What type of economy did Canada's First Nations have before the Europeans?

Answer 1

Canada's First Nations tribes are believed to have first populated the American continent from Asia as many as 40,000 years ago. Early man, and the tribes that were well established contemporary with, but before the time the first Europeans came to Canada had hunter/gatherer, agrarian, and trade-based economies. To what extent the balance was tipped to any of these activities depended entirely on the location and density of the population. On the west coast, the focus was on fishing and whaling, but the climate was also mild enough for settlement and farming to develop. Trade was facilitated between specific tribes by easily navigable inter-coastal waterways. In the great Canadian plains, bison herd migrations were followed and hunted by the sparse population of native Canadians, providing for a broad range of needs. In the east, the Huron had developed a stable farming economy by the year AD 800, supplying around thirty-thousand tribal members and with over three-thousand hectares in agricultural production. In the far north, the Inuit were great hunters, following the seasonal opportunities provided by whales, seals, polar bears and caribou.