Many years before Christopher Columbus’ ship landed in the Bahamas, another group of people discovered America. These people are who we refer to as Native Americans.

Thousands of years before Columbus, the nomadic ancestors of the Native Americans hiked over what was believed to be a “land bridge” from Asia to North America. They landed in what is now Alaska.

By the time Columbus would arrive, it was believed that more than 50 million of these nomadic people already inhabited North America. 10 million of those were believed to be living in what is now the United States.

As time went by, various groups began as different people spread out across the land. In order to keep track of these groups, anthropologists and geographers have divided them based on their culture.

The first culture group is called The Arctic. These were people from present-day Alaska and Canada. The people of this group were called the Inuit and Aleut.

They lived in a cold, treeless area. Both groups spoke, and still do, dialects from the Eskimo-Aleut language. They hunted seals, polar bears, and fish.

The next group is referred to as The Subarctic. These were people from inland Alaska and Canada. Scholars have divided this group into two language groups. The first is the Athabaskan speakers at its western end and the Algonquian speakers at its eastern end.

This area was made up of piney forests and waterlogged tundra. The people in this group did not form large settlements, instead, they stuck with small family groups. They also hunted caribou.

The next culture group is The Northeast. These people lived in what is now Canada’s Atlantic coast to North Carolina and inland all the way to the Mississippi River. The people in this group were either Iroquoian speakers or Algonquian speakers.

The Iroquoian’s lived inland on rivers and lakes in villages. The Algonquians lived in small farming and fishing villages along the ocean.

The Southeast group lived north of the Gulf of Mexico and south of the Northeast group. Some of the most familiar Native American tribes are from this culture group. For example, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole.

Many of the people in this group were great at farming. They specialized in growing crops such as beans, tobacco, sunflower, and squash.

The Plains culture area spreads from the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from present-day Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. During the 18th century when the Europeans came groups like the Crow, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Comanche, and Arapaho came about.

These Indians are known for their elaborate feather bonnets, cone-shaped teepees, and bison-skinned tents. They also herded buffalo.

The Southwest culture group was formed mostly in desert regions. These were places in present-day Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Texas, and Mexico. Some of these Native American groups were the Hopi, Zuni, Yaqui, Yuma, Apache, and Navajo.

The Hopi, Zuni, Yaqui, and Yuma lived in pueblos and grew crops like corn, beans, and squash. The Navajo and Apache lived in houses made of mud and bark. They hunted, gathered, and raided neighbor’s crops.

The Great Basin culture area was formed by the Rocky Mountains to the east, the Sierra Nevada’s to the west, the Columbia Plateau to the north, and the Colorado Plateau to the south. Its people spoke either the Shoshonean language or the Uto-Aztecan language.

The people of this group were often on the move and lived in wikiups. They hunted things like snakes and lizards and gathered roots, seeds, and nuts.

The California group lived in what is known as present-day California. It was a very diverse cultural area with about 100 different tribes. Of these almost 200 different languages were spoken.

Many of these tribes lived similarly. They lived in small family units and were usually hunters and gatherers. They also lived fairly peacefully among each other and had a well-established trade system.

The Northwest coast culture group resided along the Pacific coast from British Colombia to the top of California. The most prominent groups in this region were the Athapaskan Haida and Tlingit; the Penutian Chinook, Tsimshian, and Coos; the Wakashan Kwakiutl and Nuu-chah-nulth; and the Salishan Coast Salish.

The climate in this area is mild and there were many natural resources available. The oceans and rivers provided much of whatever these groups needed.