In order to make valid comparisons of the encounters over such a vast area and involving so many distinct peoples, my first task was to classify the indigenous cultures based on their systems of agricultural production and the types of societies that resulted.

Sedentary societies

Sedentary peoples practiced agriculture on land of sufficient quality to enable them to reside in one location. They could thereby develop large urban populations that were subdivided into different social ranks and craft specializations. In the Americas, all of the sedentary societies were located in Mexico and Central America—an area commonly termed Mesoamerica—and in the Andean Zone, the mountain highlands and adjacent coastal lowlands that extend from Colombia into northern Chile. Many people lived in communities that numbered in the thousands and even tens of thousands. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital, contained over 200,000 residents when the Spanish arrived; Cuzco, the Inca capital, contained around 60,000.

Both sedentary zones contained dozens of distinct ethnic provinces, many of which spoke mutually unintelligible languages. These provinces had developed state structures, complete with royal dynasties and governmental bureaucracies, well over a thousand years before contact with Europe. They frequently conducted warfare against neighboring provinces, and the victors sought to construct empires, demanding tribute payments or labor service from the vanquished.

Many Mesoamerican societies maintained official scribes who composed their records and histories. (Unfortunately, no similar group seems to have emerged in the Andes.) Most of the surviving documents and carvings from the pre-contact era have been translated, providing insights into provincial and dynastic histories. Soon after the Spanish conquest, some members of these Mesoamerican societies learned to write their indigenous languages in the Spanish alphabet, producing a vast body of documentation, much of which has been preserved.

Semi-sedentary societies

Much of the Americas in 1492 was occupied by semi-sedentary societies. They dominated the eastern half of North America, parts of the American Southwest, the large islands of the Caribbean, and much of central and eastern South America. Semi-sedentary peoples practiced agriculture, but the less fertile land they inhabited required that they move periodically to a fresh site within their boundaries, where they would clear and burn the underbrush.

Such land use restricted the amount of food each community could produce. This, in turn, limited the size of the population and the complexity of the social and political hierarchies. They did not develop states, but instead were commonly led by chiefs who shared power with village councils. Although semi-sedentary peoples engaged in considerable warfare, because of the mobility and independence of their communities, they could not construct enduring empires.

Women enjoyed considerable authority in a number of these societies throughout the Americas. Family identity was calculated through the female line, and the senior female in each lineage group presided over the long houses or residential compounds in which her relatives and their mates dwelled. These women were influential in village councils and could order their male descendents and in-laws to go to war.