“Heaven and Earth never
agreed better to frame a place
for man’s habitation.”
Jamestown founder John Smith, 1607
THE FIRST AMERICANS
ancestors had for thousands of years,
A
along the Siberian coast and then
t the height of the Ice Age, be- across the land bridge .
tween 34,000 and 30,000 B .C ., much
Once in Alaska, it would take
of the world’s water was locked up these first North Americans thou-
in vast continental ice sheets . As a sands of years more to work their
result, the Bering Sea was hundreds way through the openings in great
of meters below its current level, and glaciers south to what is now the
a land bridge, known as Beringia, United States . Evidence of early life
emerged between Asia and North in North America continues to be
America . At its peak, Beringia is found . Little of it, however, can be
thought to have been some 1,500 ki- reliably dated before 12,000 B .C .; a
lometers wide . A moist and treeless recent discovery of a hunting look-
tundra, it was covered with grasses out in northern Alaska, for exam-
and plant life, attracting the large ple, may date from almost that time .
animals that early humans hunted So too may the finely crafted spear
for their survival .
points and items found near Clovis,
The first people to reach North New Mexico .
America almost certainly did so
Similar artifacts have been found
without knowing they had crossed at sites throughout North and South
into a new continent . They would America, indicating that life was
have been following game, as their probably already well established in
6
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
much of the Western Hemisphere by ing earthen burial sites and forti-
some time prior to 10,000 B .C .
fications around 600 B .C . Some
Around that time the mammoth mounds from that era are in the
began to die out and the bison took shape of birds or serpents; they
its place as a principal source of probably served religious purposes
food and hides for these early North not yet fully understood .
Americans . Over time, as more and
The Adenans appear to have
more species of large game van- been absorbed or displaced by vari-
ished — whether from overhunting ous groups collectively known as
or natural causes — plants, berries, Hopewellians . One of the most im-
and seeds became an increasingly portant centers of their culture was
important part of the early Ameri- found in southern Ohio, where the
can diet . Gradually, foraging and remains of several thousand of these
the first attempts at primitive agri- mounds still can be seen . Believed
culture appeared . Native Americans to be great traders, the Hopewel-
in what is now central Mexico led lians used and exchanged tools and
the way, cultivating corn, squash, materials across a wide region of
and beans, perhaps as early as 8,000 hundreds of kilometers .
B .C . Slowly, this knowledge spread
By around 500 A .D ., the
northward .
Hopewellians disappeared, too,
By 3,000 B .C ., a primitive type of gradually giving way to a broad
corn was being grown in the river group of tribes generally known
valleys of New Mexico and Arizo- as the Mississippians or Temple
na . Then the first signs of irrigation Mound culture . One city, Ca-
began to appear, and, by 300 B .C ., hokia, near Collinsville, Illinois, is
signs of early village life .
thought to have had a population of
By the first centuries A .D ., the about 20,000 at its peak in the early
Hohokam were living in settlements 12th century . At the center of the
near what is now Phoenix, Arizo- city stood a huge earthen mound,
na, where they built ball courts and flattened at the top, that was 30
pyramid-like mounds reminiscent meters high and 37 hectares at the
of those found in Mexico, as well as base . Eighty other mounds have
a canal and irrigation system .
been found nearby .
Cities such as Cahokia depend-
MOUND BUILDERS AND
ed on a combination of hunting,
PUEBLOS
foraging, trading, and agriculture
T
for their food and supplies . Influ-
he first Native-American group enced by the thriving societies to the
to build mounds in what is now the south, they evolved into complex hi-
United States often are called the erarchical societies that took slaves
Adenans . They began construct- and practiced human sacrifice .
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