We began with a brief review of the people who resided in the western hemisphere before the arrival of European explorers in 1492. To give complete details of the many nations that existed in what is today the U.S. is far beyond our scope. So we reviewed large areas that contained diverse cultures in lands inhabited before Europeans arrived. We reviewed the cultural groups of Native American members, not in all of North America, but instead just those within the Lower 48. Such as the Caribbean, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest Coast, and Great Plains. This was just an overview of the cultural groupings of Native American tribes by region. We did not cover every group and certainly not every tribe. To truly learn about these peoples takes a great deal of study, just like any other unique cultural group in the world. We then reviewed the effects of early European colonization: Christopher Columbus and Native Americans. While we looked at some of the items passed between the Americas and Europe in the "Columbian Exchange," we focused more on the genocide of many native peoples shortly after their first contact with Europeans. Millions of people throughout the Americas and Caribbean did not have any immunity to European diseases - especially smallpox. Once Europeans realized this, they purposely spread smallpox to native peoples. This could happen through simple trade, when native peoples were given blankets that had been exposed to smallpox. One group of people in the Caribbean known as the Arawak people were completely obliterated by these new European explorers and their tactics.