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Directions: Read and look through the images on your selected region. Then record the following information in a graphic organizer like the example provided below.
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Column 1: Location - What and where is this region? Describe where in relation to the modern day U.S., this region is. What modern day U.S. states are in this region? Draw a map to along with the descriptions.
Column 2: Geography - What was the geography like in this region? Describe what the climate (hot, cold, arid/dry, etc) was like. Describe what the terrain (land) was like (mountains, forests, coasts, grasslands, etc.) Draw a picture(s) to go along with the descriptions. Column 3: Adaptation - How did the tribes in this region adapt to their environment (How did they use their natural resources to survive?)? Describe their food sources. Describe the types of homes they had and what they were made of. Draw a picture(s) to along with the descriptions. |
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The First Americans Adapt: American Indians lived in a variety of places, from snowy forests to dry deserts and vast grasslands. Each of these kinds of places is an environment. An environment includes everything that surrounds us—land, water, animals, and plants. Each environment also has a climate, or longterm weather pattern. Groups of American Indians survived by adapting, or changing, their style of living to suit each environment, its climate, and its natural resources.
Using Natural Resources: American Indians learned to use the natural resources in their environments for food, clothing, and shelter. In the frigid regions of the far north, early Americans survived by hunting caribou in the summer and sea mammals in the winter. They fashioned warm, hooded clothing from animal skins. To avoid being blinded by the glare of the sun shining on snow, they made goggles out of bone with slits to see through. The people of the north lived most of the year in houses made from driftwood and animal skins. In winter, hunters built temporary shelters called iglus (IG-looz) out of blocks of snow.
Using Natural Resources: American Indians learned to use the natural resources in their environments for food, clothing, and shelter. In the frigid regions of the far north, early Americans survived by hunting caribou in the summer and sea mammals in the winter. They fashioned warm, hooded clothing from animal skins. To avoid being blinded by the glare of the sun shining on snow, they made goggles out of bone with slits to see through. The people of the north lived most of the year in houses made from driftwood and animal skins. In winter, hunters built temporary shelters called iglus (IG-looz) out of blocks of snow.
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American Indian Cultural Regions: Over generations, groups of American Indians developed their own cultures, or ways of life. Many became part of larger groupings that were loosely organized under common leaders. Groups living in the same type of environment often adapted in similar ways. Forest dwellers often lived in houses covered with tree bark, while many desert peoples made shelters out of branches covered with brush.
Using such artifacts (items made by people), historians have grouped American Indian peoples into cultural regions. A cultural region is made up of people who share a similar language and way of life. By the 1400s, between 1 and 2 million American Indians lived in ten major cultural regions north of Mexico. |
American Indian Cultural Regions Map
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The Southwest Region: This cultural region includes present-day Arizona, New Mexico, southern Utah and Colorado, and portions of Texas, Oklahoma, and California. This region has many environments—canyons, mountains, deserts, and flat-topped mesas. It even has two major rivers, the Colorado and the Rio Grande. However, rain seldom falls anywhere in this region. The heat and lack of water made living in the Southwest a challenge. Yet some American Indians learned to love this arid land. “The whole Southwest was a House Made of Dawn,” goes an old American Indian song. “There were many colors on the hills and on the plain, and there was a dark wilderness on the mountains beyond.”
Mesa People: Different groups found different ways of surviving in the Southwest. Some lived as nomadic (wandering) desert hunters. Along the Colorado River, small groups hunted, gathered, and farmed. Others planted fields of corn, beans, and squash on the tops of high, flat areas called mesas. The mesa people lacked trees for building homes. Instead, they made homes from the earth itself. Using bricks of adobe (sun-baked clay), they built thick-walled houses that protected them from summer heat and winter cold. Their villages looked like apartment houses that reached up to five stories high and had up to several hundred rooms. A single village, called a pueblo (PWEH-blo), might house 1,000 people. To protect their bodies from the sun, mesa people wore clothes made of cotton that they grew, spun, and wove into cloth. Using plants and minerals, they dyed fabrics with bright colors.
Corn Culture: Despite living in a desert, the early mesa people grew corn, beans, and squash. Corn was by far the most important crop that the mesa people had. To make the most of infrequent rain, farmers planted near naturally flooded areas like the mouths of large streambeds or the bases of mesas, where rain runoff flowed. Men dug irrigation ditches from the streams to the fields and built small dams to hold summer rain. Women spent many hours a day grinding corn kernels into cornmeal. They cooked the cornmeal into bread in clay ovens. In clay pots, they cooked stews of corn, rabbit meat, and chili peppers.
Mesa People: Different groups found different ways of surviving in the Southwest. Some lived as nomadic (wandering) desert hunters. Along the Colorado River, small groups hunted, gathered, and farmed. Others planted fields of corn, beans, and squash on the tops of high, flat areas called mesas. The mesa people lacked trees for building homes. Instead, they made homes from the earth itself. Using bricks of adobe (sun-baked clay), they built thick-walled houses that protected them from summer heat and winter cold. Their villages looked like apartment houses that reached up to five stories high and had up to several hundred rooms. A single village, called a pueblo (PWEH-blo), might house 1,000 people. To protect their bodies from the sun, mesa people wore clothes made of cotton that they grew, spun, and wove into cloth. Using plants and minerals, they dyed fabrics with bright colors.
Corn Culture: Despite living in a desert, the early mesa people grew corn, beans, and squash. Corn was by far the most important crop that the mesa people had. To make the most of infrequent rain, farmers planted near naturally flooded areas like the mouths of large streambeds or the bases of mesas, where rain runoff flowed. Men dug irrigation ditches from the streams to the fields and built small dams to hold summer rain. Women spent many hours a day grinding corn kernels into cornmeal. They cooked the cornmeal into bread in clay ovens. In clay pots, they cooked stews of corn, rabbit meat, and chili peppers.
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