This map depicts migration patterns across the Bering land bridge that once connected northeast Asia to modern-day Alaska. It traces the possible movements of people beginning about 25,000 years ago.

Archaeologists and anthropologists, meanwhile, focus on migration histories. Studying artifacts, bones, and genetic signatures, these scholars have pieced together a narrative suggesting that the Americas were once a “new world” for Native Americans as well.The last global ice age trapped much of the world’s water in enormous continental glaciers. Twenty thousand years ago, ice sheets, some a mile thick, extended across North America as far south as modern-day Illinois. With so much of the world’s water captured in these massive ice sheets, global sea levels were much lower, and a land bridge connected Asia and North America across the Bering Strait. Between twelve and twenty thousand years ago—during what is called the Paleolithic Era— Native ancestors crossed the ice, waters, and exposed lands between the continents of Asia and America. These mobile hunter-gatherers traveled in small bands, exploiting vegetable, animal, and marine resources into the Beringian tundra at the northwestern edge of North America. DNA evidence suggests that these ancestors paused for perhaps 15,000 years in the expansive region between Asia and America.^[4] Other ancestors crossed the seas and voyaged along the Pacific coast, traveling along riverways and settling where local ecosystems permitted.^[5]

This map shows the extent of the major civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. In South America, early civilizations developed along the coast because the high Andes and the inhospitable Amazon Basin made the interior of the continent less favorable for settlement.

After the decline of the Olmec, a city rose in the fertile central highlands of Mesoamerica. One of the largest population centers in pre-Columbian America and home to more than 100,000 people at its height in about 500 CE, Teotihuacan was located about thirty miles northeast of modern Mexico City. Large-scale agriculture and the resultant abundance of food allowed time for people to develop special trades and skills other than farming. Builders constructed over twenty-two hundred apartment compounds for multiple families, as well as more than a hundred temples. Among these were the Pyramid of the Sun (which is two hundred feet high) and the Pyramid of the Moon (one hundred and fifty feet high). The city was also the center for trade, which extended to settlements on Mesoamerica’s Gulf Coast.

Mayan culture had strong ties to Teotihuacan. At its height from roughly 200 CE to 900 CE, Mayan civilization encompassed some fifty urban centers in what is now Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and Guatemala. The Maya’s architectural and mathematical contributions were especially significant. Mayan elites perfected the calendar and written language the Olmec had begun. They devised a written mathematical system to record crop yields and the size of the population, and to assist in trade. They built the city-states of Copan, Tikal, and Chichen Itza along their major trade routes. Within these urban centers stood impressive temples, pyramids, statues of gods, and astronomical observatories. But, for reasons still debated by scholars, Mayan civilization declined by about 900 CE, leaving their large population centers abandoned. Poor soil was likely a contributing factor, along with the exhaustion of resources and a drought that lasted nearly two centuries.

The Spanish found little organized resistance among Mayan descendants when they arrived in the 1520s. However, they did find Mayan history, in the form of glyphs, or pictures representing words, recorded in folding books called codices (the singular is codex). In 1562, Bishop Diego de Landa, who feared the converted natives had reverted to their traditional religious practices, collected and burned every codex he could find. Today only a few survive.

El Castillo, located at Chichen Itza in the eastern Yucatán peninsula, served as a temple for the god Kukulkan. Each side contains ninety-one steps to the top. When counting the top platform, the total number of stairs is three hundred and sixty-five, the number of days in a year. (credit: Ken Thomas)

Native peoples of North America generally developed more dispersed societies than the urban civilizations of Mesoamerica. But largescale population centers developed here, too. Some of the largest culture groups in North America were the Puebloan groups, centered in the Greater Southwest (the southwestern U.S. and northwestern Mexico) and groups living along the great river valleys of the East. Extensive trade networks connected peoples across vast distances. Some of these networks linked the peoples of Mesoamerica with peoples in the southern part of today’s United States, leading to cultural exchange as well as the exchange of goods.

The Greater Southwest

In the American Southwest Mesoamerican farming techniques supported a series of societies collectively known as the Pueblo. The Spanish first gave them this name, which means “town” or “village,” because they lived in towns or villages of permanent stone-and-mud buildings with thatched roofs. Like present-day apartment houses, these buildings had multiple stories, each with multiple rooms. The three main groups of the Pueblo people were the Mogollon, Hohokam, and Anasazi. The Mogollon thrived in the Mimbres Valley (New Mexico) from about 150 BCE to 1450 CE. They developed a distinctive artistic style for painting bowls with finely drawn geometric figures and wildlife, especially birds, in black on a white background. Beginning about 600 CE, the Hohokam built an extensive irrigation system of canals to irrigate the desert and grow fields of corn, beans, and squash. By 1300, their crop yields were supporting the most highly populated settlements in the southwest. The Hohokam decorated pottery with a red-on-buff design and made jewelry of turquoise. In the high desert of New Mexico, the Anasazi, whose name means “ancient enemy” or “ancient ones,” carved homes from steep cliffs accessed by ladders or ropes that could be pulled in at night or in case of enemy attack.

To access their homes, the cliff-dwelling Anasazi used ropes or ladders that could be pulled in at night for safety. These pueblos may be viewed today in Canyon de Chelly National Monument (above) in Arizona and Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado.

Roads extending some 180 miles connected the Pueblos’ smaller urban centers to each other and to Chaco Canyon, which by 1050 CE had become the administrative, religious, and cultural center of their civilization. As many as 15,000 people lived in the Chaco Canyon complex in present-day New Mexico.^[10] One single building, Pueblo Bonito, stretched over two acres and rose five stories. Its 600 rooms were decorated with copper bells, turquoise decorations, and bright macaws.^[11]  

But as their population base grew, the peoples of Chaco Canyon faced several ecological challenges. Deforestation and over-irrigation ultimately caused the communities to collapse and residents dispersed to smaller settlements. An extreme fifty-year drought began in 1130. Shortly thereafter, Chaco Canyon was deserted. New groups filled this land, including the Apache and Navajo, both of whom adopted several Puebloan customs.

The Mississippi Valley

The same drought that plagued the Pueblo also likely affected the Mississippian peoples of the American Midwest and South. The Mississippians developed one of the largest civilizations north of modern-day Mexico. Roughly one thousand years ago, the largest Mississippian settlement, now called Cahokia, peaked at a population of between 10,000 and 30,000. Located just east of modern-day St. Louis, Cahokia rivaled contemporary European cities in size. No American city, in fact, would match its peak population levels until after the American Revolution. The city itself spanned five square miles and centered around a large earthen hill that rose ten stories and was larger at its base than the great pyramids of Egypt. The city also contained 120 earthen mounds or pyramids, each dominating a particular neighborhood and on each of which lived a leader who exercised authority over the surrounding area. As in other early cultures, life and death in Cahokia were linked to the movement of the stars, sun, and moon, and their ceremonial earthwork structures reflect these important structuring forces.

An artist’s rendering of Cahokia as it may have appeared in 1150 CE. Prepared by Bill Isminger and Mark Esarey with artwork by Greg Harlin for the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site.

Around the year 1050, Cahokia experienced what one archaeologist has called a “big bang,” which included “a virtually instantaneous and pervasive shift in all things political, social, and ideological.”^[12] The population grew almost 500 percent in only one generation, and new groups were absorbed into the city and its supporting communities.^[13] By 1300, the once powerful city had undergone a series of strains that led to collapse. Scholars previously pointed to ecological disaster or slow depopulation through emigration, but new research instead emphasizes mounting warfare, or internal political tensions. Environmental explanations suggest that population growth placed too great a burden on the arable land. Others suggest the demand for fuel and building materials led to deforestation, erosion, and an extended drought. Recent evidence, including defensive stockades, suggests that political turmoil among the ruling elite and threats from external enemies may explain the end of the once great civilization.^[14]

Like the cities of Mesoamerica, North American communities were sustained by long distance trading routes. The Mississippi River served as a particularly important trade artery, but all of the continent’s waterways were vital to transportation and communication. Cahokia became a key trading center partly due to its position near the Mississippi, Illinois, and Missouri Rivers. These rivers created networks that stretched from the Great Lakes to the American Southeast. Archaeologists can identify materials, like seashells, that traveled over a thousand miles to reach the center of this civilization. At least 3,500 years ago, the community at what is now Poverty Point, Louisiana, had access to copper from present-day Canada and flint from modern-day Indiana. Sheets of mica found at the Serpent Mound site of the Ohio Valley’s Hopewell culture came from the Allegheny Mountains, and obsidian from nearby earthworks came from Mexico. Turquoise from the Greater Southwest was used at Teotihuacan in Mexico 1,200 years ago.

The Eastern Woodlands

This map indicates the locations of the three Pueblo cultures the major Eastern Woodland Indian tribes, and the tribes of the Southeast, as well as the location of the ancient city of Cahokia.

Women in this region typically cultivated the crops and harvested nuts and berries, while men hunted, fished, and provided protection. But both took responsibility for raising children, and most major societies in the East were matrilineal, meaning they determined descent and inheritance through female relatives. In tribes such as the Iroquois, Lenape, Muscogee, and Cherokee, women had both power and influence. They counseled the chief and passed on the traditions of the tribe. Women’s roles often changed dramatically with the coming of the Europeans, who introduced, sometimes forcibly, their own patriarchal customs and traditions.

The Pacific Northwest

In the Pacific Northwest, the Kwakwaka’wakw, Tlingits, Haidas, and hundreds of other peoples, speaking dozens of languages, thrived due to the moderate climate, lush forests and many rivers. The peoples of this region depended upon salmon for survival and valued it accordingly. Images of salmon decorated totem poles, baskets, canoes, oars, and other tools. The fish was treated with spiritual respect and its image represented prosperity, life, and renewal. Sustainable harvesting practices ensured the survival of salmon populations. Elders closely observed the size of the salmon run and would delay harvesting to ensure that a sufficient number survived to spawn and return in the future.^[16] Men commonly used nets, hooks, and other small tools to capture salmon as they migrated upriver to spawn. Massive cedar canoes, as long as 50 feet and carrying as many as 20 men, also enabled extensive fishing expeditions in the Pacific Ocean, where skilled fishermen caught halibut, sturgeon, and other fish, sometimes hauling thousands of pounds in a single canoe.^[17]

Intricately carved masks like this Crooked Beak of Heaven Mask used natural elements like animals to represent supernatural forces during ceremonial dances and festivals. This particular mask is from the Kwakwaka’wakw people in British Columbia.

Food surpluses enabled significant population growth, and the Pacific Northwest became one of the most densely populated regions of North America. The combination of population density and food surplus created a unique social organization centered around elaborate feasts, called potlatches. These potlatches celebrated births and weddings as well as determined social status. A party would last for days and the host would demonstrate his wealth and power by feeding and entertaining guests with food, artwork, and performances. The more the host gave away, the more prestige and power they had within the group. Some men saved for decades to host an extravagant potlach that would in turn give them greater respect and power within the community.

Many peoples of the Pacific Northwest built elaborate plank houses out of the region’s abundant cedar trees. The 500-foot-long Suquamish Oleman House (or Old Man House), for instance, rested on the banks of Puget Sound.^[18] Giant cedar trees were also carved and painted in the shape of animals or other figures to tell stories and express identities. These totem poles became the most recognizable artistic form of the Pacific Northwest. But peoples also carved masks and other wooden items, such as hand drums and rattles, out of the great trees of the region.

Similarities Amidst Diversity

The New World was marked by diversity and contrast. By the time Europeans were poised to cross the Atlantic, Native Americans spoke hundreds of languages and lived in keeping with the hemisphere’s many climates. Some lived in cities, others in small bands. Some migrated seasonally, others settled permanently. Still, North America’s indigenous peoples shared some broad traits. Their spiritual practices, understandings of property, and kinship networks differed markedly from European arrangements.

Most native peoples of North America did not neatly distinguish between the natural and the supernatural. Spiritual power permeated their world and was both tangible and accessible. It could be appealed to and harnessed. Further, kinship bound most Native North American people together. The majority of peoples lived in small communities tied together by kinship networks. In matrilineal Eastern Woodlands communities, where clan identity proceeded along the female line, mothers often wielded enormous influence at local levels and men’s status often depended on their relationships to women. Native American culture meanwhile generally afforded greater sexual and marital freedom than European cultures did. Women often chose their husbands and divorce often was a relatively simple and straightforward process.

Clashing beliefs about land ownership and use of the environment were, arguably, the greatest area of conflict with European values. Although tribes often claimed the right to certain hunting grounds—usually identified by some geographical landmark—native societies did not practice, or in general even have the concept of, private ownership of land. Native Americans generally felt a personal ownership of tools, weapons, or other items that were actively used, and this same rule applied to land and crops. Groups and individuals exploited particular pieces of land, and used violence or negotiation to exclude others. But the right to the use of land did not imply the right to its permanent possession. The European Christian worldview, on the other hand, viewed land as the source of wealth. According to the Christian Bible, God created humanity in his own image with the command to use and subdue the rest of creation, which included not only land, but also all animal life. Upon their arrival in North America, Europeans found no fences, no signs designating ownership. Land, and the game that populated it, they believed, were there for the taking.