North America’s First Peoples

Early Settlement of North America

The Bering Strait Land Bridge Theory

One theory is that early hunters followed game across the Bering Strait when glaciers covered the ocean between Siberia and Alaska.

Part of Global Migration

• This “migration” occurred as a part of the global migration of our species during the last 200,000 years according to archaeological evidence.

• . It was only by about 50,000 years ago that people had evolved cultures capable of supporting them in more northern, colder climates, in northern Europe and Asia, for example.

• During the advance of the glaciers, modern humans crossed the Bering Land Strait, probably while hunting the large game animals which would have found the conditions there ideal. This crossing was probably a leisurely one, made by hundreds or even thousands of people.

• Two routes have been proposed for the passage of people into continental North America.

• Some suggest that a corridor opened, “. . . just north of modern-day Edmonton to south of modern-day Calgary and the first peoples may have travelled this route into the New World.”

• Others suggest that, “. . . the first peoples might have travelled down the coast of British Columbia, along shore lines now inundated by higher sea levels.”

• Still others suggest that there were always people here, or that people arrived by boat and/or raft across both oceans.

• We do know, however, that the First Nations people had arrived in interior North America before 20,000 years ago and had rapidly spread as far as South America in a short period of time.

• The evidence available indicates the Paleo-Indians were primarily hunters of big game. Archaeological sites in the southwest of the United States have produced clear evidence of Paleo-Indians hunting and scavenging mastodons and extinct species of bison.

• Changes in styles of projectile points are used as one method of determining the relative ages of sites. Early Paleo-Indian sites are easily recognized by the presence of distinctive forms of projectile points called "fluted points“.

Clovis and other Points

• Since most other materials left have decomposed, archaeologists often use these points to age campsites etc.,

• The glaciers which covered the northern half of the continent began to gradually melt, exposing new land for occupation.

• At the same time as this was occurring, world wide extinctions among the large mammals also occurred. People had to follow other sources of food and began to move south.

• This encourage further waves of immigrants and eventually people were living all over North and South America. These First Peoples developed unique cultures and lifestyles and became tribes. The Mi’Kmaq tribe is considered to have been in this area for at least 10,000 years.

Source:

• This summary was taken from the Discovering Ontario Archaeology - Speakers Kit. The original texts were written by Jeff Bursey, Hugh Daechsel, Andrew Hinshelwood and Carl Murphy for the Ontario Archaeology Society.