U.S. History / Unit 1: Colonial America
1.1 Native American Societies
Notes
Millions of people lived in the Americas long before Europeans arrived. They built very different societies suited to their environments.
- Agriculture spread from Mesoamerica: maize (corn), beans and squash (the "Three Sisters") supported large, settled villages.
- Southwest: the Ancestral Puebloans built multistory adobe and cliff dwellings and used irrigation.
- Mississippi Valley: the Mississippian culture built mound cities such as Cahokia (near modern St. Louis).
- Northeast: the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy united five nations (later six) with a shared council.
- Great Plains and Great Basin: many groups were mobile hunters and gatherers; Pacific Northwest peoples relied on fishing.
- Most Native groups saw land as shared for use, not owned and sold as private property.
- Example: a farming people in the Northeast planted the Three Sisters together so the beans climbed the corn stalks.
Practice
Which crop was most important to the spread of settled farming villages across North America?
Maize spread north from Mesoamerica and supported large settled populations.
Cahokia, a large city with earthen mounds near present-day St. Louis, was built by which culture?
The Mississippian culture built mound centers along the Mississippi River; Cahokia was the largest.
A historian finds that a Native group lived in permanent stone and adobe homes and dug irrigation channels in a dry climate. Where did this group most likely live?
Ancestral Puebloans in the dry Southwest built adobe dwellings and irrigated crops.
Ready for more? Take the Unit 1 test.