There was no single Indigenous culture in North America. The continent contained hundreds of nations, languages, political traditions and ways of life. Arctic peoples developed extraordinary knowledge of ice, sea, weather and animal migration. Along the Northwest Coast, forests, rivers and ocean resources supported large communities renowned for fishing, woodworking, seagoing canoes, monumental art and ceremony. In the Southwest, ancestral communities built sophisticated settlements of stone and adobe. Their surviving architecture reveals engineering skill, regional exchange and close observation of the natural world. Across the Plains, peoples farmed along rivers or hunted across wide territories. In the Eastern Woodlands, communities cultivated crops, traded and formed complex political relationships. Diversity did not mean isolation: shells, copper, minerals, crops, ideas and artistic forms moved through networks spanning immense distances.
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