Consider the travels of the Narvaez expedition[1], which landed in Florida in 1528, traveled a small distance by land, rebuilt their boats, then went to roughly

Consider the travels of the Narvaez expedition[1], which landed in Florida in 1528, traveled a small distance by land, rebuilt their boats, then went to roughly where Galveston is today, then a handful of survivors wandered what is today the lands along the US/Mexico border, until finally rejoining the Spaniards who hand conquered the Aztecs in what is today, Mexico City around 1536 or so. They covered a tremendous amount of ground and, out of about 600 who started, only 3 or so survived. The most famous is Cabeza de Vaca, who would return to Spain, write a book, then be sent to what is now Paraguay and Argentina, where he governed for a while before being sent back to Spain again. He did all that without cars or planes, or motorboats. These people could go very far. My favorite from the expedition was a Morrocan named “Estevanico” [2]. His story is pretty amazing. My guess is that lots of humans traveled like this, over great distances. Some went far, some not so much. The North American tribes took slaves, traded them amongst each other, or sometimes seemed to accept strangers with open arms before nicely sending them along. Other times they would just kill strangers, sometimes almost for sport or entertainment. Traveling back then wasn’t easy, and encountering other humans could just as easily accelerate your progress as it would stop you dead in your tracks. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narváez_expedition https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narváez_expedition [2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevanico https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevanico