Topic 1 · The First Americans
Study guide notes, academic vocabulary, and review questions with answers. Textbook pages 17–20.
By 1492, how had Native Americans in each region of North America shaped their homes, their food, and their governments to fit where they lived?
That is the one question this lesson answers. Every note, every word, and every review question below comes back to it: from the snow houses of the Far North to the Grand Council of the Iroquois League, people built what the place around them would support.
The lesson video is posted in Google Classroom. This page is the written material that goes with it, in the same order as your workbook: notes first, then vocabulary, then the review questions. Answers are hidden until you click Show answer. Try each one in your workbook before you click.
Before Europeans arrived in the late 1400s, many different societies flourished across North America. Groups living in the same region often shared common features, because those features reflected the environment of that region. In the Far North the Inuit and Inupiat built winter homes of snow blocks, called igloos, to protect themselves from severe weather; in the Southwest the Hopi, Acoma and Zuni built houses of adobe brick and used irrigation to water beans, squash and melons; in the northeastern woodlands the Iroquois built longhouses out of a wooden frame and bark. Same continent, three regions, and in each one people built with what the place around them supplied.
The Great Basin lies between the Sierra Nevada and the Rocky Mountains, and its soil is too hard and rocky for farming. That is why peoples such as the Ute and the Shoshone had to travel in search of food, hunting small game and gathering pine nuts, juniper berries, roots and insects as each came into season. While travelling they crafted temporary shelters out of branches and reeds. Their winter villages, set near lakes or rivers where water was dependable, were the more permanent places they came back to.
Groups of Iroquois speakers had warred with one another continually until five Iroquois nations — the Onondaga, the Seneca, the Mohawk, the Oneida and the Cayuga — established an alliance called the Iroquois League, and the League succeeded in bringing about an extended era of peace among those five nations. The League was formed by an oral constitution, the Great Law of Peace, which organized its members into clans; the women of each clan chose a clan mother, and the clan mothers chose the men who served on the Grand Council. The Grand Council met regularly to settle disputes among the various peoples and clans, and no decision could be made there unless the vote was unanimous. That unanimous vote is why the Iroquois League is considered one model of democratic governance.
The year in the title is a European date. These pages describe North America as it already was: many different societies that had flourished across the continent before Europeans arrived in the late 1400s. 1492 marks when the outside world arrived, not when any of these ways of life began.
Tap any word for a picture and the full definition. The bold part is the definition to write in your box.
Watch these two: a federation is the largest thing in this lesson and a clan is one of the smallest. A federation is a government that links whole nations together — five of them, in the Iroquois League. A clan is a group of people who share a common ancestor, sitting inside a single nation. And the two ends meet: it is the clan mothers, at the small end, who choose the men who sit on the Grand Council at the large end.
Write the answer for each one in your workbook in your own words first. Then tap Show answer to see if you got it right.
A government that links and unites different groups.
The Hiawatha Belt — the wampum record of the Iroquois League, one figure for each of its five nations
A group of people who have a common ancestor.
A long, rectangular frame structure covered in bark.
A recreated Seneca longhouse at Ganondagan State Historic Site, New York
A cone-shaped skin tent.
A hide tepee on the southern Plains, photographed about 1870
A small, skin-covered boat.
Two hunters in kayaks at Noatak, Alaska, 1927
An alliance of five Iroquois nations, formed by the Great Law of Peace to stop those nations warring with one another. The five were the Onondaga, Seneca, Mohawk, Oneida and Cayuga, and the Great Law of Peace was an oral constitution. It worked: the League brought about an extended era of peace among them.
Iroquois chiefs with their wampum belts, Brantford, Ontario, 1871
Because the clan mothers had watched all the boys of the clan grow up, knowing it would be their duty to choose the council members. Nobody else had spent that long observing the men they were choosing from. The Great Law of Peace organized the League into clans, and the women of each clan chose the clan mother.
The soil is too hard and rocky to farm, so people travelled all year to find food, and wintered near lakes and rivers where water was dependable. They hunted small game and gathered pine nuts, juniper berries, roots and insects as each came into season. While travelling they crafted temporary shelters out of branches and reeds.
A Paiute brush shelter, southern Utah, 1874
Look at what those three answers have in common. Hard, rocky soil taught the Ute and the Shoshone to keep moving. A forest supplied the poles and the bark that let several Iroquois families live under one roof. And five nations that had warred with one another for years decided a Grand Council was worth more than the fighting. If someone asked you right now how Native Americans across North America lived in 1492, you should be able to answer in one sentence: in whichever part of the continent they lived, people developed ways of living that were well suited to their environments. If you can say what a longhouse, a tepee and a kayak were made of, why the Great Basin peoples travelled, and what the Iroquois League was and what it was for, you have Lesson 4.
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Textbook page images are reproduced from Early Americans pages 17–20 for classroom use only.