1.2 Native American Societies Before European Contact

3 min read•june 18, 2024

Jillian Holbrook

Will Pulgarin

AP US History 🇺🇸

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Native peoples in the Southwest began constructing these highly defensible cliff dwellings in 1190 CE and continued expanding and refurbishing them until 1260 CE before abandoning them around 1300 CE. Andreas F. Borchert, Mesa Verde National Park Cliff Palace. Wikimedia. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany.

The marker of 1491 serves as a division between the Native American world and the world that came after European exploration, colonization, and invasion. In 1491, both North and South America were inhabited by flourishing and highly complex civilizations. In particular, North America was home to hundreds of tribes, cities, and societies. First Nation Peoples in North America are often grouped by similarities in their adaptations to the environments (desert vs arctic vs woodland societies).

Indigenous societies in North America before Europeans were vastly more complex than College Board requires for the exam, which focuses on the major tribes and societies within seven identified geographical areas and some basic components of their lifestyles. The intricacies missing from this curriculum are political, social, and cultural:

What were the languages spoken?
Where were the regional trade centers?
How were conflicts resolved among different societies, and what were those conflicts?

While some of these details are lost to history due to the events that unfold on this continent after contact with Europeans, there are many, many more histories that are still preserved by indigenous people and communities today, even if they are not covered in the APUSH curriculum.

Permanent Settlements

The spread of maize cultivation from present-day Mexico northward into the present-day American Southwest and beyond supported economic development, settlement, advanced irrigation, and social diversification among indigenous societies. Through farming corn, beans, maize, and squash, tribes like the Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo built permanent settlements into the ledges of Mesa Verde.

Along the Northwest coast and in California, tribes developed communities along the ocean to hunt whales and salmon, building wooden lodgings, totem poles, and canoes from surrounding forests. These tribes included the Tlingit, Chinook, Coos, and Chumash.

In the Northeast, the Mississippi River Valley, and along the Atlantic seaboard, some indigenous societies developed mixed agricultural and hunter-gatherer economies that favored permanent villages.

Nomadic Hunting and Gathering Tribes

In contrast to the fixed societies of the Southwest, Natives in the Great Plains and surrounding grasslands retained mobile, nomadic lifestyles. Based on the aridity, or dryness, of the conditions, the Great Plains was more suitable for hunting and gathering, with food sources consisting of rabbits, snakes, birds, nuts, and insects. The Shoshone lived in cone-shaped huts built with wooden poles, covered with dried grasses and brush that could be packed and transported as the tribe moved.

The major groups and regions of First Nations Peoples to know for AP US History are:

Geographical Area	Arctic and Subarctic	Northwest Coast and California	Plateau	Great Basin	Southwest	Northeast (Eastern Woodlands)	Southeast	Great Plains
Major Tribes	Eskimo and Cree	Tlingit, Chinook, Coos, & Chumash	Nez Perce	Shoshone	Apache, Navajo, and Pueblo	Iroquois, Mohawk	Cherokee, Seminole	Sioux, Cheyenne
Housing	Igloos	Wooden houses; often sheltering several related families	Bison-high teepees; rounded homes of wood	Cone-shaped huts built with wooden poles, covered with dried grasses and brush.	Built homes on the ledges of Mesa Verde	Mound builders for burial	Reed and bark huts.	Teepees
Food Supply	Hunting and fishing.	Whales and other sea mammals; salmon	Salmon (fish)	Rabbits, snakes, birds, nuts, and insects	Corn, beans, maize, and squash	Deer; corn, beans, squash, tobacco	Tobacco, squash, melons, cabbage, peas, and corn	Bison; wild edible plants and roots
Clothing & Tools	Waterproof clothing and blankets; Tools made from bone and teeth	Animal skin clothing; spoons, masks, canoes, and totem polls	Deerskin clothing and robes of rabbit skin; Bows and arrows, spears, knives	Women wore strips of bark, sandals, and fur; baskets	Not stated	Clothing not stated; used forests to make tools, homes, fuel, and food	Clothing not stated; bows and arrows, blow guns, and traps	Bison fur; dogs were used to carry supplies.
Present-Day	Canada and Greenland	Canada, California, Washington, and Oregon	Oregon, California, Idaho, and Canada	Nevada, California, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Oregon	Mexico, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado	Stretched from New England to the Gulf of Mexico	Texas to West Virginia, down to Florida	Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains, from Canada to Texas