How did early settlers get their food?

Answer 1

The first people in the Americas were Cro-Magnon Neolithic hunter-gatherers who had no bows and arrows (because they had not yet been invented).

They hunted using either hand-thrown spears with knapped stone points or spear-throwers (later called atlatls) which helped to increase range and accuracy. These weapons were used to hunt first migrating caribou and sea lions, then the truly giant creatures that existed at that time: giant longhorn bison, giant moose, giant beavers, ground sloths, mammoths and mastodons, camels, peccaries.

Their hunting was made extremely dangerous by the presence of the dire wolf and the sabre-tooth cat, as well as panthers bigger than any modern lion.

There is evidence for the hunting of giant bison using the "buffalo jump" technique, which took considerable organisation and careful planning: a small herd of animals must be quietly surrounded by hunters on foot (no horses at that time), leaving just one avenue of escape - and this led to a sheer drop of at least 6 feet. At a signal the animals would be stampeded over the cliff, killing many of them all at once. All that needed to be done was to process the meat using flint knives.

Answer 2

Thechincally speaking the fisrt Califorians were Native Americans (and even they aren't native) So they found, on their journey, (across an ice bridge between Asia and Canada following the mammoths) they most have discovered they could eat fish and hunt things other than the endangered mammoths. They lived on what they knew when they got there and figured out what they could do with the land. Then when the immigrants and such came they must have learned from the natives adding what they knew about farming and cattle giving you how the first Calafornians got food. just a theory that can be learned in history.