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Northeast Native American Cultures -
The northeastern part of the U.S. and Canada includes coastal lands, rivers, the Great Lakes, valleys and mountains. before the arrival of European settlers, this region was mostly one vast forest. In these woodlands teeming with deer, bear, rabbit, and other animals, most of the Indians were hunters and gatherers. They also fished in the lakes and rivers. In wet marshy areas Indians gathered wild rice. And in the summer, some tribes planted crops of corn, squash, and beans.
Farming tribes usually cleared small plots, used them for a few years, and then abandoned them to move to better lands elsewhere. Birch bark canoes made hunting easier and also enabled many of these tribes to trade with one another throughout the region.
Most woodland tribes lived in small villages. Some made small, round homes from birch bark. Others built large longhouses from wood and bark. Many families lived in each longhouse, and this made it important for tribes to become skilled at working together to solve problems. Five large tribes in what is now New York even joined together in a complicated and democratic kind of government called the Iroquois Confederacy. These five original Iroquois tribes were the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida and Mohawk.
The Fox Warrior shown here is wearing a deer and porcupine hair roach (from painting by Karl Bodmer). Also shown: birch bark dish, an Iroquois longhouse; a buckskin coat.
• Northeastern States posters
• Midwestern States posters
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