Frank Brown

Long before cities, farms, or written languages appeared in North America, the continent was home to small communities of people who lived by hunting animals and gathering wild plants. These early inhabitants—often called hunter-gatherers—developed ways of life that were closely tied to the rhythms of the natural world. Their survival depended on understanding the landscape, … Read more

Domestication, diffusion, and the transformation of Indigenous life For most of human history, people survived by hunting animals and gathering wild plants. This was true in North America for thousands of years after the first humans arrived near the end of the last Ice Age. Early peoples followed migrating animals, gathered seasonal plants, and moved … Read more

Before Europeans crossed the Atlantic and began mapping the continent according to their own understanding, North America was already a richly known landscape. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples had explored its rivers, mountains, plains, forests, deserts, and coastlines. They knew where the salmon runs came each year, where buffalo herds migrated across the grasslands, … Read more

When people today think about religion, they often imagine churches, temples, or written sacred books. But for many Indigenous peoples of North America before 1500, religion was not something separate from everyday life. Instead, spiritual beliefs were deeply woven into everything people did—how they farmed, hunted, raised families, and understood the world around them. For … Read more

If you travel today through the dry desert lands of the American Southwest, you might think it would be a difficult place for people to live. Much of the land is rocky and dry. Rainfall is limited. Summers can be extremely hot, and winters can be cold. At first glance, it might seem like a … Read more

If you traveled along the Pacific coast of North America long before European explorers arrived, you would have encountered a very different landscape from most other parts of the continent. Instead of deserts or wide grasslands, this region was covered with dense forests, rushing rivers, and rugged coastlines. Giant cedar trees grew hundreds of feet … Read more

In the year 1491, just one year before the voyage of Christopher Columbus, North America was already home to a vast and diverse population of Indigenous peoples. For thousands of years, Native societies had developed across the continent, adapting to many different environments and creating cultures shaped by the land around them. From the forests … Read more