The Indian Years Coloring Sheets (Page 2 of 8) in pdf

Indian Life in Texas

Indian life in Texas began thousands of years ago. The early Indians lived by hunting animals

and gathering wild plants for food. The Indians made spear points of stone for hunting.

Some of the animals that the first Texans hunted cannot be found here today. One of these

is the mammoth. The mammoth was an animal that looked like a large, woolly elephant.

Now the mammoth is extinct, like dinosaurs and other animals of long ago.

For thousands of years, the Indians of Texas lived in much the same way. The animals

that they hunted changed. The kinds of tools that they made changed. But the Indians still

hunted animals and gathered wild plants. They still made spear and dart points of stone.

They moved about from place to place to find food.

About 2,500 years ago, some Texas Indians learned to plant corn. The farmers began to

stay in one place instead of moving around to find food, They began to live in villages.

They learned how to make pots from clay. And they had new tools, the bow and arrow.

Soon, all Indian groups began to use the bow and arrow instead of the spears that the

earlier Indians had used.

None of these Indians had a written language. They passed their history on by telling

stories. They also left paintings, called rock art, in caves. The time when they lived, before

written history, is called prehistory. The stone tools and other things the Indians left behind

are the only clues to prehistory. Scientists called archeologists study these clues to learn

about the Indians of long ago.

Spanish explorers came to the New World 500 years ago; written history, or the historic

period, began when they arrived. An explorer named Coronado came north from Mexico to

Texas in 1542. Other explorers soon followed. Later, settlers came to Texas from other parts

of America. Many Indians were pushed out of the lands of their ancestors. None of the

Indians who were here before Coronado still lives in Texas today. All of the Indians who

now live in Texas came here during the historic period.

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The Indian Years Coloring Sheets Page 2

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