Development And Expansion Of Native American Culture

Native Americans, or Indians, or whatever people might choose call people who first came to North America, are pictured with bow and arrow, riding a horse, and hunting buffalos, or with a tomahawk in the hand, and a feather in their head trying to fight and be violent. The truth is people only see one side of the story. In reality Native Americans have a complex and diverse culture, that has evolved as the time has passed. They have gone from hunting mammoths, and collecting wild barriers to farming and making permanent settlements. Native Americans had a different kind of belief system that was unique from what other parts of the world had, but Native American culture evolved within North America, and things like geography, climate and vegetation played a crucial part in development and expansion of the Native American culture.
Native American first came to North America from Beringia, the land bridge that was made up of snow and rain during the ice age.
They crossed the bridge most likely while hunting for large animals, which Native Americans relied on for food, clothing, and tools. Today archeologist called these people Paleo-Indians. They made their way through Canada, and explored rest of the continent using an ice free passage, they also travelled along the Pacific coast for fishing. Their diets transformed as North America provided Paleo-Indians with a variety of different animals to hunt for. This caused the population of the Native Americans to increase within the first thousand years. They started to expend their population throughout the hemisphere. As they moved away from one another they created their own ways of doing things, and this caused a lot of different cultures to
evolve.
Archaic hunters and gatherers are the decedents of the Paleo-Indians, and they also hunted for animals, but unlike their predecessors, they hunted for smaller animals. They learned new ways to hunt, like their ancestors they used sharp spears, but they also used traps to catch animals. Small animals did not provided as much resources as the big mammoths, so archaic people started gathering wild plants. They also used stone tools to grind wild plants, for eating purposes. They developed basket making skills which helped them store more wild plants. Including plants was a big move for Native Americans, because it was a good technique for surviving in different types of climate conditions present in the Western hemisphere. One region where people lived in was the massive Great Plains. Here they hunted for large herds of bison. They used several methods of hunting like killing bison with spears, or running them off of a cliff which caused bison to die at the impact, and they also cornered them and slaughtered them. In the Great Plains some natives lived along rivers, lakes and mashes where they captured fishes instead of hunting for bison. Great plain itself was a diverse in regards to different climate conditions it had everything from deserts to Rocky Mountains. People adapted to climate according to the resources that were available, some heavily depended on plants and nuts, while some relied on small animals like rabbits, rodents, and snakes. One of the important and culturally diverse place in the North American was the Pacific coast, precisely the present day California, which housed the Pacific coast culture. This place was a cultural powerhouse it had many tribes of its own and hundreds of different languages were spoken here. One of the cultures for this area that stands out is Chumash culture, and these people made a permanent tribe. They had a lot of food they especially acorn, but got wiped out due to conflict. Like pacific coast eastern woodland was a densely populated area with its own culture. Here people lived in a different type of climate that was not found in the western side of the continent. People acquired ample amount of food from the forest surrounding, and this caused them to create a permanent settlements. Here people learned pottery and agriculture from trade relations with Mexico. Some of the woodland cultures build complex burial mounds, and they were central part of the villages or the cities. The mounds hosted important ceremonies most likely some sort of religious ceremonies. The complexity of chiefdoms give clues about some sort of a government that managed people who made the mounds, but it is impossible for archeologist to conform who the “chiefs” were.
People in the southwestern part of the US had to adapt to extremely unreliable weather conditions. Due to shortage to rain in this area people had to adopt agriculture which supplied good amount of food to Native Americans in the present day Arizona, new Mexico, and Colorado. Southwest was also culturally diverse with tribes like Monolion, Hohokam, and Anasazi, but these cultures did not survive due to droughts, but it was not a surprise, because it was a hot desert area. Cultures in present day America were thriving, and below the Rio Grande River the Mexica culture also know was Aztec was flourishing. They had many cities with more population then the mighty Europe. They traded with the cities all over the continent, and that played a huge role in the spread of their diverse culture.
From landing in the North America to creating large settlements in Central America, Native American culture transformed and developed, and climate, animals, and other geographic factors molded their lives, society and values. Due to not being able to keep up with the World’s technological advancements the Native American culture slowly ended.