When Europeans arrived in the Americas, the Northeast Indians lived in what are now the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. The Northeast culture area reaches from the present-day Canadian provinces of Quebec, Ontario, and the Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island) south to the Ohio River valley (inland) and to North Carolina (on the Atlantic coast). The climate is mild, with plentiful rainfall. The land is generally rolling, though the Appalachian Mountains include some fairly steep slopes. Forests spread over the mountains and valleys. There is extensive coastline as well as many lakes and streams. The Northeast Indians largely depended on the trees, the animals that lived in the woods, and the fish and shellfish from the streams and the sea.
Most tribes of the Northeast belonged to either the Algonquian or Iroquoian language family. Tribes that spoke Algonquian languages were more widely distributed. Their territories covered the entire region except the areas immediately surrounding Lakes Erie and Ontario, some parts of the present-day U.S. states of Wisconsin and Minnesota, and a portion of the interior of present-day Virginia and North Carolina. Among the Algonquian groups were the Algonquin, Wampanoag, Mohican, Mohegan, Mi’kmaq (Micmac), Abenaki, Penobscot, Massachuset, Pequot, Delaware, Menominee, Kickapoo, Ojibwa, Sauk, Fox (Meskwaki), and Illinois.
The territory around Lakes Erie and Ontario was controlled by Iroquoian-speaking tribes. They included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Huron. The Tuscarora, who also spoke an Iroquoian language, lived in the coastal hills of present-day North Carolina and Virginia.
Although many Siouan-speaking tribes once lived in the Northeast culture area, only the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) people continue to reside there in large numbers. Most of the Siouan speakers moved west in the 1500s and 1600s as a result of European colonialism. Most Siouan-speaking groups are usually considered to be part of the Plains culture area.
Most Northeast peoples relied on farming for food. Men and women cleared the ground for fields by burning off the trees and bushes. Trees were felled by girdling. A fire set at a tree’s base charred the wood so it could be chipped with a stone ax until the tree fell. A ring of wet clay kept the flames from spreading up the trunk. Women then planted the fields with corn, squash, beans, pumpkins, and gourds. Corn-based soups and stews were staples of the diet. Some produce was dried and stored for winter meals. Northeast Indians also fed themselves by hunting and gathering. The diet included deer, elk, moose, waterfowl, turkeys, fish, leaves, seeds, tubers, berries, roots, and nuts.
Some parts of the culture area offered other things to eat. In the forests, people tapped the sugar maples and boiled the sap to make sugar. Rivers in the north and east had annual runs of fish such as salmon. In the north people tended to rely more on fish than on crops because the latter were often destroyed by frost. Similarly, the Ojibwa and other tribes of the northern Great Lakes area relied more on wild rice than on crops. Peoples on the western fringes of the culture area relied more on hunting the bison (buffalo) that roamed the local prairies than on farming. On the Atlantic coast and along major rivers, shellfish were plentiful and played an important part in the diet. In contrast, residents of the central and southern parts of the culture area tended to rely quite heavily on crops, because wild resources such as rice, fish, shellfish, and bison were unavailable.
The Northeast tribes that relied most heavily on farming tended to form the largest settlements. Their villages were usually clustered beside a lake, stream, or other source of fresh water. Most villages had a few dozen to a few hundred residents. The Indians drove sharpened poles into the ground to make a high fence, or palisade, around the village to protect it from attack by other people or by large animals. The farm fields lay beyond the fence. When the ground lost its richness through years of planting, the game in the area became scarce, or the local supply of firewood was used up, the villagers left their old homes and moved to a new location.
Peoples living in areas with an abundance of wild food sources such as wild rice or salmon tended to live in smaller and less protected villages. They spent more of their time in scattered hunting and gathering camps. By the first half of the 1600s, however, nearly every village was ringed by a protective palisade.
The most widely used house in the Northeast was the dome-shaped wickiup (or wigwam). The Indians made a frame of small, flexible trees, or saplings. They stuck them firmly in the ground in a circle, then bent them overhead in an arch and tied them together with tough bark fibers. Next, other branches were wrapped in circles around the bent poles and tied to them. Slabs of bark, reeds, or woven mats were tied to this frame to form the roof and walls. A fire in the center provided heat for cooking and for warmth.
The Iroquois and certain other tribes built a larger kind of home, called a longhouse. Like wickiups, longhouses were made of a framework of poles covered with bark sheets. They were roughly rectangular in floor plan, however, with a door at either end and an arched roof. In terms of construction, a longhouse was rather like a greatly elongated wickiup. A longhouse was usually about 22 to 23 feet (6 to 7 meters) wide and anywhere from 40 to 400 feet (12 to 122 meters) long depending on the number of families living in it. A typical longhouse probably was home to 10 families, each with its own living space. A series of hearths was placed down the middle of the structure, with the families on either side of the central walkway sharing the fire in the middle.
Although housing and the reliance on farming varied from tribe to tribe, clothing was fairly similar throughout the Northeast culture area. Northeast women made clothing from the skins of deer and other game. In summer, the women wore a wraparound skirt, the men a breechcloth. A breechcloth was a strip of soft leather drawn between the legs and held in place by looping it over a belt at the waist. In winter, both men and women wore leggings—basically, two tubes of leather or fur also attached to the waist belt—and capes or robes made of leather or fur. Both men and women wore moccasins. Women decorated clothes with painting, porcupine-quill embroidery, shells, or shell beads. Glass beads, cloth, and ribbons were highly valued once they became available through trade.
For special occasions such as feasts and war expeditions, Northeast Indians sometimes decorated their bodies with paint and jewelry. Many people had tattoos, especially on the face. Long hair was admired and might be greased to add luster. A number of men plucked out some hair and cut the remainder to form roaches (a hairstyle now commonly referred to as a “Mohawk”) or other distinctive hairstyles. Men’s headdresses were of dyed deer hair or a few feathers.
Northeast Indians took advantage of the forests by making many items out of wood. Women of many tribes knew how to weave mats, baskets, and belts from shredded bark, wood splints, and other fibers. Dishes and spoons were fashioned from bark or carved wood. Mortars were made of hollowed logs, and small logs were used as pestles.
Northeast Indians skimmed over the many lakes and streams of their region in canoes of birch bark. Some canoes, called dugouts, were made from the hollowed trunks of whole trees. The forest also provided materials for the frames of snowshoes, which aided travel in winter and which were essential in the north. The shafts for bows, arrows, and spears were made of wood as well. Points for arrows and spears were chipped from stone, as were knives and other sharp-edged tools. A variety of bone tools were also made, mainly for processing animal hides into soft leather.
Cooking vessels included ceramic pots and birch-bark baskets (hot stones were placed in the latter). Brass pots and kettles were prized for cooking once they became available through trade.
Peoples of the Northeast formed loosely organized bands and villages based on shared language and cultural traits. Bands tended to be smaller and to live in places where wild foods such as wild rice, salmon, or shellfish were plentiful. They moved often in pursuit of food sources. Peoples who depended more on farming formed larger villages. Several bands or villages made up a tribe, which was also loosely organized. In many parts of the Northeast a tribe was not so much a political or decision-making unit as a group of people who spoke a common language and had similar customs.
Chiefs, or sachems, led the tribes. Although chieftainships often were inherited, personal ability was the basis for a chief’s influence. Leaders of various levels gathered frequently for councils, which might include 50 or more people. Such gatherings normally opened with prayers and an offering of tobacco to the divine, followed by the smoking of a sacred pipe, or calumet.
Groups of tribes sometimes joined to form powerful confederacies. These alliances were often very complex political organizations. They generally took their name from the most powerful member tribe. The most elaborate and powerful political organization in the Northeast was the Iroquois Confederacy. Its original members were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca; the Tuscarora joined later.
Warfare was common among Indians of the Northeast. In many tribes, military honors were the most important measure of a man’s status. Tribes raided other tribes to gain more territory as well as captive women and children. These captives were often adopted into the tribe to replace family members lost to death or capture. Captive men, however, generally fared less well than women and children. Among the Iroquois Confederacy and some other groups, men taken during raids might be either adopted into the tribe or tortured to death. If the captive had been taken to compensate for a murder, his fate was usually determined by the family of the deceased. Among the Iroquois it was not uncommon to close the event by cannibalizing the body, a practice that alienated surrounding tribes.
Perhaps the most important and stable social group in the Northeast was the clan. A clan was essentially a large extended family whose members were descended from a common ancestor. Clan members considered themselves to be related whether or not a definitive genetic relationship could be traced. Members had certain obligations toward one another, such as providing hospitality to visitors of the same clan.
Clans divided the community into smaller cooperating units and created a means for uniting people from different villages or bands. Some tribes also grouped clans into larger units called moieties or phratries. (The term moiety is used when a tribe is divided into two complementary units; the term phratry when there are more than two units.) These larger groups had obligations to one another. Among many Iroquoians, for example, an important moiety responsibility was to bury the dead of the opposite group.
Membership in a clan was for life; it did not change upon marriage. Because clan affiliation was so important in structuring community life, those who were born outside the system and were later adopted into a tribe were also adopted into a clan of that tribe.
Clan membership was an important stabilizing device within native societies, as divorce and deaths from battle, childbirth, accident, and illness could change a person’s fortunes quite quickly. A clan was responsible for the well-being of its members and ensured that those least able to provide for themselves—an orphaned child, an elder whose children had died or been killed, a widow or widower with several young children—were cared for.
Typically among Northeast peoples, labor was divided on the basis of gender and age. Grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, and older siblings and cousins helped parents care for children from toddlerhood on, teaching them the ways of the group. Women cared for infants, cooked, made clothing and basketry containers, gathered wild plants and shellfish, fished, and made the tools necessary for these tasks. They also planted, weeded, and harvested all crops. In total, women typically grew, gathered, or caught the majority of the food consumed by a group. Men held councils, warred, built houses, hunted, fished, and made the implements they needed for these activities.
Animism —the belief that everything has a soul or spirit—pervaded many aspects of life for the Northeast tribes. It was expressed in a wide variety of ways. Among many upper Great Lakes tribes, each clan owned a bundle of sacred objects. Together the objects in the bundle were seen as spirit-beings that were in some sense alive. The clan was responsible for performing the rituals that insured those beings’ health and goodwill. The Iroquois had no comparable clan ceremonies. Instead, a significant part of their ritual life centered on ceremonies in recognition of foods as they matured. These rituals included festivals celebrating the maple, strawberry, bean, and green corn harvests, as well as a midwinter ceremony.
Medicine societies were also important. They were so named because one of their major functions was curing and because their membership consisted of people who had undergone such cures. Typically their practices combined the use of medicinal plants with what would now be considered psychiatric care or psychological support. The most famous medicine society among the upper Great Lakes Algonquians was the Midewiwin, or Grand Medicine Society. Its elaborate annual or semiannual meetings included the performance of various magical feats. Of the various Iroquois medicine societies, the False Face Society is perhaps best known. The wooden masks worn by members of this society during their rituals were carved from living trees. The masks were believed to be powerful living beings capable of curing the sick when properly cared for or of causing great harm when treated disrespectfully.
Not all curing was performed by members of medicine societies. Shamans had the power to cure, a power that was often indicated in a vision or dream. Dreams were especially important. They indicated not only the causes of illness and an individual’s power to cure but also the means of maintaining good fortune in various aspects of life. They might indicate whether one had special ability in warfare, hunting, and other such activities. So much attention was paid to dreams that among some peoples a mother asked her children each morning if they had dreamed in order to teach them to pay attention to these experiences. Dreams could also influence the decisions of councils.
Boys in Northeast tribes sometimes undertook a vision quest, though this ritual was not as important in the Northeast as it was among the Plains Indians. The goal of a vision quest was to receive a sign from a supernatural being. A shaman then helped to interpret the vision. Girls typically went through a period of isolation and training when they experienced their first menstruation.
When Europeans arrived in North America, they brought manufactured goods that the Indians welcomed and new diseases that they did not. Some of these diseases proved particularly devastating to Native Americans because they did not have the immunity that the colonial populations had developed through centuries of exposure. The first recorded epidemic in New England, probably of smallpox, took place in 1616–17. The number of Indians who died appears to have been quite high, as the Puritans who landed at Plymouth in 1620 remarked upon the large number of abandoned villages near their settlement.
Extensive trade developed between Northeast Indians and the French, English, and Dutch who colonized the region. The Europeans sought furs, especially beaver fur, because the undercoat of a beaver pelt could be processed into a strong felt that was used in making hats. The Indians wanted objects such as guns, brass pots and kettles, metal needles and fishhooks, glass beads, and cloth.
At first European settlers clung to the Atlantic coast, and thus coastal Indians were first affected by the newcomers’ desire for land. Conflict with the colonists occasionally erupted, as in the Pequot War of 1636–37 and King Philip’s War of 1675–76. Such resistance could not be maintained for long, however, and the Indians began to adopt European ways as a means of survival. This often involved the acceptance and practice of Christianity. Some missionaries were especially influential. John Eliot, for example, accomplished the monumental task of translating the Bible into Massachuset, an Algonquian language.
The Iroquoians fared somewhat better than the coastal Algonquians. In the 1600 and 1700s their inland location protected them from European settlement, though part of their eastern territory was colonized. In addition, European traders wished to retain the Iroquoians’ services as middlemen who would take the risks associated with transporting manufactured goods and furs over long distances. The Iroquoians understood their advantage and engaged in both war and diplomacy to maintain their grip on the region. Their power was finally broken during the American Revolution, when George Washington, aware of the alliance of a number of Iroquoian tribes with the British, sent an expedition against them. After the Revolution, many of these peoples moved to Canada. Others remained in New York state, and some (mostly Oneida) moved to what is now Wisconsin.
Like native peoples farther east, those of the upper Great Lakes area were greatly affected by the fur trade. The French established a series of trading posts there, and the English challenged them for control of the area. Indians from the east, such as the Delaware, Ottawa, and Shawnee, drifted into the area seeking furs and land. The result was a series of wars and skirmishes involving various combinations of the tribes, the English, and the French. In the 1700s and 1800s several prophets tried to revitalize native culture, and a series of chiefs worked to unite various tribes for the purposes of war. Notable among these were Pontiac (of the Ottawa people), Little Turtle (Miami), Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (Shawnee), Keokuk (Sauk), and Black Hawk (Sauk).
Eventually the Northeast tribes entered into treaties with the governments of the United States or Canada. The terms of these agreements were generally quite unfavorable to the tribes. Despite heroic efforts to protect their homelands, all of the Northeast peoples that survived the early colonial period had been either moved to far-flung reservations or deprived of their land by the end of the 1800s.
Nevertheless, many Northeast tribes maintained tribal governments and councils and continued their traditional cultural activities. This vitality was important as the tribes dealt with a variety of government policies during the 20th century, including urban relocation programs and termination, a policy that removed federal recognition from tribes (see American Indians). They were also crucial in the creation of a variety of tribal development projects that include timber mills, manufacturing centers, and casinos. By the late 20th and early 21st centuries many groups that had lost tribal status had successfully petitioned the U.S. government to restore their sovereignty. For example, the Menominee of Wisconsin were one of the first tribes to be reinstated (1973) after termination, while the Mashpee Wampanoag of Massachusetts, long declared “extinct,” were granted federal acknowledgement of tribal status in 2007.