Historial Overview of Native American Indians

How far back does the history of Native people In America & Canada go back ?

There are several different theories on how they ended up on the continent .

One theory is that they migrated across the Bering straits after the last Ice age around 13000 years ago from norther western Russia and into modern day Alaska.

Another idea is that other groups further south in the Mexican peninsula sailed from   some of the Pacific islands or even other parts of Asia .

This is still highly debated amongst archaeologists and academics  but what is for sure is that there are many different groups of people across the Continental America and Canada .

In the North people eventually began to spread across the land exploring the great rivers and lakes in Canada and eventually ending up in Eastern Canada and America .

These groups eventually lived by fishing and hunting in and around the Rockies and central Canada .

Others stayed near the coastal regions from Alaska down to British Columbia and Washington state in the U.S .

These people became sea fearing  and hunting for whales ,as well as hunting local inland areas for large wide variety of game .in the far north what today is the Aric  circle  people hunted Walruses’

These are today known as Inuit and Eskimo people .

As other groups moved south and east some became woodland people who hunted woodland game and fished but also grew  a variety of crops .

Eventually some of these [people moved out to explore the vast plains to the south where huge herds of Buffalo roamed freely . They then began to hunt and  live of the Buffalo becoming nomadic  hunters following the buffalo herds as they roamed the plains and who eventually became some of the most well know Indian tribes on Turtle Island .

Some of the other groups lived in the mid-Eastern part of the U.S building large urban settlements not unlike the bronze age mounds of Europe .

Another group eventually ended up in the Florida living along the coast or in the everglades .

Further west we come across the Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, peoples  who lived a more settled way of living

By  farming as well  as keeping sheep  .

Then there are the people who became modern day Mexicans these are the original Mayans ,Aztecs  and  Inca  who built some of the largest cities in the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans.

It is believed amongst some that the Hopi or Zuni people were descended from the some of the Ancient Mayan people who fled environmental disasters forcing them to move eat into southwestern Arizona.

So today we have a very wide range of  indigenous   peoples  from the Artic to the jungles of South  America and beyond .

This introduction  to the history of native peoples  does not in any way take away the oral history of any individual tribal history or culture in their own creation stories .

For more  Information go to our history of Native American Tribes section which covers their history and way of life .