groups were the Araucanian people of
Chile and Argentina and the Guaraní of
Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina.
Around the Strait of Magellan in Chile,
the Ona and Yahgan hunted seals and
lived in sealskin-covered wigwams.Before the United States
Spain at its zenith claimed vast tracts of
what is now the United States, and in
those regions they encountered still more
Native American peoples. They can be
roughly categorized by culture area—a
geographic region in which a particular
climate and ecology encourages certain
kinds of cultural adaptations. The
Southwest culture area included parts of
what is now the U.S. Southwest—Arizona,
New Mexico, and southern Colorado—
and what is now northern Mexico. Plant
cultivation in this mostly arid region dates
from 3000 b.c.When the Spanish came,
the peoples they encountered included
the Akimel O’odham (Pima) of Arizona, afarming people who lived near riverbanks
in villages of domed huts, irrigated their
fields, and were governed by an elected
chief and a council. They were the descen-
dants of the Hohokam, who migrated into
Arizona from Mexico in about 300 b.c.
The Spanish also encountered the Pueblo,
descendants of a people called the Anasazi,
who flourished about a.d.700. Like their
ancestors, the Pueblo grew maize, beans,
and squash, excelled in pottery making and
weaving, and lived in multistoried, ter-
raced apartment buildings of adobe called
pueblos. Peoples in this group include the
Zuni and the Hopi.
Also living in the Southwest at the
time were nomadic hunting and gather-
ing people, such as the Navajo (Dineh)
and Apache, who had migrated there
from the north in the 1400s. Able war-
riors, they were accustomed to raiding
Pueblo towns for food. They hunted
bison, or buffalo, and lived in buffalo-hide
tipis and brush huts.
Not all Native peoples that would
come into contact with the Spanish were12 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY
Anasazi cliff dwellings at Canyon de
Chelly, in Arizona (Library of
Congress)
Southwest Pre-Columbian Civilizations