266 Natives of North America Algonquian village on the Pamlico River estuary, showing Native structures, agriculture, and spiritual life Indian communities in the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and middle Mississippi Valley had vanished or dispersed, abandoning sophisticated buildings and artifacts Factors that have been proposed to explain these declines include climate change, warfare, and disease By 1450, there were dozens of tribal groups and alliances speaking diverse languages and following very different religious and social customs There were some commonalities: Most Indians were animists, believing in the spiritual power of their natural surroundings They devised elaborate rituals to placate these spirits, especially those of animals they had killed In many areas human burials were placed in elaborate and extensive earthen mounds Most tribes respected shamans (healers) and believed that a Great Spirit oversaw the natural world Because tribes were likely to move often in search of better land or more abundant game—or to avoid other hostile tribes—property ownership in the European sense was all but unknown Archaeologists have found abundant evi- dence of trade routes that spanned the continent, bringing tribes together in the process of barter and exchange In most North American tribes, women were in charge of agricultural production, while men hunted for game Maize (corn), first cultivated in Mexico, was by the time of contact a basic crop in much of North America Squash and beans were also staples of most tribes’ diets While by no means environmentalists in any modern sense, most North American tribes were well adapted to their surroundings and were often helpful to inexperienced Europeans For example, natives taught French explorers how to build lightweight birchbark canoes to travel where their clunky wooden ships were useless Others helped Europeans identify strange plants and animals, learning which were edible and which poisonous Most famously, Squanto, a Patuxet who had been kidnapped by an English slave trader in 1614, returned to America in time to teach the Pilgrims how to fish and grow corn, keeping them alive to hold a Thanksgiving in 1621 Warfare was a constant among various Indian groups both before and after European contact Early on, some tribal groups welcomed alliances with Europeans as a way to overpower their traditional rivals, in part by acquiring the foreigners’ goods and technologies, especially their superior weapons But as the trickle of Europeans became a flood, especially in British-claimed regions, some tribes forged alliances with traditional friends and even enemies to counter European threats to Indian survival For example, Algonquian chief Powhatan, head of a strong confederacy, at first welcomed Jamestown settlers, even allowing his daughter, Pocahontas, to marry Englishman John Rolfe But in 1622, Powhatan’s brother Opechancanough, now leader of the Powhatan Confederacy, launched a surprise attack on settlers, killing more than three hundred of them and capturing women and children Ultimately, the Virginians rallied, using trickery and even poison to reclaim their holdings In this early war, as in later conflicts, tribes were responding to growing white populations Whites were no longer perceived simply as traders who would soon move on; they had become settlers using—and claiming as their own—traditional tribal lands Disease did even more damage than European land grabs and weapons of war Because Indians were genetically very similar, and because they had been isolated in the New World for many centuries, they were at the mercy of pathogens carried by the invaders The worst of these was smallpox, with measles and influenza also sowing death These diseases killed Europeans, too, but ravaged the Indian population Long before germs were known to cause disease, Europeans praised God for