•According to a report published on the site, the pre-historic period of Native Americans dates back decades, and research suggests that prehistoric humans have been in the Americas for much longer than most scholars believe. On Indigenous Peoples Day, seven regions in the United States stand out for their stories of Native Americans.
1. Chaco Canyon (New Mexico)
This settlement, which was founded many years ago, may have been named after the Spanish word for “Native” in the region, and was the center of the Old Pueblo people between approximately A.D. 850 and 1250. At its heart is Pueblo Bonito (“Beautiful Village”), a four-story stone structure with more than 600 rooms and 35 underground ceremonial chambers called kivas.
Experts estimate that the builders of these complex structures transported more than 200,000 wooden logs from distant mountains; the logs were used to reinforce buildings made of blocks of sandstone. The town was once at the center of trade routes stretching more than 400 miles (640 kilometers), and excavations of imported Mexican parrots and cacao confirm that it traded with distant regions.
2. Cahokia (Illinois)
Cahokia was the largest Native American settlement in Mexico and hosted 40,000 people in A.D. 1100 — comparable in size to major cities in medieval Europe. Strobel, a historian and Native American historian at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Live Science: “It’s an incredibly important site.”
5. Walnut Canyon (Arizona)
Walnut Canyon was the largest Native American settlement site around Estero Bay. For long periods, it was made up of two small islands covered in mangroves, but over the centuries, feasts on shellfish built up the area into two mounds covered in vegetation. In some places, the mounds rise more than 30 feet (9 meters) above the water; they are now so large that they are divided in two only when the water is high.
Before Europeans arrived in the 16th century, this shelled island was called Calos and was transformed by its inhabitants into a vibrant maritime city. Mound Key itself is estimated to be made up of several million shells, most of them oysters.
6. Sitka (Alaska)
Sitka National Historical Park preserves the battlefield of the 1804 Battle of Sitka, the last major armed conflict between Europeans and the people of Alaska. At the time, Russia claimed Alaska (it sold it to the United States in 1867). The conflict began in 1802 when Russian traders built a fort in Sitka, entering Tlingit tribal lands, but the Tlingit destroyed the enemy fort and drove the Russians out. They rebuilt it to withstand the expected Russian attack, but in 1804, when it was bombed by Russian ships, they were forced to abandon it. The dispute was not resolved until the United States purchased Alaska.
This region preserves cliff dwellings built by the Kuzay Sinagua people between AD 1125 and 1250. People can reach the site by walking along a deep sandstone and sandrock canyon about 10 miles southwest of Flagstaff. The cliff dwellings were built in natural caves within the sandstone; this provided them with insulation from cold and heat, and their high positions on the canyon floor served as a defense.
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