Native Americans

Key Concept 1.1: As native populations migrated and settled across the vast expanse of North America over time, they developed distinct and increasingly complex societies by adapting to and transforming their

diverse environments.

• I. Different native societies adapted to and transformed their environments through innovations in agriculture, resource use, and social structure.

• A) The spread of maize cultivation from present- day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development, settlement, advanced irrigation, and social diversification among societies.

• B) Societies responded to the aridity of the Great Basin and the grasslands of the western Great Plains by developing largely mobile lifestyles.

• C) In the Northeast, the Mississippi River Valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard some societies developed mixed agricultural and hunter- gatherer economies that favored the development of permanent villages.

• D) Societies in the Northwest and present-day California supported themselves by hunting and gathering, and in some areas developed settled communities supported by the vast resources of the ocean.

Figure 1.1 p5

Map 1-1 p6

First Inhabitants

Theories--approximately 35,000 years ago, people

migrated across the Bering Land Bridge and eventually spread throughout North and South American continents

-perhaps even earlier (40,000) people came by boat http://www.nature.com/news/ancient-migration-coming-to-america-1.10562

Peopling the Americas

• The Incas of Peru, Mayans in Central America, and Aztecs in Mexico shaped the Mexico area:– These people built elaborate cities and carried on

far-flung commerce– They were talented mathematicians– They offered human sacrifices to their gods.

The Earliest Americans

• Social life was less elaborately developed.• Nation-states did not exist, except the Aztec

empire.• The Mound Builders were in the Ohio River

Valley.• The Mississippian settlement was at Cahokia.

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Mesa Verdi

The Earliest Americans

• Three-sister farming—maize, beans and squash.

• Iroquois Confederacy developed political and organizational skills.

• The natives had neither the desire nor the means to manipulate nature aggressively.

Map 1-2 p9

Geography influences developmentCultural diversity

• Maize cultivation (Mexico/American Southwest ) and Foraging and hunting (Northwest/California)– Led to economic development and social diversification.– (Pueblo)

• Lack of natural resources led to mobile lifestyles in Great Basin and western Great Plains.

• Northeast and Atlantic Seaboard- mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economy- led to permanent villages.

-Iroquois

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