The development of horticulture and the growth of maize created a surplus of food and pushed communities and hierarchies to grow in complexity. Less necessity for society members to contribute to the food supply allowed workers to specialize in new areas of village life (priesthood, craftsmanship, etc.)
The Anasazi and Hohokam settled the arid Southwest with horticulture by developing complex irrigation canals without beasts of burden, metal tools, or other developments. This method of maize farming later spread easily into other parts of North America, particularly along the Mississippi, whose watersheds would cancel out the necessity for irrigation canals.

Horticulture never spread to the tribes of the Great Basin and Plains, who instead adopted the bow and arrow …show more content…
New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey were known as the “bread colonies,” because of how much grain they exported. Their forests served as sources for shipbuilding and lumber and the rivers and harbors stimulated commerce and growth in seaports.
The landholdings of the middle colonies were intermediate in size, local government was in between personalized town meetings and diffused county government, and the population was extremely ethnically mixed with an unusual degree of religious toleration and democratic control. Because of easily acquirable land, a large amount of social and economic democracy prevailed in the middle colonies.

The South was a plantation based economy with a strong aristocratic atmosphere where owners lorded over black slaves. They were devoted to exporting agricultural products such as tobacco and rice. In all of the plantation colonies, there was slavery. The scattering of plantations slowed urbanization and made establishing schools and churches difficult. The South allowed for a small amount of religious toleration, the Church of England became the ruling faith, and the colonies were somewhat