The first peoples arrived in North America between 26,000-19,000 years ago during the last Ice Age when lower sea levels exposed a land bridge between Asia and North America. As the climate warmed, sea levels rose and the land bridge was flooded, separating the populations. Various groups such as the Inuit and Mississippian cultures developed across North America, building settlements and growing crops. However, diseases brought by Europeans devastated Native American populations from the 1500s onward, contributing to the decline of groups like the Mississippian civilization. Meanwhile, the Iroquois developed a matrilineal society with a democratic confederacy that may have influenced the US system of government.

1. Developments in the Americas
 By Jack Garrity

3.  Today the Bering Strait is 85 KM wide, 30-50 meters
deep.

5.  During Paleolithic times, you could walk from Asia to
North America.

6.  As the Ice Age ended, sea level rose and the ice melted,
blocking the land route.

8. Global Migrations
 The first peoples came to the Americas from Asia 26,000 to
19,000 years ago. years ago.

9. The People
 These populations expanded south, occupying both North
and South America, by 12,000 to 19,000 years ago.

10. Between 100,000 and 8,000 years ago, the last Ice
Age had low sea levels that made a land bridge in the Bering
Strait between Asia and North America

14. Most likely, they were hunters chasing the herds of
mammoths, bison and caribou that looked for grazing
land in North America.

15. About 3000 B.C. E, a group of Mesolithic people called
the Inuit had developed a continuous culture in the
distant North of the continent from Asia.

16. Mesolithic Age : the stone age period when Humans made more tools and
homes out of wood and stone. Humans domesticated the wolves.

17. The relatively late arrival of human beings in North and South America, would
put these cultures at a relative disadvantage time wise.

18. By the time the neo lithic Olmec civilization rose in Meso America 1200 BC, the
Shang Dynasty had developed a feudal empire, and the pyramids of Egypt were
more than a thousand years old.

19. About 3000 B.C. E, a group of Mesolithic people
called the Inuit moved into North America
from Asia.

20. They made a variety of tools, harpoons and spears from
antler or narwhal tusks.

21. They built boats kayaks made of bone and covered in seal skin.

27. The Inuit became skilled at hunting seal, caribou, and fish,
providing them with both food and clothing.

28. In winter, the Inuit built homes of stones and turf.

29. They built igloos as temporary shelter used while
traveling.

30. They not only domesticated wolves for hunting ,
but also transportation.

31. The Inuit tribes still inhabit parts of Alaska, Canada, and
Greenland today.

32. Inuit tribes still inhabit parts of Alaska, Canada, and
Greenland today.

35. The Mound Builders

36. The Mound Builders Mississippian Culture
Around 800- 1600 a semi Neolithic culture flourished on both sides of the
Mississippi River from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

37. The Mound Builders Mississippian Culture
A thousand years before, 5000 humans lived at Poverty Point the first city in
North America (1500 BCE) .

38. People here grew some crops but also continued
to gather food.

39. People lived onto of pyramids and earthworks..

40. Poverty Point was occupied for a thousand years. Its culture seems to have spread
throughout the region..

41. The Hopewell peoples, (Mound Builders) built earth mounds used as tombs or for
ceremonies.

43. Some were built in the shape of animal

47. Around 700, numerous cities were built across the region. called the
Mississippian Culture. They did not have a writing system that has
been discovered.

48. Mississippian culture
They grew corn, squash, and beans, together to give plants nutrients,
support, and shade.

55. Between A.D. 850 and A.D. 1150, Cahokia was the seat of government
for the Mississippian culture.

56. City planning and engineering on a large scale, buildings aligned
with Cardinal directions astronomy.

58. Mississippians built enormous earthen mounds,
some of which were as tall as 100 feet and covered an area the size of
12 football fields.

59. The center of the city has a burial mound over 30 meters high with a
base larger than Kufu’s Great Pyramid in Egypt.

60. Cahokia had a least 200 mounds with 10,000 to 15000 people with
another 20,000 – 30,000 in the surrounding areas.

61. There would not be a larger city in North America until New York in
the 1750’s.

62. Cahokia rule over another 50,000 people in other towns along the
Mississippi.

65. Government and Society
The Mississippian society had a rigid class structure, led by a chief
called the Great Sun.

66. Government and Society
Below the Great Sun was an upper class of priests and nobles and a lower class of
farmers, hunters, merchants, and artisans.

67. Government and Society
At the bottom were slaves, who usually were prisoners of war.

68. Gender Roles
In general, women farmed and men hunted.

69. Gender Roles
Huge communal corn fields (technology from the South West) surrounded the city.

70. Gender Roles
Imported copper supplied copper workshops that produced jewelry and weapons for
the elite classes.

71. Gender Roles
Imported copper supplied copper workshops that produced jewelry and weapons for
the elite classes.

72. Gender Roles
Women controlled the wealth and the Mississippians had a matrilineal society.

73. Gender Roles
Social standing came from the woman's side of the family. For example, when the
Great Sun died, the title passed not to his own son, but to a sister's son.

75. Decline of Mississippian Culture
Mississippian Civilization did not develop writing, so our knowledge comes from
archeology.

77. Decline of Mississipian Culture
People abandoned Cahokia around 1450, it had been in population decline since 1200.
All Mississippian cities by 1600.

78. Decline of Mississipian Culture
People abandoned Cahokia around 1450, and other large Mississippian cities by 1600.

79. Decline of Mississippian Culture
One theory posits that flooding or other weather extremes caused crop failures and the
collapse of the agricultural economy needed to sustain the populations of the large
cities.

80. Decline of Mississippian Culture
Others that war was more of a factor.

81. Decline of Mississippian Culture
More importantly, diseases introduced by the Europeans decimated the population.

82. Decline of Mississippian Culture
Europeans diseases wiped out perhaps 90 percent of some populations, especially those
in large cities.

83. Decline of Mississippian Culture
The Spanish Conquistador Hernando de Desoto (1500-1542) was a three- year reign of
terror on the people of North America (1539-1542).

84. Decline of Mississippian Culture
Desoto (1500-1542) was a liar, murderer thief, and rapist. Claiming himself a God, he
cut people’s hands and noises off and burned them alive and fed them to dogs…..he
enslaved thousands of people along his journey. And worked them to death.

85. Decline of Mississippian Culture
Beginning in the 1500’s , Patriarchic Europeans norms put women as second class
citizens, so British, French, and Spanish men would not negotiate with the traditional
leaders of North American civilizations .

86. The Algonquians and Iroquois Nations
Temperate Deciduous Forest

87. Temperate deciduous forests are dominated by trees that lose their leaves
each year. They have warm, moist summers and snowy winters. The region
was affected by the Mississippian Peoples.

88. While the Algonquins remained hunter gathers,
the Iroquois lived in villages made up of
of longhouses surrounded by a wooden fence
around 1000.

89. Iroquois settlements increased warfare, yet had a
matriarchically society.

93. They built longhouses on wooden poles,
surrounded by high walls. Each from 150 to 200
feet long, housing about a dozen families.

94. Iroquois men hunted . As warriors, they
protected the community.

95. Women owned the dwellings and did the
farming.

96. The most important crops the “three sisters”—corn,
beans, and squash.

97. Was their society matriarchal or a patriarchal?

98. Woman also took over making pottery and
controlled the wealth of the communities. They
often traded men between communities.

99. Their creation myth reflects the dominance of
women and importance of animals.

100. Each Iroquois group was made up of
clans.

101. Clan noun plural noun: clans
a group of close-knit and interrelated families

102. The women of each clan elected a well-respected
woman as the clan mother.

103. The clan mothers, chose the male members of the
Grand Council.

104. They made wampum used as money and , which they
read out at meetings. People cannot read it today.
Scholars debate over if it was a true written language or
not today.

106. The Grand Council had 50 representatives.

107. The Grand Council met regularly to settle differences among
league members.

108. In the 1500’s Deganawida and Hiawatha advocated the Great Peace,
creating a strong alliance for peace called the Iroquois League.

109. In all of your acts, self-interest shall be cast
away. Look and listen for the welfare of the whole
people, and have always in view . . . the unborn of
the future Nation.”

110. Hiawatha the Great (d 1595) spread Deganawidah's vision and
created the first democratic republic in North America.

111. Jigonhsasee (1570–1600. Mother of Nations,)convinced the other
nations to join the confederation , creating the first democratic republic
in North America.

112. This republic predates John Locke’s publications y 89 years, and
influenced Founding Fathers of the USA directly.

113. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin used the Iroquois
League as a model for a Plan of Union for the
British colonies, although some historians
disagree.

114. , Franklin cited the Iroquois as an example of successful political
union, stating
“It would be a very strange Thing, if six Nations of ignorant Savages,
should be capable of forming a Scheme for such an Union, and be
able to execute it in such a Manner, as that it has subsisted Ages, and
appears indissoluble; and yet that a like Union should be
impracticable for ten or a Dozen English Colonies, to whom it is more
necessary, and must be more advantageous; and who cannot be
supposed to want an equal Understanding of their Interests.”
Letter Benjamin Franklin 1751,

117. By 1639, Smallpox epidemic from Europe disrupts much of the
North Eastern Nations.

119. By 1639, Smallpox halves the population of the Huron Indians
in what is now known as southern Ontario, Canada, from
20,000 to 10,000, epidemics would continue throughout Native
Nations until very recently.

121. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, longtime
enemies of the Huron, take the opportunity to kill many of the
weakened Huron people and disperse survivors to lands farther
west in Canada and Michigan.

122. .French and British colonists reduced the populations further
with more diseases, war, and byzantine strategies.

123. .French and British colonists would not negotiate with
women, which reduced the political roles of women
greatly.

124. In 1754, Benjamin Franklin used the Iroquois
League as a model for a Plan of Union for the
British colonies.

125. American Revolution
During the American Revolution , the Iroquois divided the League with a
few tribes joining the Americans, most sided with the British.

126. Those that sided with the British fled to Canada, and those with the
USA moved West after the war.

127. Neolithic Peoples of the Southwest: The
Ancestral Pueblos formally Anasazi

128. Soon after the rise of the Mississippian Civilization, various cultures emerged
in what is now the southwestern United States. Living in a dry region, people
developed ways to collect, transport, and store water efficiently. In addition,
because of the climate, trees were small and scarce, so people had little wood
to use to build homes.

129. The Spanish called these people Pueblos (Spanish for villagers) but archeologists have
identified 4 distinct civilizations in the region.

130. From 750 to today, the Ancestral Pueblos made a
large farming society in Arizona, Colorado Nevada,
New Mexico. .

131. The Ancestral Pueblos are the classical civilization
for the region, yet they did not develop a writing
system.

132. The Ancestral Pueblos used canals and earthen
dams to turn parts of the desert into fertile
gardens

133. By the year 100, corn tech from Mexico allowed
populations to skyrocket, eventually about a
million people had Pueblo culture.

134. They used stone and adobe (sun-dried brick)
to build pueblos

135. Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico,
they built an elaborate center for their civilization

136. • Chaco Canyon flourished from 800-1150 with a
drought.

137. • Chaco Canyon has enough room for 10,000
people, yet did not have enough food for those
numbers.

138. Instead, Chaco Canyon was the center of yearly
religious festivals and parties for ancestral pueblos al
around the region.

139. Chaco Canyon was the center of yearly religious
festivals and parties.

141. Chaco Canyon’s layout provides an astronomical
calendar. Certain buildings light up during the
Summer and Winter Solstice.

142. Chaco Canyon’s layout provides an astronomical
calendar. Certain buildings light up during the
Summer and Winter Solstice.

143. Chaco Canyon (Pueblo Bonito) has eight
hundred rooms housing more than a thousand
people.

144. Chaco Canyon (Pueblo Bonito) has eight
hundred rooms housing more than a thousand
people.

145. At Chaco Canyon (Pueblo Bonito) sophisticated
reservoirs, water canals and irrigation systems
allowed food to be grown.

146. Geometric Pottery

154. The people of Mesa Verde built multi-
story homes into the sides of cliffs using
bricks made of sandstone.
The book writes that both groups
declined in the late 13th century as the
climate became drier.
Yet, early European exploiters certainly
came across these cultures.

155. Ancestral Pueblos built t Mesa Verde (today a
United States national park in Colorado).

156. 3 story apartment buildings next to each other like
ours. Some 4 stores. Pit houses could fit hundreds
of people for ceremonies and parties.

157. 3 story apartment buildings next to each other like
ours. Some 4 stores. Pit houses could fit hundreds
of people for ceremonies and parties.

158. The Ancestor Pueblos had extensive trade route.

159. The Pueblos built large road systems.

160. Daily life as an Ancestorial Pueblos.

161. Prolonged drought in the late thirteenth century put
pressure on the Pueblos and Mesa Verde.

164. European diseases, then brutal conquest by Spain
followed destroying Mesa Verde.

165. European diseases, then brutal conquest by Spain
followed destroying Mesa Verde.

166. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado(1510-1554).

167. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado(1510-1554)
Search for the 7 Cities of Gold! I can out do Cortez!!!!!

170. NEXT TIME Central and South
America