NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS

WHERE DID THEY LIVE?

Tribes of Native Americans spread across the land, depending on nature for food and shelter. Where they lived shaped the way they lived, and each group began to develop different customs and ways of doing things. On the rugged Northwest Coast, the “Salmon and Cedar People” built with wood and ate mainly fish, like their neighbors on the high Plateau. The Inuit (Eskimos) hunted polar bears across the treeless tundra and whales in freezing Arctic waters. Caribou provided nearly everything Subarctic families needed, while buffalo sustained the Plains Indians. In California, the mild climate meant that tribes there had plenty to eat, unlike the parched Great Basin where food was scarce. In the Northeast and Great Lakes, people traveled the rivers and cleared forest plots to grow corn and tobacco. Most Southwest and Southeast tribes became farmers and lived in villages.