“ In a Comanche story, Humpback, a powerful being, kept all of the buffalo for himself in a corral., an animal known for his tricks, changed himself into a little dog and befriended Humpback’s son. At night, Coyote slipped into the corral, barking loudly and stampeding the buffalo away. Humpback’s son cried, ‘Where is my little dog?’ ‘That was no dog,’ Humpback said sadly. ‘That was Coyote the Trickster. He has turned loose all our buffalo.’” - Dee Brown’s Folktales of The Native American

Main Idea: The Hohokam, the Anasazi and the Mound Builders were among the most advanced of the Early North American civilizations.

» Lived in what is now Arizona. » May have come from Mexico. » They flourished from 300 AD to » They were experts at squeezing every drop of available water form the soil. » They depended on irrigation channels or trenches that they dug to carry rivers of water to their fields.

» Lived around the same time as the Hohokam. Between 1 AD to » They lived in the area of America called the Four Corners. » They build what Spanish explorers called pueblos. » Archaeologists have found traces of a complex road system. Masa Verde in Colorado is one of the largest cliff dwellings.

» In central north America, prehistoric native Americans build thousands of mounds of earth that resembled the stone pyramids of the May and Aztec. » The earliest mound builders were the Adena, hunters and gatherers who flourished in the Ohio Valley by 800 BC. Later they were followed by the Hopewell people.

» Where the largest settlement of the Mound Builders (found in Illinois). A group of people called Mississippians build the city of Cahokia. » A Natchez legend says: “Before We came into this land, we lived yonder under the sun; [the speaker pointed southwest toward Mexico]….Our nation extend itself along the great water [Gulf of Mexico], where the large river [the Mississippi] loses itself.”

» The people who settled in the Northern most part of North America (near the Arctic Ocean) are called the Inuits. Some believe that they were the last to cross the land bridge. » They had many skills that helped them survive the cold climate. They may have brought these skills from Russia's Siberia. » They had clothing of furs and sealskins that were warm and waterproof. » They hunted caribou (large deer like animals). As well as whales, seals, and walruses.

» North America’s West Coast had a mild climate and dependable food sources. » Tlingit, Haida, and Chinook people depended on the forest and the sea. » They build wooden houses and made canoes, cloth and baskets from tree bark. » Salmon was also important for the people of the plateau region. » A great variety of cultures live in what is now California. » Between the Great Basin region, between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains the soil was too hard and rocky for farming. So the Ute (YOOT) and Shoshone (shuh-SHOHNE) people would travel in search of food. They eat small game pine nuts and roots.

» The descendants of the Anasazi formed the Hopi, Acoma, and Zuni people. » The build their homes from sundried mud bricks called adobe. » They raised corn/maize for food. » In the 1500s two new people settled in the area, Apache and the Navajo. They were hunters and gatherers. The Navajo settled in villages and build houses called Hogans.

» They were nomadic people. » Their homes were called tepees. » When the Spanish came they brought horses. Some of those horses got loose. The Native Americans such as the Comanche, Dakotas, and other plains Indians became skilled riders.

» The Algonquian groups were linked by similar languages. » The Iroquois and Cherokees had a formal law codes and formed a federation (governments that linked different groups). » The Iroquois lived near Canada in what is now northern New York State. » These groups often warred with each other. Though, in the 1500s they established what is the “Great Peace” it was called the Iroquois League. It was organized according to clans or groups of related families.

» In Eastern woodlands: the Creek, Chickasaw and the Cherokee. » The Creek lived in loosely knit farming communities in what is now Georgia and Alabama. » The Chickasaw lived more in the Mississippi area. Farmed. » Cherokee farmed in the mountains of Georgia and the Carolinas.