With the big mammals gone, Indians struggled to find alternative sources of food. Prolonged droughts or severe winters resulted in starvation. North of
Mexico, in what is now the United States, population likely remained stagnant: The garbage pits from archaeological sites show that diets lacked sufficient fats and proteins to promote female fertility.
But over time, these Indians—termed Archaic— adapted to conditions of scarcity. They migrated according to a seasonal schedule, often returning to the same campsites year after year. In the spring, when fish spawn, Archaic Indians moved to rivers and streams. In the summer, they hunted small animals. In the fall, they shifted to upland woods to gather protein-rich nuts, some of which they hid in caves for emergencies. In winter, they often migrated to forests in search of deer, bear, and caribou.
Eventually Archaic Indians adapted to particular habitats. In woodland areas east of the Mississippi River, they learned to hunt small animals, like rabbits and beaver, that had previously not been worth the bother; or they learned to find stealthy animals like bear and caribou or to sneak up on skittish ones like elk and deer. On the Great Plains, Indians thrived on bison, one of the few large mammals that had not become extinct.
Archaic peoples provided for special needs through a remarkably far-ranging trading system, passing goods from one band to another. Copper, used for tools and decorative objects, was acquired from the Lake Superior region; it was traded for chert, a crystalline stone that fractured into sharp, smooth surfaces, ideal for tool making.
Some Archaic peoples discovered rich habitats that could sustain them throughout the year. Indians living along the coast and rivers of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska found fish to be so plentiful that they could be scooped up in baskets. These people made nets and fishhooks. Eventually they built boats out of bark and animal skins. Those living along the New England coast discovered a seemingly inexhaustible supply of shellfish. But for even these people, survival was a full-time job: it takes 83,000 clams to provide as much fat as a single deer.
As tribes remained longer in one area, they began to regard it as their own. They built more substantial habitations, developed pottery to carry water and cook food, and buried the dead with distinctive rituals in special places, often marked with mounds.
One of the earliest sedentary communities was located at what is now Poverty Point, on the Mississippi River floodplains north of Delhi, Louisiana. It was founded 3,500 years ago. Poverty Point peoples filled countless grass baskets with earth and dumped them onto enormous mounds. One mound, shaped like an octagon, had six terraced levels on which were built some 400 to 600 houses. Another was more than 700 feet long and 70 feet high. Viewed from above, it resembled a hawk. In all, the mounds consisted of over a million cubic yards of dirt.
The enormity of their construction projects reveals much about Poverty Point peoples. They could not have diverted so much time and energy to construction if they were not proficient at acquiring food. Moreover, while most Archaic bands were egalitarian, with little differentiation in status, the social structure of Poverty Point was hierarchical. Leaders conceived the plans and directed the labor to build the earthworks.
After about a thousand years, Poverty Point was abandoned. No one knows why. Several hundred years later, scores of smaller mound communities, known as Adena, sprouted in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys. The inhabitants of these communities were also hunters and foragers who cultivated plants in their spare time. The Adena communities lasted several hundred years.
Around 2200 BP, another cluster of mound builders, known as Hopewell, flourished in Ohio and Illinois. Hopewell mounds were often shaped into squares, circles, and cones; some, viewed from above, resembled birds or serpents. Around AD 400, the Hopewell sites were abandoned.
The impermanence of these communities serves as a reminder that the transition from a nomadic existence of hunting and foraging to a settled life based on agriculture was slow and uneven. For the Indians living north of the Rio Grande, this was about to change. For people living in what is now Central America, it already had.
World History
