At the time Columbus discovered America, millions of Indians had been living in the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years. During the latter part of the Ice Age, a land bridge existed between Asia and Alaska across what is now the Bering Strait, and all evidence indicates that the Native American tribes migrated from Mongolia, through Alaska and Canada and eventually all the way down to South America, with some settling in favorable locations in the north and others moving on. Over time, they developed into distinct, separate Indian cultures. Although the exact time of that migration is still being studied, evidence gathered so far indicates that it began at least 12,000 years ago.
Thus North and South American Indians were extremely diverse, with varied physical traits, linguistic groupings, ethnic characteristics, customs, cultures, and so on. Indeed, the Indians in North America were probably far more diverse than the people of the nations of northwestern Europe in 1500. In Central America the Aztecs had a large powerful empire, while along the eastern coast of North America Indians lived in smaller tribes and subsisted by both agriculture and by hunting and gathering. Farther south the Mayas and Incas had advanced civilizations that had progressed far in mathematics, astronomy, and engineering. In the western part of North America nomadic tribes roamed over the Great Plains in search of buffalo and other game and often came into conflict with other tribes over the use of their hunting grounds.
When game became more scarce, perhaps due to over-hunting or from other causes, many American Indian groups turned to agriculture as a means of subsistence. In so doing American Indians became perhaps the best farmers in history, developing new crops and refining farming methods that they later shared with the colonists from Europe. Dozens of foodstuffs consumed in the world today, including corn, potatoes, various beans, squash, and so on, were developed by Native American farmers. When the European colonists first arrived, their survival often depended on their adoption of Indian hunting and farming practices.
Indians also understood the use of natural medicines and drugs, and many of their healing techniques are still used by medical people today. Indian foods, especially corn and the potato, transformed European dietary habits, and in fact the impact of the potato on Ireland's population was so great that it eventually led to the great wave of Irish immigration to America during the potato famine of the 1800s.
A thorough investigation of Native American cultures, including those of North and Central America, is an apt subject for lengthy study; the literature on pre-Columbian America is rich indeed. What is important to know is that Indian and European cultures affected each other profoundly, a phenomenon that has been called the Colombian Exchange—the exchange of habits, practices, living techniques, and resources between the Indians and the Europeans.
The Native American cultures in the Western Hemisphere found their societies disrupted or even destroyed by the impact of the Europeans, some of which was deliberate, and some of which was a result of the transmission of diseases to which the American Indians were not immune. The introduction of firearms, alcohol, and other European artifacts also had deep and unpredictable effects. But the impact of the Indians on European culture was also deeply significant.2
For reasons that are not fully understood, some groups of Indians vanished without being affected by the Europeans. One such group were the Anasazi of the southwestern United States. They built spectacular dwellings in the cliffs in New Mexico; some of their settlements carved into the rocks contained hundreds of rooms. But somewhere around the year 1300 they left their rock palaces, never to return, for reasons yet unknown.
World History
