Columbus’ Voyage and Early American Civilizations
Columbus’s Voyage to America
On August 3, 1492, Italian adventurer Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain to find a new route from Europe to Asia, hoping to open a shorter trade route between the two continents. His intention was to load his three small ships with silks, spices, and gold in Asia and return to Europe a wealthy man.
- Sailed south to the Canary Islands.
- Turned west across the unknown waters of the mid-Atlantic Ocean.
On October 12, he stepped ashore on the beach of a low, sandy island, which he named San Salvador (Holy Savior). He believed he had landed in the Indies, a group of islands close to the mainland of India. He called the brown-skinned people los Indios (Indians).
These islands were off the shore of a new continent. Europeans named the new continent America, but for many years, they continued to call its inhabitants Indians. More recently, these first Americans have been described as “Native Americans” or “Amerindians.”
Diverse Native American Groups
Many different groups in the USA and Canada were scattered across the grasslands and forests in separate groups or “tribes.” They followed very different ways of life and spoke over 300 separate languages.
Europeans called America “the New World,” but it wasn’t new to the Americans. Their ancestors had been living there for perhaps 50,000 years.
While nobody is completely sure, scientists believe that the distant ancestors of the Amerindians came to America from Asia during the Earth’s last ice age.
A bridge of ice joined Asia to America across what is now the Bering Strait. Hunters from Siberia crossed this bridge into Alaska. From Alaska, the hunters moved south and east across America, following herds of caribou and buffalo as the animals went from one feeding ground to the next. Maybe 12,000 years ago, descendants of these first Americans were crossing the Isthmus of Panama into South America. 5,000 years later, their campfires were burning on the frozen southern tip of the continent: Tierra del Fuego – the Land of Fire. Early Amerindians lived as wandering hunters and gatherers of food. People living in highland areas of what is now Mexico found wild grass with tiny seeds that were good to eat. They cultivated the wild grass with great care to make maize. By 5000 BC, they also cultivated beans, squash, and peppers.
The Pueblo People
The Pueblo people were among the best-organized of the Amerindian farming peoples. They lived in groups of villages or towns built for safety on the sides and tops of cliffs. Their houses were terraced buildings made of adobe (mud and straw) bricks, dried in the sun, sometimes containing as many as 800 rooms. They made clothing and blankets from cotton, which grew wild in the surrounding deserts, and wore boot-shaped leather moccasins to protect their legs against the sharp rocks and cactus plants of the desert. Their diet consisted of crops of maize and beans. Irrigation made them successful farmers, building networks of canals across the deserts to bring water to their fields, irrigating as much as 250,000 acres of farmland.
The Apache
The Apache wandered the deserts and mountains in small bands, hunting deer and gathering wild plants, nuts, and roots. They also obtained food by raiding their Pueblo neighbors and stealing it. They were fierce and warlike and were much feared by the Pueblo.
The Iroquois
The Iroquois lived in the thick woods of northeastern North America. They lived in permanent villages in long, wooden huts with barrel-shaped roofs. These huts were made from a framework of saplings covered by sheets of elm bark and housed up to 20 families. They built wooden stockades to protect themselves from enemies. They were skilled farmers, growing beans, squash, and 12 different varieties of maize. They were also hunters and fishermen. They used birch bark canoes to travel swiftly along the rivers and lakes of their forest homeland.