First Americans
Columbus gave the Arawak people this name because he mistakenly believed he had reached India.
What is indios?
This civilization developed a vast empire along western South America.
Who were the Inca?
The textbook divides North American indigenous cultures into these four broad geographic regions.
What are the Southwest, Southeast, Northwest, and Northeast?
This prehistoric group lived in the Mississippi River valley and is remembered for building huge earthen structures.
Who were the Mound Builders?
The buying and selling of goods and services; trade.
What is commerce?
According to the Beringian land bridge theory, the first people who migrated to America came from this continent.
What is Asia?
This civilization built agricultural societies, cities, and pyramids in Central America.
Who were the Maya?
This region had a dry, arid climate that made farming challenging.
What is the Southwest?
The Creek played this game that was similar to lacrosse.
What is stickball?
An object that reflects the life, beliefs, and society of a group of people.
What is a cultural artifact?
Some historians believe early people crossed the land bridge while following these.
What are herds of big game?
This powerful empire developed in what is now Mexico.
Who were the Aztec?
Native American farmers in the Southwest used this natural resource to help them grow crops.
What are rivers?
This Cherokee man created a written system for the Cherokee language.
Who was Sequoyah?
A religious leader who performs healing rites and rituals.
What is a shaman?
Besides crossing the land bridge, the textbook gives these two possible ways people may have migrated to America.
What are traveling by boat and walking across frozen water?
This disease brought by Europeans devastated indigenous populations.
What is smallpox?
Forests in the Northwest provided wood that indigenous people used for these three purposes.
What are shelters, boats, and religious objects?
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy’s government helped settle conflicts and regulate this activity involving trade.
What is commerce?
The religious belief in one god.
What is monotheism?
As indigenous groups spread throughout the Western Hemisphere, explain why they developed different ways of life.
Because they encountered different environments and resources, causing some groups to hunt while others farmed and formed highly structured societies?.
Give two reasons Spanish conquistadors were able to defeat powerful indigenous empires.
What are superior European weaponry and diseases that devastated indigenous populations?
Compare the Southwest and Northwest. Why did people living in these two regions develop different ways of life?
Because their environments and resources were very different--the Southwest was dry and arid with scarce water, while the Northwest had plentiful water and forests.
Name three ways Eastern Woodlands peoples used the natural resources around them.
Possible responses include using wood for building and fuel; hunting animals; fishing; gathering nuts and berries; and farming corn, beans, and squash.
A large area set apart from other places by characteristics such as climate and physical features.
What is a geographic region?