HOW VERY INTERESTING, GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE> The Native Americans were the first inhabitants of the Americas. They were our first environmentalists and horticulturists. To them the spirit world was embodied in every part of the natural world, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral. Thus they treated the natural world with great respect. Native Americans first survived as big-game hunters and as fishermen. The Indians were excellent fishermen and invented the birch-bark canoe. It was not long before they became agricultural, adapting to climate changes and the discovery of the plant maize (corn). First harvesting wild plants with edible seeds, they gradually developed hybrids to increase productivity. Soon, maize, squash, and beans became major agricultural products. The history of the Native Americans is a fascinating subject. Did they originate here, or did they migrate with the seafarers of Phoenicia, or from Siberia across Beringia, a land mass once connecting Siberia with Alaska, or perhaps a combination of the above? The oral tradition of the Native Americans must be respected along with the archaeological, linguistic and scientific studies of pre-Columbian history. An ancient civilization has been discovered in Caral in the Supe Valley of Peru. The Inca of Peru, the Olmecs and Mayans of Central America, and then the Toltecs and Aztecs of Mexico were early Native American civilizations. The earliest peoples within our national borders were the Southwest Ancestral Puebloans, identified at sites such as Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and the Mississippian Mound Builders at places such as Cahokia on the Mississippi River. The Native Americans settled in different regions in the country and formed independent tribes with distinct Indian cultures, such that by 1492 there were over 300 separate native american languages! When Christopher Columbus landed on October 12, 1492, he thought he had reached India, and called the native people Indians, a name which native americans have come to appreciate, as the term gave them a collective identity.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Aug 2013 21:39:35 +0000
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