native populations are California, Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. There are more than half a million Native Americans and Inuit in Canada.
