The First Nations peoples influenced the environment in North America before the arrival of Europeans. In what is now the US and Canada, on the Great Plains, there was the buffalo hunt which affected the herd sizes but did not decimate them in the ensuing slaughter of them after colonization. In British Columbia, Canada, the First Nations harvested large red cedars for their lodges and dugout canoes, for example. In what is now Mexico, agriculture was practiced and the land cultivated for corn and beans especially before colonization.