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Some of the Inuit of today live very much the way their ancestors did. For food, clothing, weapons, tools, and fuel, they rely on the fish they catch and the caribou, seals, whales, and walruses they hunt. In winter, the Inuit live in houses made of sod, wood, and stone, and in summer, they use tents made of animal skins. Igloos, shelters made of blocks of snow, are used only when the Inuit go on hunts and then only rarely. Kayaks and dog sleds are their means of transportation. Much of the Inuit reli- gion revolves around the sea and animals. The Inuit are noted for their carvings in soapstone, ivory, and bone, which often use characters from their religious lore. Anasazi (Pueblo Builders and Cliff Dwellers) By about 2,000 years ago, the Anasazi had settled in what is known today as the four corners area of the Southwest, that is, where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah meet. Originally hunters and gatherers, the Anasazi turned to farming by around 1000 CE. Their crops were primarily maize (corn), beans, and squash. The first houses of the Anasazi were pithouses constructed below ground. By 1100 CE, however, the Anasazi were building cliff dwellings, multistoried stone apartment buildings with many rooms, set into mountainsides. By the late 1200s, for unknown reasons, the Anasazi began to abandon their cliff dwellings. Possible reasons include drought, disease, pressure from invading groups like the Apache, and internal dissension among villagers. Archaeologists have found no proof of any of these. By the mid-1500s, when the Spanish arrived in the Southwest, there was no trace of the cliff dwellers. In their place were descendants who lived in villages of adobe houses. These houses were built with a type of sun-dried brick made from clay. Both the clay and the bricks themselves are called adobe. The Spanish called these houses pueblos, and applied the name to the villagers as well; hence, the Acoma, Zuni, and Hopi became known as the Pueblo Indians. Mound Builders There are three different cultures that prospered at three different times that are classified as Mound Builders: the Adena (1000 BCE–200 CE), the Hopewell (100 BCE–700 CE), and Mississippian (500 CE–1600 CE). There are thousands of their mounds throughout the eastern part of the United States. The mounds are just that—huge, high domes of dirt or long, narrow mounds of dirt, like ribbons, that wind across the landscape in twists and turns. Building such huge structures required thousands of workers and some form of government to organ- ize and direct them. Hopewell Mound ceremonial site The Adena culture developed in the Ohio River Valley and spread through what are now the states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The Adenans may have been farmers, or they may simply have harvested wild grains. Much of what we know of the Adenans is based on archaeological analysis of their mounds. Archaeologists speculate that the mounds were built as graves and also as sites for religious observances. There are no traces of the Adenans after about 200 CE, and archaeologists do not know what happened to them.

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I. The Earliest Americans

The Hopewell culture also developed in the Ohio River Valley and spread from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and west to the Mississippi River. In the east, the culture penetrated as far as the western slopes of the Appalachians. The largest mound that has been found is 40 feet high and 100 feet in diameter. The Hopewellians were hunters and fishers as well as farmers, raising corn, beans, and squash. Some of the people were also traders; Hopewellian trade goods have been found in distant parts of the continent, and trade goods from as far away as the Rockies have been found among Hopewellian artifacts. Archaeologists specu- late that the Hopewellian trade network stretched from the Rockies to the Atlantic, and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. The Hopewell culture began to decline sometime between 500 CE and 700 CE. The Mississippian culture did not penetrate quite as far north, west, or east as the Hopewell Mound Builders, but it was a more complex society. In addition to burial mounds, the Mississippians built city-states surrounded by villages and farms. Each city included temple mounds, homes, workshops, and marketplaces. While the northern city-states died out sometime in the 1500s, the southern cen- ters were still functioning in the 1600s when the French and Spanish explored the Gulf coast area. European diseases decimated the population of these people. The Cherokee and Choctaw are two cultures that are descended from the last Mound Builders. B. Native Americans Background Scholars differ on how to group culture regions. Recent research has resulted in the difference between the Sequence grouping of Native American cultures and how they are presented here. Most anthropologists have classified Native American peoples into culture regions in order to study and understand them, in the same way that anthropol- ogists study members of other ethnic groups, such as the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia or the Zulu people in the Republic of South Africa. A culture region is a geographic area in which different groups have adapted to their physical surroundings in similar ways. However, even within culture regions, groups still Teaching Idea retain certain individualized characteristics. The following profiles attempt to Different Native American groups lived describe the characteristics of both a culture region and of specific peoples with- in different types of homes. Using in those regions. The Southwest, Eastern Woodlands, and Southeast culture Instructional Master 27, Native groups are featured because they were the areas of first encounters between American Homes, familiarize students Europeans and Native Americans. In teaching about these peoples, point out with the types of homes associated that, for the most part, these groups are present in American life today. with the Southwest, Eastern Woodlands, and Southeast culture Southwest regions. As a homework extension of The native peoples of the Southwest lived in what are today Arizona, western this activity, you could ask students to New Mexico, and parts of Utah, Colorado, and Texas. The area has a very dry cli- make a model of one type of home with mate with little rainfall. There are a variety of physical environments: plateaus, their caregivers and then bring it in to mountains, valleys, and desert. Where irrigation was possible, Native Americans show the class. raised squash, corn, beans, cotton, tobacco, and gourds. Where annual precipita- tion was inadequate for farming, the people were hunters and gatherers. Those

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