Native Americans Native Americans were the people who lived in America before people from other countries came here.

Native Americans respected nature. They took care of the earth and only used what they needed.

Native Americans used natural resources to meet their needs. trees water stones buffalo Natural resources are things in nature that people can use.

Native Americans lived in culture groups. The people in a culture group have the same way of life. A culture group is a group of people who live in the same region.

Each region had different physical surroundings. Some regions had forests. Others were mostly desert.

Still others had oceans nearby.

Each region had different natural resources. Each culture group used the natural resources in its region to meet its needs.

For this reason, Native American culture groups had different homes. Those who lived near deserts used clay or stones to build their homes. Those who lived on the Plains used buffalo skins to make their homes. Still others lived near forests. They built their homes of wood.

These are the remains of an ancient Anasazi cliff village. Many Native American culture groups built their homes in villages or cities. These are the remains of an ancient Anasazi cliff village.

Other culture groups, like the Plains Indians, were nomadic. They could not live in one place. They had to move around to follow the buffalo.

The physical surroundings of each region also affected how each culture group got its food. Native Americans in the Eastern Woodlands were very lucky. That region had forests, lakes and rivers, a nearby ocean, and good climate. These Native Americans could farm, hunt, and fish for food.

There were no forests in the Southwest region There were no forests in the Southwest region. The land was rocky and uneven. There were many mesas, or large rocks with flat tops. The Indians who lived in this region were farmers. They planted their crops on the tops of mesas.