1) The civilizations of the Americas each had their own government, social customs, economic structures, and religions in the pre-Columbian period. The people of the Americas arrived by crossing over the land bridge that once connected Asia and North America at the Bering Straight. When these people came to central Mexico they became and agricultural society, cultivating foods such as maize, squash, beans, and chili peppers. The Mexican Indian’s knowledge of cultivation eventually spread to other Indians in areas that facilitated crop growing. Some places were not ideal for farming rather hunting and gathering. The Paiutes and Shoshones of the Great Basin (today’s Nevada and Utah) are two tribes that resorted to this more primitive style of food gathering because of poor soil and insufficient rainfall in the regions they occupied. Such hunter-gatherer societies were based on small bands of hunters and their families because supporting large numbers of people with limited access to food was too difficult. The size of the bands depended on the scarcity of the animals and edible plants in the surrounding area. The Indians in present day Canada and the Great plains could have larger tribes because there was an abundance of food. Sometimes Tribes combined both the hunter-gatherer method and farming methods to have a mixed agriculture. Some of these groups were found on the coasts like the Chinooks of present-day Washington and Oregon.


 Great Basin (Nevada and Utah), Canada and the Great Plains, present day Oregon and Washington,