Native American Climate Essay

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What was life like for the first humans living in North America and what role did the Earth’s climate play in shaping their experiences? Everyday you wake up in the morning and start making decisions. What you wear, what you eat, and what you do for the day are dependent on the weather. Climate is an important part of life, without it we would not have life at all. Native Americans experienced climate in ways both similar and different than we do. The Americas have very diverse climates. Each region has a unique terrain as well as climate. Native Americans who lived in each of these areas experienced a different climate, which effects agriculture, religion, and social culture in a society. Depending on which region Native Americans …show more content…

Here the Native tribes relied heavily on the Buffalo. The introduction of the horse from the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors was very important to these people for transportation and hunting purposes. The Plains had many different Native American tribes within it including the Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche and Blackfoot (Lowenstein 14). Since there was a high demand for buffalo, the Plains became an area for many conflicts. Even though these conflicts occurred often, the Native people all shared a sign language and also a firm belief in the supreme creator the “great spirit” (Lowenstein 15). The Artic, a vast frozen territory, is home to the Inuit or Eskimo people. They were reliant on the whale as well as the narwhal and walrus as their main food source. Traditionally, in the Canadian area they lived in igloos but in the Alaskan area they lived in semi-underground earth-houses. Here they had two different variations of the language Inuktitut spoken by the Native people in the Artic (Lowenstein …show more content…

Your environment shapes your experiences. Personally, living in a region where the climate has mild summers and harsh winters one can physically see the differences. Someone who may live in another region with a hot and dry climate experiences life in different ways than others do who have learned to adapt to living in a different environment. Religion is also an important aspect of life that was greatly influenced by climate experienced by Native Americans. Their practices vary from tribe to tribe because of the life experiences the Native Americans had due to the differences in climate. Some of the things that they practiced religiously were very different compared to tribes in other regions. Native Americans religious practices revolved around the things they saw and felt. These practices vary because the environment is different for tribes depending on their

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