9781422277485

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An Ancient Culture

amounts of crops, more than they could eat in a single year. They knew that they could lose everything to an early frost. By saving extra food in productive years, they could get safely through lean times. Trade Routes D espite strong regional cultures, NativeAmerican tribeswere far from isolated. Anetwork of trade routes stretched throughout theAmeri- cas, creating sophisticated connections among people. In North America, farming tribes in what is now North Dakota and Ontario, Canada, traded corn, squash, and beans for the meat and furs of animals brought in by hunters farthernorth. In theSonoranDesert—whichstretches across lands that are now the southwestern United States and northern Mexico—the Papago collected salt that they traded for pumpkin seeds with theMohave people, who lived farther north in what became California. Puebloans in northwestern New Mexico founded a trade system that

Ancient farming techniques