How did the native Americans survive?

Out of all the nomadic and tribal groups of the world, the Native Americans are one of the most in tune with nature and formed a comfortable way of living that lasted for thousands of years. This lifestyle was only interrupted upon the arrival of the European settlers, or until another tribe decided they wanted someone else’s land. Many of the tribes were peaceful and only wanted to live their way of life, but others were not so friendly and became responsible for completely wiping out dozens of rival groups. Whatever their tribal policies were, all of them successfully managed to survive countless winters and support large populations, so who exactly were these people and how did the native Americans survive for generations?

Where did Native Americans come from?

The Ancestors of the native Americans are believed to have come from the earliest groups of nomadic humans who walked out of Africa and headed east. Many of these groups settled in what is now known as the Middle East and Southeast Asia, but some of them kept going and found themselves on the eastern side of modern-day Russia, in an area that has long since been lost to rising sea levels called Beringia.

Today, this area is covered by the sea and separates the countries of Canada and Russia in a channel named the Bering Straight. The first humans on the North American continent arrived there between 13,000 and 13,500 years ago after walking across the land bridge from mainland Asia. This land bridge started to become submerged shortly after the first people arrived, and was eventually impassible 11,000 years ago when the sea cut off the last connecting paths between continents.

(The land-covered area of Beringia before and after the changing sea levels)

The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago but before this, the northern parts of Canada would have been covered in thick glaciers and made miles of land south of them too cold to live on for most people. The first humans in North America would have headed south toward the warmer areas of the continent, where they turned into the Native American tribes we know today. There is also a theory that many of the people who crossed the land bridge before it sank stayed close to the cold and followed the glaciers back as they melted, becoming the ancestors of the Inuit people.

How did the Native Americans live?

There were two main ways of living when it came to homes, which were permanent settlements and nomads. The Nomadic tribes were more common in the northern areas of the country where deer were more common, and they would follow the herds around while living in small and easy-to-move tents like the tee-pee or even making their own shelters from natural materials each time they moved.

(A classic teepee made from sewn-together animal skins)

Some of the Southern tribes were also nomadic but would follow huge herds of bison around the plains of what are now the southern states between California and Florida. They would mostly live in the classic teepee instead of building their own homes each time because they had access to large amounts of animal skins to make them and would often have to set up in the middle of plains where there were no natural building materials.

The permanent settlements were often built close to rivers or rich hunting grounds. Houses were built from sticks and branches and covered with tree bark, animal skins, and sometimes woven fabric, but thatching was a technology that wasn’t used by the Native Americans. Both the nomadic and permanent settlements would almost never include the whole tribe, and instead would be made up of smaller family groups who would live in their own areas but still belong to the same tribe. This was done to make sure that people still had enough land to feed themselves but could be called upon in times of war.

What did Native Americans eat?

The permanent settlements would produce 2 to 3 harvests each year of corn, their primary staple crop. They would mass produce this and make it into a huge range of bread, cakes, stews, and anything else you can use corn for, but it was especially important because it was one of the few foods that could be dried to last throughout the winter.

(Smoking was used to preserve short-term foods for a few weeks, like jerky or fish)

In the earlier days of living on the continent, populations would have been very small and each tribe would have a huge amount of wilderness to hunt, and the need to grow corn didn’t come until their numbers grew to the point that hunting wasn’t practical on such a large scale. Meat included deer, bison, wild turkey, game birds, elk, moose, fish, and water mammals like the beaver, but they didn’t have cows, goats, or horses until the Spanish arrived and began to ship them over from the start of the 1500s onwards.

The vegetables and fruit they had access to would depend on where they were in the country, but a short list of foods native to North America include sweet potato, beans, squashes, sunflowers, grapes, peppers, tomatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, and wild rice. Farming was hard and took a lot of effort, which was especially difficult when the only metal they used was copper. The little farmland they had would mostly be used for corn, with the second most common food eaten being meat.

How did the Native Americans survive winter?

Staying warm wasn’t a problem because if there’s one thing that hunter-gatherers have in abundance, it is animal skins. They were able to sow thick blankets and live in warm tents with plenty of firewood, but the real challenge was making sure everyone was fed. Certain animals don’t hibernate and can be caught all year round, but nothing ensured survival through the winter like a good supply of grain and pemmican.

There were only two things that could go wrong when it came to producing corn, which was either a failed harvest or getting attacked by one of the less peaceful tribes. Many of the tribes had a warrior culture and didn’t bother to grow their own grain, they also lived nomadically and would raid other tribes for food before moving on to do it again. If the corn harvest was successful, then this made sure everyone in the tribe would at least not have to starve to death. Grain would be coarsely ground and mixed with peppers, tomatoes, or other seasonal vegetables to give variation to it, but was most often eaten by being ground up and mixed with water to form a small, flat cake which would be cooked on a hot stone next to the fire.

The other type of preserved food they invented was such a good survival food that it became the number one trade item between the Natives and the settlers for many years and helped the tribes who didn’t produce corn to make it through winter. This food was called pemmican and if made correctly can be safe to eat for over 10 years, and provides high amounts of fat and calories. It is made from bison meat that has been cut into thin strips before being dried on racks and ground into a powder, this is then mixed in a 50/50 ratio with rendered fat from the same animal and formed into bars.

If the pemmican is kept away from the air it will last for years, and many tribes who had access to the meat would do this. An entire bison would be turned into pemmican and formed into one huge ball, which would then be sown up in the skin of the animal it came from. Any type of red meat from a grazing animal can be used, as long as it’s darker than standard beef, such as bison, elk, moose, or caribou.

What clothing did Native Americans wear?

The earliest surviving example of fabric produced by the native Americans was found preserved in a peat bog during a dig in Florida, where several pieces of woven fabrics were found with the earliest dating to 6,000 BCE. They were made from twine in a plain weave style but it is unknown how long before these the natives could weave fabric. cotton is native to the southern part of North America, and twine could have been made from certain plants or animal hair, but the problem is these kinds of materials wouldn’t survive for very long unless they were preserved in perfect conditions, like being submerged in a peat bog for example.

(A photo from the late 1800s of two men wearing traditional breechcloths)

The number of tribes who wove their own fabric is unknown because they didn’t have a written language and didn’t record such things, but we do know that the majority of their clothing was made from animal skins. Deer was the most popular choice because it was lighter and more flexible than bison leather, but both could be scraped to make them thinner before curing into wearable materials.

A common item of clothing for native american men was the breechcloth, sometimes combined with deerskin trousers. A breechcloth is nothing more than 2 pieces of rectangular fabric that drape down from the waist at the front and back, to cover the more private areas of the body. Women would often wear dresses, almost always made from deer skin, and other decorative garments like hats and fashionable accessories were made from rarer animals, like beaver or mink skin.

How advanced were the Native Americans?

The first age of existence of humanity was the Stone Age, which includes everything before people seperated into different groups and discovered their first useable metal. The Copper Age saw the introduction of the first metal that was worth using, and the native Americans discovered how to melt and work this metal around 5,500 BCE. They quickly found out that it had limited use due to its strength, and found it easier to just use stone like they have been for so many generations. Flint is not only quicker and easier to sharpen and shape but can be found in abundance on the surface, unlike copper which had to be mined.

None of the native American tribes managed to make it to the Iron Age, and this new metal wasn’t introduced until the arrival of the first European settlers in the early 1500s. Because no one had anything stronger than copper it wasn’t necessary to use anything else, and even copper didn’t offer much of an advantage over flint because it did the same amount of damage when it came to arrows and spears.

There was no written language amongst any of the tribes and history-keeping came down to personal stories of great people being passed down to their children. They did have a rune-like system, similar to that used by the Vikings that represented various aspects of their beliefs or traditions, such as a symbol that represents the sun or war, but lacked the ability to create detailed messages or send written words.

The main reason they didn’t advance past the level they did is debated, but a common conclusion seems to be that they simply didn’t need to. All of their rivals had the same materials and weapons they did, and food production wasn’t a problem because of the way they chose to live. Money wasn’t necessary and all trade involved the exchange of goods so a physical coin wasn’t practical.

What happened to the Native Americans?

There are three main factors that caused the deaths of millions of Native Americans and turned their once prosperous and populated continent into little more than a handful of reservations. The first factor was a natural war within their own communities, which saw dozens of tribes over the years getting wiped out through genocide or being absorbed into more powerful tribes. This was almost always done by the tribes based on warrior cultures who lived nomadic lives and chose to fight instead of farm.

(They were friendly at first, but it didn’t take long for the selfishness and greed of the settlers to anger the natives)

The next major factor in their downfall was the arrival of the European settlers, but not in terms of a physical threat. During the early years of Europeans settling on the continent, the Natives were much more powerful and numerous and didn’t see them as a threat, but they had no idea of the invisible killers they brought with them. Outbreaks of disease caused more deaths amongst Native American tribes than all those killed by settlers combined.

When a population goes through an outbreak, natural immunities will be developed which gives them a higher chance of surviving it a second time, and eventually, people can become immune to certain things. With the complete physical separation of the Native Americans from Europe, none of the diseases experienced by Europeans could infect the Americans, and in turn, there wouldn’t be the chance to build up immunities against them. The settlers unknowingly brought with them several diseases, most notably typhoid fever and smallpox, both of which killed millions across the continent over the years.

The last factor in the fall of the Indians was colonialism, which happened across the entire Americas. Portugal took large areas of South America, while Spain took the rest and most of Central America, and France and Britain took North America. They did the same thing that all colonizing armies do, which is to take more and more land, and by the time anyone tries to stop them, they are too strong and just end up taking more.