I was wondering what they did. The south has tornados and droughts, the north blizzards, the East hurricanes, the west earthquakes. I know these people had extensive histories and protocols. I’m not taught anything about the natives before colonization in school so there’s no way of me learning about this other than asking specifically.
Working with North and South American Indigenous history often means working with oral history and the archaeological record, since even when there was history written down, it was often destroyed by colonizers.
Nevertheless there is ample history to suggest behavior patterns for certain ecological disasters. For example, by examining tree ring size (dendrochronology) for building materials found at Chaco Canyon, archaeologists think that the various settlements were abandoned after a long drought. And by comparing DNA of livestock remains (mostly turkey bones) found at the site with remains and living animals, archaeologist have linked the Chacoans with modern Puebloan cultures. This put an end to the narrative of the “Vanished Anasazi.”
There is similar evidence that drought conditions helped bring about the disapora of the mound building cultures of the Midwest (Cahokia and other outliers). Most recently, archaeologists have been examining cortisol levels (poop chemicals) in runoff areas (local lakes) where they would collect in order to track local population over time.
Dendrochronology has been useful for tracking ancient disasters such as the tsunami that occurred in Oregon due to the 1700’s Cascadia earthquake. Though there are ample written records of the tsunami’s damage in Japan, in Oregon there was largely only oral history. Archaeologists at one point discounted it as folklore. But have recently used the oral histories to find ancient felled forests on the ocean floor that date to the time of the tsunami.
Almost all surviving indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest have some oral tale about a flood that wiped out many villages. In many of these tales, the only survivors were tribes who lived far enough inland or high enough in the mountains.
Oral histories also exist surrounding the New Madrid earthquake. According to these stories, the Mississippi River ran backward and an entire native village was swallowed by the soft, sandy earth of the Mississippi riverbanks.
For an answer that deals more specifically with tornadoes, you might read over this past thread. How_did_precolonization_midwest_native_americans/
/u/irishpatobie and /u/RioAbajo have previously answered How did Native Americans deal with massive hurricanes?
This is a fairly common question formula, and other threads exist, but the one I linked has the most detailed answers by far about the Americas.