DISCOVERING NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN CULTURES WHY WERE THEY CALLED INDIANS When the explorer Christopher Columbus landed in the New World he used the term Indios Spanish for Indians for the native people because he thought he had reached a part of South Asia called the Indies In the 1960s many activists in the United States and Canada rejected the label Indians because of its mistaken origin In these countries Native Americans became the preferred term Later Native Americans in Canada began to refer to themselves as First Nations Various peoples of the Arctic prefer the terms Alaska Native Yupik or Inuit Canadians of mixed First Nations and European heritage are known as Métis Yet even with this great variety of terms many native people of North America continue to identify themselves as Indians Paleo Indians The earliest people of North America are called Paleo Indians The prefix paleo comes from a Greek word meaning early or ancient The Paleo Indians shared Some cultural traits with peoples of Asia such as the use of fire and domesticated IO
Paleo Indians used tools such as this Goshen projectile point to hunt huge game animals dogs However they do not seem to have used other Old World technologies such as grazing animals domesticated plants and the wheel The Paleo Indians were hunters and gatherers They lived in small family based groups called bands that moved from place to place in search of food They shared the land with large mammals such as mammoths mastodons and giant bison Archaeological sites of Paleo Indians often include bones from these animals This has sometimes led to the mistaken idea that II
DISCOVERING NATIVE NORTH AMERICAN CULTURES American mastodon woolly mammoth African savanna elephant Mastodons and wolly mammoths were hunted by some Paleo Indians These animals were similar in size to modern African elephants but unlike the modern variety they were adapted to Ice Age temperatures these people only hunted and ate large animals By the turn of the twenty first century however digs by archaeologists showed that Paleo Indians ate both ani mals and wild plants including fruit tubers and seaweed Evidence also has shown that some Paleo Indians fished Archaic Cultures The Archaic cultures developed from Paleo Indian traditions They arose in 12
THE FIRST PEOPLES OF THE AMERICAS response to environmental changes Beginning about 11 500 years ago temper atures rose dramatically worldwide Very large ani mals such as mammoths could not cope with the change and became extinct Other ani mals such as bison survived by becoming smaller At the same time new grasses trees and other plants developed As the environment changed so did the Indians lifestyles The most visible change was The spear thrower was an innovation of the Archaic in their Archaic peoples diet period It consisted of a rod with used a wider range of plant a hook at the rear end to hold the and animal foods than the weapon in place until its release Paleo Indians had They relied The device gave greater velocity and force to the spear more upon smaller animals such as deer and elk They caught more fish and collected more shellfish from rivers and lakes They also gathered seeds an addition to the larger plant foods of the Paleo Indians such as fruit and roots In the late Archaic period people began to farm The Archaic period lasted until about 2000 BCE in most of North America 13
