[rawgabbit]

AFAIK The native peoples of the Americas did not have iron technology. The Incan and Aztec empires were able to feed their peoples despite being limited to stone and wood and obsidian.

I believe the forests of North America could not be farmed without iron axes and saws.

[AlotOfReading]

They did, and the people of the PNW specifically worked drift iron. The wiki page on precolumbian metallurgy is worth reading through, because the true extent of metalworking was fairly widespread [0].

In most cases, stone was preferred to metals because it was abundant, sharper, and cheaper, much as we use iron extensively today despite Aluminum and Titanium alloys being better in many respects. The areas that did work metal heavily (e.g. west Mexico, the triple alliance, Ecuador) typically used it for ceremonial objects and small domestic tools like needles.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgy_in_pre-Columbian_Am...