cultivating wild plants, such as beans and pump-
kins. Their early farming experiments began to reap
greater benefits when they started growing an early
variety of maize, or Indian corn, in about 5000 B.C.
After several thousand years of experimentation,
Mexican Indians created a hearty hybrid corn plant
that produced large enough crops to change signifi-
cantly their way of life. Coming to rely increasingly
on farmed foods, they gradually shifted away from
hunting and gathering and toward a settled agricul-
tural lifestyle. As farmers, the Indians had a more
reliable source of food; their populations could grow
larger, with less chance of famine. The cultivation
of maize thus made possible the great ancient civi-
lizations of Mesoamerica, including the Olmec (ca.
1500 B.C. to A.D. 300), the Maya (ca. A.D. 300 to
A.D. 1500), the Toltec (ca. A.D. 900 to A.D. 1200),
and the Aztec (ca. A.D. 1430 to A.D. 1517).
As the knowledge of farming spread northward,
it had an equally significant impact on Indians in what
is now the United States and Canada. In areas where
farming was difficult or where other food sources
were extremely plentiful (for instance, fish in the Pa-
cific Northwest and wild plant foods in present-day
California), people continued to live in small tribal
groups. In the Midwest and Southwest, however, ag-
riculture allowed Indians to develop urban areas as
large and sophisticated as those in Mexico.
In the Midwest emerged the Adena (ca.
1000 B.C. to A.D. 200), the Hopewell (ca. 200
B.C. to A.D. 400), and the Mississippian cultural
traditions (ca. A.D. 700 to A.D. 1550). The early
peoples of these cultures are now commonly
known as the Mound Builders, for the massive
burial mounds they constructed in their ceremo-
nial and trade centers. For instance, Cahokia, the
largest Mississippi urban center, had a population
of more than 20,000 and featured the enormous
Monk’s Mound, which was larger than the Great
Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt. The presence of such
massive structures puzzled non-Indian archae-
ologists of the nineteenth century. Regarding the
Indians of the Mississippi valley as too primitive
to have constructed the great mounds, they devel-
oped a succession of bizarre theories, attributing
the structures to Phoenicians, Egyptians, Aztec,
Danes, and Hindus.
In the Southwest, farming allowed for the de-
velopment of the Mogollon (ca. A.D. 200 to A.D.
1400), the Hohokam (ca. A.D. 400 to A.D. 1500),
and the Anasazi (200 B.C. to A.D. 1400) cultures.
These early peoples constructed large adobe houses
in villages whose burgeoning populations were sus-
tained by agricultural products and items obtained
through trade with other Indians—sometimes
groups living more than a thousand miles away.
The greatest trade network was established by the
Anasazi, who are also known as cliff dwellers, be-
cause of their large adobe structures they built in
the sides of mountains. At their height, the Ana-
sazi lived in large pueblo settlements along Chaco
Canyon, an area that served as their trade and ad-
ministrative center. More than 250 miles of road
connected outlying pueblos to the canyon, allowing
for an easy flow of food and trade goods between
Anasazi communities.
By the late 15th century, the great southwest-
ern civilizations had largely disappeared. Possibly
due to climactic changes, it seems to have become
impossible for the Indians of these cultures to farm
enough food to feed their growing settlements.
Over time, they abandoned their urban centers
to live in smaller tribal groups, like those of most
other Indians in North America. Despite their small
size, these groups over thousands of years had cre-
ated highly sophisticated methods of surviving and
even thriving in the wide variety of environments
the continent offered—from the forbidding deserts
of the Great Basin to the lush forests of the East-
ern Woodlands to the frozen tundra of the Arctic.
As Christopher Columbus set his sights westward,
however, the Indian peoples of North America
were about to face a new and possibly even greater
challenge—protecting the ways of life they had so
laboriously developed from an enemy often intent
on destroying them.Before 1492