What were the similarities and the differences in the North American Indian societies? My text for this is Bentley and Ziegler's Traditions &...

In your text,
the discussion of the natives of North America lists differences between various societies, but
no similarities that hold true for all North American Indian societies.  Let us look at
differences noted in the text, at some things that many cultures held in common, and at one
major similarity between all Native American societies that is not mentioned in the
text.

The text mentions one difference between various Native American
societies that is of paramount importance.  It notes that some societies had large-scale farming
while other societies did not.  This is very important because it affected the ways of life in
those societies in important ways.  Agricultural societies could have larger populations.  They
were able to have more complex societies and become more militarily powerful than societies that
lacked agriculture.  This difference is a very important one.

One thing that
many societies had in common was a hunter-gatherer economy.  These Indian societies lacked the
resources that would allow them to farm.  Instead, they lived by hunting animals and by
gathering plant resources that grew wild.  This brings us to another difference. 
Hunter-gatherers in different regions had different food sources.  Your text mentions, for
example, that regional peoples consumed fish while those in the interior based their diets on
large land animals like deer and bison. 

The major similarity between all
these societies is that they lacked metal technologies.  None of the North American societies
knew how to make bronze or iron or other metals that could be made into tools and weapons. 
Therefore, they all used stone technologies for things like arrowheads and knives.  This was to
be a major disadvantage for the natives when the Europeans came to the
Americas.