NATIVE AMERICAN TRIBES

SOURCES

Arctic and Subarctic

Between 15,000 years ago, people began crossing the Bering Strait from Asia into what is now Alaska. Over time, some of those people moved into the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. The descendants of those people now have individual tribal names but refer to themselves together as First Nations.

Tribe: Inuit

Southeast

SOURCES

People have been living in the southeastern region of North America for at least 18,000 years. At first these groups were on the move, hunting wild game and gathering food. Then, people started planting corn near the Mississippi River and settled there permanently. Their peaceful culture thrived for hundreds of years in this plentiful area.

Tribes: Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw

Northeast

SOURCES

People began settling in the Northeast region of North America thousands of years ago, after their ancestors traveled east from Alaska, around the Great Lakes, and eventually ended up along the Atlantic coast. They built their homes near lakes, rivers, and navigated these waterways in canoes made of hollowed-out logs or bark from birch trees.

Tribes: Iroquois, Wappani, Shawnee

Great Plains

SOURCES

Stretching from Canada to Texas, the Great Plains region was too dry to support large groups of people. But over time the climate became warmer and rainier, allowing grasses to grow. That brought herds of bison; people moved to this area to hunt for food, shelter, tools, and clothing.

Tribes: Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche and Crow

Southwest

SOURCES

Thousands of years ago, ancient people first settled in the deep canyons of present-day New Mexico. Almost all of the Southwestern tribes, which later spread out into present-day Arizona, Texas, and northern Mexico, can trace their ancestry back to these civilizations. They were hunters who often raided the other tribes in the area for food.

Tribes: Navajo, Apache, Pueblo

Great Basin

SOURCES

People have been living near the caves of what’s now Oregon for at least 12,500 years. Their descendants spread throughout the mountains, forests, and plains in what’s now the western United States and southwest Canada, also known as the Great Basin and Plateau region. This is a dry area and was one of the last to have contact with Europeans.

Tribes: Washo, Ute, Shoshone.

Northwest Coast

SOURCES

About 10,000 years ago, people began living on North America’s Northwest Coast, a narrow area along the Pacific Ocean that stretches across parts of modern-day Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Yukon and British Columbia in Canada. By 3,000 B.C., people had set up permanent villages along the rivers, peninsulas, and islands of this region.

Tribes: Wappani, Shawnee

California

SOURCES

People have lived in what’s now California for almost 20,000 years. Because the landscape has so many different habitats—the rainy forests; the Sierra Nevada Mountains; the Central Valley; the Mojave Desert; and the Pacific Ocean coastline—the ancient people who settled here split into hundreds of smaller groups,

Tribes: Mohave, Miwok

SOURCES

Plateau

Are indigenous peoples of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada, and the non-coastal regions of the United States Pacific Northwest states. They have ahigh reliance on roots, long-term habitation of winter villages at fixed locations along rivers or lakes. There was a lack of social stratification and a lack of tribal organization.

Tribes: Nez Perce, Salish, Tlingit.