One of the reasons why many early British colonies in North America failed amid the New World's abundance was that the settlers' mindset prevented them from living like the native inhabitants. From Native Americans, the settlers learned such skills as building brushwood weirs to trap fish, but they did not adopt the real key to success: mobility. The whole intellectual foundation of European civilization was fixity – a worldview profoundly different from that of Native Americans, who moved in response to changing food resources. Settlers were drawn to North America by tales of its extraordinary abundance, not realizing that abundance is seasonal. Culture and ecological knowledge allowed Native Americans to exploit different food sources at different time of year.