Essay On Native American Culture

The discovery that Native Americans' culture is not static, is a relatively new one. With the aid of modern archeology, we now know that the Natives were very complex and were ever changing. The evidence we have now is still basic, but we can still learn a lot from it. Because of the lack of evidence, a lot of controversy is attributed to Native Americans. Some people believe that Natives were perfect beings, living in harmony with nature and others believe that they were savages due to human sacrifices, wars, etc. Natives are also often compared to Europeans who like them, engaged in warfare as well. One large difference is that Europeans had more capability to cause destruction compared to the Natives, due to their technology and organization
We call these Indians, Archaic. Again, the Indians experienced population growth due to the diversified food sources. In areas where the climate was temperate, people were able to live in semi-permanent villages because of the abundance of food sources. In other areas, the Indians changed their environment to benefit them. By doing things like weeding certain plants, and annual fires to promote better grazing for prey, they helped make food abundant. Due to their strategies in harvesting their local resources, the Indians were now able to spend time developing their culture.
Indian horticulture started with the process of caring for wild plants then went on to developing hybrid varieties that were better. With these crops, people in areas such as Central Mexico, spent less time hunting, gathering, and fishing and enabled some people to take on different positions such as priests, merchants, rulers, etc. Horticulture was not always positive as things such as drought and insects could easily destroy crops and with more people living closer together, the spread of disease was