CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 6 CHAPTER ONE DISCOVERING THE NEW WORLD 11 CHAPTER TWO EXPLORING THE SOUTH AND SOUTHWEST 25 CHAPTER THREE EXPLORING THE NORTHEAST 41 CHAPTER FOUR EXPLORING THE MISSISSIPPI 58 CONCLUSION 66 TIMELINE 69 GLOSSARY 71 FOR MORE INFORMATION 73 BIBLIOGRAPHY 77 INDEX 78
6 INTRODUCTION The first peoples to explore and settle the Americas were the ancestors of the American Indians These early explorers were members of nomadic hunter-gatherer cultural groups They moved from Asia to North America during the last ice age when thick ice sheets cov ered much of northern North America As the ice sheets absorbed water sea levels dropped and a land bridge emerged along what is now the Bering Strait From about 30,000 to 12,000 years ago this land bridge connected northeastern Asia to what is now Alaska Some peoples came to North America by fol lowing the Pacific coast southward They may have combined walking with boat travel Others walked across a glacier free area through the center of what is now Canada 6
Scientists call the now-underwater stretch of land that the ancestors of the American Indians crossed the Bering Land Bridge This image by a modern artist shows a group of hunter-gatherers crossing it Continued melting of the ice gradually opened up the land allowing people to spread out across North America and into South America No single person made any large part of the long journey one group after another continued the march over many centuries The first Europeans did not arrive in the 7 INTRODUCTION
