Foragers and Others 61and gathering peoples not only in their own world but also in the wider world’s
political economy and the emerging global culture.
The Regions
1 North America (regional editor: Harvey A. Feit;
archaeological background: Aubrey Cannon)
Prior to colonization about two-thirds of North America was occupied by hunters
and gatherers, including most of what is now Canada and much of the US west of
the Mississippi. Some of the best-known recent foragers reported in the Encyclo-
pedia include the James Bay Cree (Feit) and Labrador Innu (Mailhot), the Sub-
arctic Dene in western Canada and Alaska (Asch and Smith), and the Inuit
(Eskimo) of Arctic Canada (Burch and Csonka) and Alaska (Worl). The foragers
of the Great Basin are represented by the Timbisha Shoshone of Nevada (Fowler).
The mounted hunters of the Plains and intermontane West represent a successful
secondary adaptation to big-game hunting by former farmers and foragers after
the arrival of the horse in the 17th century (Kehoe). Complex foraging societies,
with slavery and rank distinctions, occupied all of the west coast of North America
from California to the Alaskan panhandle (Daly).
2 South America (regional editor: Laura M. Rival;
archaeological background: Anna C. Roosevelt)
The southern cone of the South American continent was occupied by foragers
including, at the extreme south, the Ona, Yamana and Selknam of Tierra del
Fuego (Vidal) and the Toba of the western Chaco (Gordillo). Some of the hunters
of the southern cone became mounted hunters with the arrival of the horse, paral-
leling processes in North America. The numerous peoples of the Amazon and
Orinoco basins combined foraging with shifting horticulture, with some like the
Equadorean Huaorani (Rival) relying largely, and a few peoples like the Cuiva of
Venezuela (Arcand) almost entirely, on foraging. South American foragers like the
Sirionó (Balée) show evidence of having been more reliant on farming in the past.
The Paraguayan Aché (Hill and Hurtado) are well known in anthropological cir-
cles for the detailed behavioural ecological studies made about them.
3 North Eurasia (regional editors: Victor A. Shnirelman and
David G. Anderson, with Bruce Grant; archaeological
background: Victor A. Shnirelman)
In northern Siberia and the Russian Far East a number of hunter-gatherer groups
exist, combining foraging with small-scale reindeer herding. These groups vary