How Did The Paleo-Indians Come To North America?

Indians arrived in America some 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. Archeological findings and Radiocarbon testing suggested that the prehistoric people who populated the Americas were hunters following the herds of wooly mammoths. They walked from Siberia across a land bridge into Alaska. They headed south toward warmer climates, slaughtering the mammoths as they went. As the glaciers melted, the oceans rose and covered this land bridge, creating the present-day Bering Strait and separating Alaska from Russia. By the time Christopher Columbus arrived, they were millions of what might be called First Americans or Amerindians occupying the two continents of Americas. The first noted documentation of the Beringia theory of the peopling of North America was by Jose de

The state of California was nearly barren of human life in the 1830s and early 1840s, and even scarcer was the population of white Americans. During this time the land was populated by wild horses and wild cattle whom were controlled by the Native Americans of the region. In the year of 1841, John Bidwell and his party of thirty were one of the first white people to travel as far west as California, except for Bonneville’s party of 1833. The first settlement Bidwell’s party reached was the ranch of Dr. Marsh in the eastern foothills of the Coast Range Mountains. That year had been one of the driest California had ever experienced. “The country was brown and parched” (Bidwell 1), crops all over the state had failed and the cattle grazed in the

It has been thought for many years that the Americas were a vastly unpopulated land until Columbus came. However new evidence disputes this previously thought notion. Archeologist, who have been studying the remains of Native American culture, have found evidence suggesting that the Indians were in the Americas for much longer and in greater numbers than what was believed. This new evidence shows us the impact the Europeans had on the New World and gives us insight into what the Americas were like before the Europeans and what they may have been had the Europeans never settled here.

According to the standard accepted theory, the Clovis people were the first inhabitants of the Americas. The Clovis people crossed the Beringia land bridge during the period of the last ice age, from there they spread across the Americas through an ice free-corridor. However, recent finding have suggested that the first people did not walk to America but came by boat. This paper will examine evidence found in Haida Gwaii and other sites along North and South America that supports a different view of human migration to the Americas, the coastal migration theory.

We have all heard the story of how America came to be, and how Native Americans were pushed out because of this. In regards to the west coast, the history is a bit different. There is evidence of natives living in California since from at least 17,000 BCE. Prior to contact with Europeans, the California region contained the highest native American population north of what is now Mexico. Because of the temperate climate and easy access to food sources, approximately one-third of all Native Americans in the United States were living in California.

How did contact between the European arrivals and the native peoples of the Americas affect both groups?

In the article “Getting to California” it states that, “By 1849, people from all over the world- Asia, Australia, Europe, Hawaii, North America, and South Africa- were scrambling to California. Many came not only to seek their fortunes, but also to find a better way of life. Of the almost 90,000 people who hastened to the gold fields in 1849, about 23,000 were U.S. citizens.” (saffer,14) It is amazing how all of these people traveled to California, they were so motivated.

Before the missions came to exist the land which is today known as California has already been inhabited by Indigenous people for thousands of years. The land was their treasure and they celebrated in their everyday life while also using its resources. Once Europeans came in the picture the establishment of the missions began. One of these missions was the San Gabriel Arcángel mission. As they were introduced the indigenous people were brought to them with the goal being to Christianize and civilize them.

Another important aspect to the success of the trip to California was the help from the Native Americans. When Smith and his men were going through great basin they were fighting starvation. The resources that kept them alive was given to them by the Paiute Indians. These resources included much needed food. Also, when Smith’s party was running out of supplies in

For more than 10,000 years the Native American people of the Columbia River region, specifically the Cayuse, Walla Walla and Umatilla Indian tribes, migrated in a yearly cyclical pattern. The tribes would travel from the lowlands of the Columbia River to the highlands in the Blue Mountains in search of safety, shelter, food, opportunities for trade and resources of energy. The most abundant sources of food included elk, deer, salmon, berries and roots. Each of the aforementioned food sources were spread throughout different locales and thus required a continued pattern of movement, place to place from season to season, to collect each target food. Accumulated meats, berries and roots would be stored for the year to come, and to last through

There were a large amount of Native Americans before the arrival of Europeans. Before reading 1491 by Charles C. Mann, I believed that there were only a small amount of people in the Americas. According to Henry F. Dobyns, the “Western Hemisphere held 90 to 112 million people”, which was more than the amount of people living in Europe.

As the years went on, more and more Americans began moving to California. Sutter was enthused and saw them as opportunities to enhance his kingdom. Sutter had no idea that this was just a glimpse of the migration that was soon to come. Encouraged by the skill level of the new Americans, Sutter decided to become a mill and lumberman. Now, he just had to find the right location and a talented craftsman.

Early settlements in North America - prior to Columbus [generalization of what they were like]

People were migrating to California for work because they did not have enough money for both food or rent. The poor people think the rich has it better than they do and they think they are at the bottom while everyone else is at the top. They are not able to buy clothes. “You gypsy workers can live on a buck a day”(Hunter ). The migrating workers swarmed to California for work. If the kids got hungry the government would hear about it they had very little to eat (Hunter).

These nomads continued moving all the way to South America. By the time Europeans arrived in America, there were already at least forty to fifty million indigenous people inhabiting the land (Faber 4-5). Other explorers, from Norway, Greenland, and Iceland reached America centuries before Columbus (Faber ix). Although these people attempted to live in this new land, they didn’t stay long, and failed to create a lasting historical impact (Faber 20-26).