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The very first Americans were big-game hunters.
They came from Asia and carried spears of bone and stone. They weren’t looking for a new place to live. They were following the giant buffalo and woolly mammoths, which they hunted.
They found beavers as big as bears in North America. But no jets roared through the skies, and no car horns honked. There were no towns or cities. No roads or highways. No shopping malls either. A squirrel could go thousands of miles across the continent jumping from tree to tree without ever touching the ground.
Over thousands of years, the first Americans found many ways to live on the land. Some made their homes on the coasts. Others lived in forests or on the plains. Some built cliff houses high above deserts. Wherever they lived, they used the land’s natural resources wisely.
By 1492, most first Americans were hunters or farmers. In the Arctic, they hunted whales, seals, and caribou. In other places, they fished and gathered wild plants. They also hunted buffalo, deer and other creatures. They didn’t kill animals for fun. They killed for food, shelter, and clothing.
Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas in 1492. Let’s see what life was like in North America just before he landed. We’ll have to step back in time more than 500 years to meet the first Americans. Are you ready to time-travel? Let’s go!
