Compare the lifeways of four Native nations from different regions -- the Haudenosaunee, the Lakota, the Pueblo peoples, and the Chinook -- and explain how each was shaped by its local geography.
The Haudenosaunee lived in the Eastern Woodlands, in what is now New York, in longhouses that held several related families under one roof. They farmed the "Three Sisters" together in one mound -- corn, beans, and squash, which support and feed each other as they grow -- and surrounded their villages with wooden palisades for defense. Far to the west, on the Great Plains, nations like the Lakota built their lives around the bison, which provided food, warm clothing, and material for tools, and lived in tipis, portable homes that could be taken down and moved quickly to follow the herds.
In the dry Southwest, Pueblo peoples built multi-story homes of adobe (sun-dried mud brick), sometimes set into cliffs, and dug irrigation canals to farm corn and beans in a landscape with little rain. On the wet Pacific Northwest coast, nations like the Chinook depended on huge yearly salmon runs, so plentiful and reliable that villages could stay in one place all year, building large plank houses from cedar trees and carving cedar canoes. Later, after contact with Europeans, horses brought by the Spanish would transform Plains life even further, making bison hunting faster and easier than ever.
Mastery looks like: They can name one nation from each of four different regions and one detail of its lifeway tied directly to its environment.
Common stumbles: Assuming Plains nations always had horses; picturing all Native homes as the same style instead of matched to local materials and climate.