of the Southwest culture area. In
California, Native Americans at the time
of the Spanish conquest subsisted on
hunting, gathering, and fishing. In the
Southeast, a semitropical region extending
from central Texas to Florida, a number of
peoples lived in long-established villages
and farmed such crops as maize, beans,
and squash. Among these peoples were
the Natchez of the lower Mississippi River
valley, a rigidly stratified society of sun
worshippers who built temple mounds.
Other agricultural peoples of the
Southeast who were based in permanent
villages were the so-called Five Civilized
Tribes: the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chicka-
saw, Creek, and Seminole.Indigenous Peoples
of the CaribbeanThe Caribbean islands or West Indies—
the first New World location reached by
explorers from Spain—were populated
by two competing peoples: the Arawak or
Taino, and the Carib. In this tropical cul-
ture area, people lived by farming, fish-
ing, and hunting. Arawak on the large
Caribbean islands had elaborate societies
headed by hereditary chiefs who ruled
over other classes. The Arawak were
skilled at pottery making, weaving, and
working with wood and metal—including
gold, which they used for ornaments.
Also inhabiting the Caribbean islands
were the Carib, who gave the region its
name. The Carib were known for their
skill in warfare and able canoeing.The Diversity of
Indigenous AmericaAlthough the numerous and distinct peo-
ples that the early Spanish explorers
encountered in the New World did share
some common cultural attributes, that is
not to suggest that the hundreds of dis-
tinct peoples that populated the Americas
shared a single homogenous identity. On
the contrary, these peoples—who lived in
climates ranging from the high Andes of
South America and the desert Southwest
of North America to the tropical islands of
the Caribbean—varied greatly in their
fundamental cultural traits, with vast dif-
ferences in their diets, languages, living
arrangements, and religious beliefs; theireconomic, political, military, and social
structures; and their clothing styles, arts,
crafts, and musical styles. Some lived in
vast empires and others in small nomadic
groups. Some were hunters and gatherers
and others were farmers. Nonetheless,
upon contact with the Spanish, many of
these varied Native American cultures
contributed distinctive elements to the
wide-ranging mixture that would become
what would become Hispanic America.THE AFRICAN HERITAGE
In a sense, all Americans, like all other
human beings, are of African descent. It
was in Africa that hominids, or humanlike
primates, first emerged at least 5 million
years ago. Many scientists now believe
that modern humans first evolved in
Africa about 100,000 to 200,000 years
ago, spreading from there to other conti-
nents, where they became the ancestors of
all the world’s peoples. But the links
between Africans and Hispanic Americans
are more recent than that. The people of
Spain are themselves a blend of North
African and other ethnic groups. Black
Africans, those from sub-Saharan Africa,
were transported across the Atlantic as
slaves to Spain’s American colonies, where
they contributed to the cultural and
genetic heritage of Hispanic America.African Empires
Africa contains more than 3,000 distinct
ethnic groups, speaking more than 1,000
languages. It is impossible here to do jus-
tice to such a long and complex history.
Instead, this section briefly recounts the
history of sub-Saharan Africa prior to the
start of the transatlantic slave trade, since
that is the region from which most of the
New World’s African people came.
South of the Sahara Desert, in the
semiarid savannah region of what are
now southeastern Mauritania, eastern
Senegal, and southwest Mali, the king-
dom of Ghana was the dominant power
from the 5th to 12th centuries a.d.It was
powerful for its control of trans-Saharan
trade, in which gold and slaves from the
south were exchanged for salt and cloth
from the north. Ghana disintegrated early
in the 13th century, under pressure from14 ATLAS OF HISPANIC-AMERICAN HISTORY