Native Americans

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Major Culture Areas

A culture area is first of all a geographical region; it has characteristic climate, landforms, and biological population—fauna and flora. Humans who live in the region must adapt to its characteristics to obtain the necessities of life. The Americas may be divided into many culture areas, and these divisions may be determined in different ways. Here, nine areas are used for North America, one for Mesoamerica (Mexico and Central America), and four for South America.

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North America

The culture areas of North America are the South-west, the Eastern Woodlands, the South-east, the Plains, the California Intermountain region, the Plateau, the Subarctic, the North-west Pacific Coast, and the Arctic.

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The South-West

The South-western culture area encompasses Arizona, New Mexico, southern Colorado, and adjacent northern Mexico (the states of Sonora and Chihuahua). The first known inhabitants of the south-west were hunting mammoths and other game with Clovis-style spearpoints by about 9500 bc. As the Ice Age ended (c. 8000 bc), mammoths became extinct. The people in the south-west turned to hunting bison (known as buffalo in North America) and spent more time collecting wild plants for food. The climate gradually became warmer and drier, and a way of life—called the Archaic—developed from about 8000 bc to about 300 bc. Archaic peoples hunted mostly deer, small game, and birds, and they harvested fruits, nuts, and the seeds of wild plants, using stone slabs for grinding seeds into flour. In about 3000 bc the South-Westerners learned to grow maize, which had been domesticated in Mexico, but for centuries it was only a minor food.

About 300 bc, some Mexicans whose culture was based on cultivating maize, beans, and squash in irrigated fields migrated to southern Arizona. These people, called the Hohokam, lived in towns in adobe-plastered houses built around public plazas. They were the ancestors of the present-day Pima and Papago, who preserve much of the Hohokam way of life.

The peoples of the northern sector of the South-western culture area, after centuries of trading with the Hohokam, had by ad 700 modified their life into what is called the Anasazi tradition, as early Cliff Dwellers. They grew maize, beans, and squash and lived in towns of terraced stone, or in adobe apartment blocks built around central plazas; these blocks had blank walls facing the outside of the town, thereby protecting the people within. During the summer many families lived in small houses at their fields. After 1275 the northern sector suffered severe droughts, and many Anasazi farms and towns were abandoned; those along the Rio Grande, however, grew and expanded their irrigation systems. In 1540 Spanish explorers visited the descendants of the Anasazi, who are called the Pueblos. After 1598 the Spanish imposed their rule on the Pueblos, but in 1680 the Pueblos organized a rebellion that kept them free until 1692. Since that time, Pueblo towns have been dominated by Spanish, then Mexican, and finally United States government. The Pueblos attempted to preserve their culture: They continued their farming and, in some towns, secretly maintained their own governments and religion. Twenty-two Pueblo towns exist today.

In the 1400s, hunters speaking an Athabascan language—related to languages of Alaska and western Canada—appeared in the south-west, having migrated southward along the western Great Plains. They raided Pueblo towns for food and—after slave markets were established by the Spanish—for captives to sell; from the Pueblos, they learned to farm, and from the Spanish, to raise sheep and horses. Today these peoples are the Navajo and the several groups of Apache.

The western sector of the South-west is inhabited by speakers of Yuman languages, including the isolated Havasupai, who farm on the floor of the Grand Canyon; and the Mojave, who live along the lower Colorado River. The Yuman-speaking peoples inhabit small villages of pole-and-thatch houses near their floodplain fields of maize, beans, and squash.

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Eastern Woodlands

The Eastern Woodlands culture area consists of the temperate-climate regions of the eastern United States and Canada, from Minnesota and Ontario east to the Atlantic Ocean and south to North Carolina. Originally densely forested, this large region was first inhabited by hunters, including those who used Clovis spearpoints. About 7000 bc, with the warming climate, an Archaic culture developed. The peoples of this area became increasingly dependent on deer, nuts, and wild grains. By around 3000 bc human populations in the Eastern Woodlands had reached cultural peaks that were not again achieved until after ad 1200. The cultivation of squash was learned from Mexicans, and in the Midwest sunflowers, amaranth, marsh elder, and goosefoot and related plants were also farmed. All of these were grown for their seeds, which—except for those of the sunflower—were usually ground into flour. Fishing and shellfish gathering increased, and off the coast of Maine the catch included swordfish. In the western Great Lakes area, copper was surface mined and made into blades and ornaments, and throughout the Eastern Woodlands, beautiful stones were carved into small sculptures.

After about 1000 bc the climate became cooler and food resources scarcer, causing a population decline in the Atlantic part of the region. In the Midwest, however, populations organized into wide trading networks and began building large mound-covered tombs for their leaders and for use as centres for religious activities. These early mound builders, called the Hopewell, raised some maize, but were more dependent on Archaic foods. The Hopewell culture declined by about ad 400.

By 750 a new culture developed in the Midwest. Called the Mississippian culture, it was based on intensive maize agriculture, and its people built large towns with earth platforms, or mounds, supporting temples and rulers' residences. Across the Mississippi River from present-day St Louis, Missouri, the Mississippians built the city of Cahokia, which may have had a population of up to 50,000. Cahokia contained hundreds of mounds. Its principal temple was built on the largest, a mound 30 m (100 ft) high and roughly about 110 m (360 ft) long and about 49 m (160 ft) wide. During this time period, maize agriculture also became important in the Atlantic region, but no cities were built.

The presence of Europeans in the Eastern Woodlands dates from at least ad 1000, when colonists from Iceland tried to settle the island of Newfoundland. Throughout the 1500s, European fishers and whalers used the coast of Canada. European settlement of the region began in the 1600s. It was not strongly resisted, partly because terrible epidemics had spread among the Native Americans of this region through contact with European fishers and with Spanish explorers in the south-east. By this time the Mississippian cities had also disappeared, probably as a consequence of the epidemics.

The Native American peoples of the Eastern Woodlands included the Iroquois and a number of Algonquian-speaking peoples, including the Lenape, also known as the Delaware; the Micmac; the Narragansett; the Shawnee; the Potawatomi; the Menominee; and the Illinois. Some Eastern Woodlands peoples moved west in the 19th century; others remain throughout the region, usually in their own small communities.

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The South-East

The South-east culture area is the semi-tropical region north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Middle Atlantic-Midwest region; it extends from the Atlantic coast west to central Texas. Much of this land once consisted of pine forests, which the Native Americans of the region kept cleared of underbrush by yearly burnings, a form of livestock management that maintained high deer populations for hunting.

Cultivation of native plants was begun in the Late Archaic period, about 3000 bc, and there were large populations of humans in the area. In 1400 bc a town, called Poverty Point by modern archaeologists, was built near present-day Vicksburg, Mississippi. Like the Mississippian towns of 2,000 years later, Poverty Point had a large public plaza and huge earth mounds that served as temple platforms or covered tombs.

The number of Native Americans in the south-east remained high until European contact. Maize agriculture appeared about 500 bc. Towns continued to be built, and crafted items were widely traded. The first European explorer, the Spaniard Hernando de Soto, marched around the south-east with his army between 1539 and 1542; epidemics introduced by the Spaniards killed thousands.

South-eastern peoples included the Cherokee, the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, the Creek, and the Seminole, known by the explorers as the Five Civilized Tribes because they resembled European nations in organization and economy, and because they quickly incorporated desirable European imports (such as fruit trees) into their way of life. The Natchez, whose elaborate mound-building culture was destroyed by Europeans in the 18th century, were another famous South-eastern people.