•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 experts believe. On Indigenous Peoples Day, seven regions in the United States highlight the story of Native Americans. 1. Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) This settlement, which was established many years ago, may be a translation of 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 transported more than 200,000 wooden logs from distant mountains to construct these complex structures; the logs were mostly 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 trade 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 history expert at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, told Live Science: “It’s an incredibly important site.”
5. Walnut Canyon (Arizona)
Walnut Canyon was home to the Hopi people, who lived in “wattle and daub” houses — a frame of sticks plastered with clay or mud — along with large circular fields, wooden palisades, and dozens of ceremonial earthen mounds. According to excavation studies, many people from far away also visited to attend ceremonies. The area now includes a park and a reconstructed “woodhenge” of wooden circles that follow the sun’s solstices and equinoxes, along with a 100-foot (30-meter) stepped earth structure called Monks Mound. Strobel thinks Cahokia may have been the most important site in the United States before the colony.
3. Mound Key (Estero Bay, Florida)
Mound Key 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 centuries of feasts on shellfish, the area was transformed into two mounded structures 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 only divided in half by high water. Before Europeans arrived in the 16th century, this shelled island was called Calos and was transformed by its inhabitants into a living maritime city. Mound Key itself is estimated to consist of several million shells, most of them oysters.
4. 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 the tribal lands, but the Tlingit warriors destroyed their enemy’s fort and drove them out. They rebuilt it to withstand the expected Russian attack, but in 1804 they were forced to abandon it when it was bombed by Russian ships. The dispute was not resolved until the United States purchased Alaska, and only then was it completely resolved.
5. Walnut Canyon (Arizona)
Walnut Canyon was home to the Hopi people, who lived in “wattle and daub” houses — a frame of sticks plastered with clay or mud — along with large circular fields, wooden palisades, and dozens of ceremonial earthen mounds. According to excavation studies, many people from far away also visited to attend ceremonies. The area now includes a park and a reconstructed “woodhenge” of wooden circles that follow the sun’s solstices and equinoxes, along with a 100-foot (30-meter) stepped earth structure called Monks Mound. Strobel thinks Cahokia may have been the most important site in the United States before the colony.
This area 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 southeast 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 locations on the canyon floor served as a defense against attack. Strobel said that Walnut Canyon is a lesser-known site, but it is an extraordinary example of Native Americans who, despite relatively dry conditions, managed water management. Those living in the caves grew crops on the flat land along the canyon edge, but they drew water from the stream at the base of the canyon to fill their cisterns.
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