It existed. There were strong distinct alcohol traditions in Mesoamerica and South America, and alcohol was not absent from North America either. The main Mesoamerican alcoholic drink was pulque, fermented from agave sap. The leaves are cut off, and the core of the plant (looking somewhat like a huge pineapple) was roasted and juiced. Pulque is still produced and drunk today (but the more internationally famous use of agave juice is to ferment it and distill it into tequila and mezcal). Pulque dates back to at least ancient Teotihuacan (Correa-Ascensio, 2014), being made in AD200-550. For a description of pulque making, see Valadez-Blanco (2012).

Mesoamerican alcohol didn't stop there, with various fruits (pineapples and others) and honey and maize (masa dough) being fermented to make alcoholic beverages.

The South American tradition centred on chicha, traditionally prepared by chewing a starchy foodstuff (at least sometimes, cooking it before and/or after chewing). Enzymes in saliva break the starches down into fermentable sugars. The two main sources of starch were cassva/manioc/yucca and maize (typically in the form of a dough made from ground maize - something rather easier to chew than whole seeds). Other sources include sweet potatoes and fruit. Today, maize is usually malted (i.e., germinated, and enzymes produced by the plant embryo break down the starches); it isn't clear whether this is only a modern practice - Cutler and Cardenas (1947) suggest that it is probably pre-Columbian. FOr a detailed look at modern traditional chicha production, see Hayadisha (2008).

One early fermentable used in South America was the sweet juice from maize stalks. It has been suggested that maize might have originally been domesticated for this purpose, rather than as a grain.

Various groups in North America made various alcoholic beverages. Near Mexico, agave sap was used. Maize was used, and maple syrup too. From the southern US through to Alaska, wines were made from a variety of fruits (fruits from cacti such as prickly pear and saguaro, berries, etc.).

References:

Marisol Correa-Ascencio, Ian G. Robertson, Oralia Cabrera-Cortés, Rubén Cabrera-Castro, Richard P. Evershed, "Pulque production in Prehispanic Mesoamerica", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111(39), 14223-14228 (2014); DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1408339111

Cutler, Hugh C., and Martin Cardenas, "Chicha, a native South American Beer," Botanical Museum Leaflets, Harvard University 13(3), 33-60, (1947). http://www.jstor.org/stable/41762102.

Frances M. Hayashida. "Ancient beer and modern brewers: Ethnoarchaeological observations of chicha production in two regions of the North Coast of Peru", Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 27(2), 161-174, (2008).

Valadez-Blanco, R., Bravo-Villa, G., Santos-Sánchez, N.F. et al., "The Artisanal Production of Pulque, a Traditional Beverage of the Mexican Highlands", Probiotics & Antimicro. Prot. (2012) 4: 140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12602-012-9096-9

Native American civilizations definitely had alcohol. The Aztecs in particular drank pulque, which is still drunk today in Mexico. Pulque is fermented from the sap of the maguey plant, which itself has a wide variety of culinary uses. The Aztecs also had a lot of laws related to alcohol consumption, and were particularly prudish about it. Apparently everyone except the elderly could be put to death if they were too drunk in public.

In parts of South America (including Peru) the drink of choice is today known as chicha, which is a beer made of corn. Notably, corn doesn't naturally contain enough of the amylase enzyme which breaks down its complex sugars to prepare for yeast fermentation (yeast strongly prefer simple sugars), so in order to prepare it people must personally chew corn. Human saliva contains amylase, as does barley and yeast, which is why beer made from these materials doesn't require this step. If you want to see how this works, the brewery Dogfish Head recreated chicha using this method during an episode of their documentary Brew Masters.