A thought just occurred to me, the Sami in northern Scandinavia were reindeer herders. They do this in what is essentially an arctic environment with sparse vegetation for grazing, so it might stand to reason that similar breeds of animal in North America could be domesticated to a similar standard for the purpose of supplementing the diets of natives located, (amongst other regions) on the north side of the great lakes region which is aided by the fact that modern-day southern Canada is less harsh then northern Scandinavia but also that this area seems to be one of the few belts of land were its warm enough to grow food if we look at the northeast side of the great lakes in particular. Finally from what I gather natives had an understanding of fertilizer demonstrated from the burial of fish close to crops to introduce nutrients into the soil, this may help to support crop yields and as we know added agricultural stability and herding livestock frees up time for tasks not necessary for survival just like what speed technological growth in the old world. Based on my understanding of Mesoamerican food accessibility, with everything mentioned in this post and my previous post it seems like a great lakes civilization would have a greater accability to food then Mayans because hunting was hard (jungle), they did not seem to have useful domestic animals and disease was more prevalent then the great lakes. All these factors seem to suggest that a great lakes civilization could be a equal to, if not greater then the Mesoamerican civilizations.