Native American societies before contact

  • The history of America really begins 15 thousands years ago, when people first arrived in the Americas

  • There is a scholarly debate about how people actually came to the United States

    • 12 thousand years ago during the Ice Age, the sea level was lower, so there was a bit of land exposed between Asia and North America for people to travel

    • Suggests that people were already in the Americas long before this said Ice Age even happened —> earlier via boats

    • No matter how they came, the humans that arrived spread in all directions of the continent

  • When Europeans arrived in the late 1400s, there were ~50 million people in the Americans

    • ~4-5 million of them were in North America

  • B.C.E people in Mexico domesticated corn (maize)

    • People who had originally been hunters and gathers, following herds of animals, could partake in settled agriculture settled around villages and complex societies

      • Doesn’t eliminate hunting and gathering, but actually suggests staying in one certain area

  • Native American Societies developed around their natural environments using the resources that were available to them

    • Northwest Coast → fishing in the pacific ocean gave Native Americans a plentiful source of food

    • Southwest → Pueblo people, dealt with the dry environment by creating very complex irrigation projects so they could water their maize crops with the little mostiour that they had. They lived in large cave complexes as agriculture allowed them to grow their population

    • Plains → continued their hunting and gathering way of life (hunting bison), and following the herds of animals in teepees

    • Northeast → Farming developed large settlements like Cahokia, which had 25-40 thousand residents

    • Southeast → three sister farming; corn, beans, and squash together, which was mutually beneficial to all plants

      • corn - served as a trailess for the beans

      • squash - protected the root system of the corn

    • By the time Europeans began to arrive in the late 14 hundreds and early 15 hundreds, native societies have been evolving for over 14 thousand years

    • The plants, animals, and diseases brought from the Europeans would bring a great amount of change for the Native American people