The Native Peoples The earliest inhabitants of North America came from Asia over , years ago on a land-bridge across the Bering Straits, and during the last Ice Age , years ago they moved further south. The oldest artefact found in America – an arrow-point – is , years old. The population started to increase about , years ago when the climate became more stable. ‘At sunset on the day before America [that is, before the Europeans reached there and gave the continent this name], diversity lay at every hand.
People spoke in more than a hundred tongues. They lived by every possible combination of hunting, fishing, gathering, gardening, and farming open to them. The quality of soils and the effort required to open and tend them determined some of their choices of how to live. Cultural and social biases determined others.
Surpluses of fish or grain or garden plants or meats helped create powerful, tiered societies here but not there. Some cultures had endured for millennia…’ – William Macleish, The Day before America . These peoples lived in bands, in villages along river valleys. They ate fish and meat, and cultivated vegetables and maize.
They often went on long journeys in search of meat, chiefly that of bison, the wild buffalo that roamed the grasslands (this became easier from the seventeenth century, when the natives started to ride horses, which they bought from Spanish settlers). But they only killed as many animals as they needed for food. ‘Native’ means a person born in the place he/she lives in. Till the early twentieth century, the term was used by Europeans to describe the inhabitants of countries they had colonised.
D ISPLACING I NDIGENOUS P EOPLES T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY They did not attempt extensive agriculture and since they did not produce a surplus, they did not develop kingdoms and empires as in Central and South America. There were some instances of quarrels between tribes over territory, but by and large control of land was not an issue. They were content with the food and shelter they got from the land without feeling any need to ‘own’ it. An important feature of their tradition was that of making formal alliances and friendships, and exchanging gifts.
Goods were obtained not by buying them, but as gifts. Numerous languages were spoken in North America, though these were not written down. They believed that time moved in cycles, and each tribe had accounts about their origins and their earlier history which were passed on from one generation to the next. They were skilled craftspeople and wove beautiful textiles.
They could read the land – they could understand the climates and different landscapes in the way literate people read written texts.