What Animals Live In The Eastern Woodlands

The Eastern Woodlands is one of six cultural areas of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The region stretches from the northeastern coast of nowadays-twenty-four hour period United States and the Maritimes to west of the Peachy Lakes. The Eastern Woodlands includes, amid others, the Haudenosaunee, Mi'kmaq, Ojibwe and Wendat (Huron) peoples.

The Eastern Woodlands is one of six cultural areas of Indigenous peoples in Canada. The region stretches from the northeastern declension of nowadays-day United States and the Maritimes to w of the Great Lakes. The Eastern Woodlands includes, amongst others, the Haudenosaunee, Mi'kmaq, Ojibwe and Wendat (Huron) peoples.

Indigenous Peoples of the Eastern Woodlands

Eastern Woodlands Indigenous peoples belong to two unrelated linguistic communication families, Iroquoian and Algonquian. Information technology is of import to note that while Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) peoples form part of the Iroquoian language group, they do not incorporate the entirety of the group. The aforementioned is true for the Algonquin and the Algonquian language group.

Iroquoian-speaking peoples in this area include the Erie (south of Lake Erie), Neutral (Grand River–Niagara River surface area), Wenro (east of Niagara River), Haudenosaunee or Six Nations (including Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk and Tuscarora), Wendat-Huron (St.Lawrence River Valley in the 1500s, Wendake or Huronia in the 1600s, which stretched from Georgian Bay to Lake Ontario), Petun (south and southwest of Georgian Bay) and St. Lawrence Iroquoians (present-day Montréal to Québec City).

Algonquian-speaking peoples in the Eastern Woodlands include the Ojibwe (eastern Lake Superior to northeastern Georgian Bay), Odawa (Manitoulin Island and Bruce Peninsula), Nipissing (Lake Nipissing surface area), Algonquin (Ottawa River and tributaries), Abenaki (present-mean solar day Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick and southeastern Québec), ​​Wolastoqiyik (formerly known as Maliseet) (St. John River in western New Brunswick, northeastern Maine to Québec) and Mi'kmaq (Gaspé Peninsula, and what is now New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia).

Geography

The Eastern Woodlands is a large region that stretches from the northeastern declension of present-day United states and the Maritimes to west of the Neat Lakes. Information technology extends southwest to nowadays-day Illinois and east to coastal North Carolina. The deciduous forests of southern Ontario (see Forest Regions), the St. Lawrence lowlands and coastal Maritime provinces stage north into the mixed deciduous-coniferous canopy of the Canadian Shield in the w and the Appalachian uplands in the east. Except in the Maritime provinces, the Nifty Lakes–St. Lawrence watershed provided admission to h2o transportation to all Eastern Woodlands peoples. Climate and soil conditions allowed peoples due south of upland regions to grow corn, beans and squash (known as the 3 Sisters); the largest portion of many Eastern Woodlands peoples' diets consisted of produce from their fields.

Traditional Territory

Iroquoian-speaking peoples in the Eastern Woodlands generally occupied much of what is at present southern Ontario, northern Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and the St. Lawrence Valley as far east every bit the present-twenty-four hours Québec City surface area. Algonquian-speaking groups extended from Lake Superior north of Lake Huron to the Ottawa Valley, and east through nowadays-mean solar day New England and the Maritime provinces.

Traditional Life

Food

Before Europeans came to North America, trapping was an integral function of the Ethnic way of life, providing food, clothing and shelter.

Having trailed a moose until the dogs force its collapse, a team of Algonqian hunters close in for the kill.

Iroquoian-speaking peoples relied primarily on cultivated corn, beans and squash. Fishing, hunting and gathering supplemented these domestic crops. White-tailed deer were ane of the most important game animals except in the northward, where moose were the staples. Some coastal peoples hunted seals also as freshwater fish, eels, molluscs and crustaceans. Waterfowl and land birds were seasonally important in some areas. Fur bearers, especially beaver, were significant to trade-based economies. Peoples in the expanse gathered and ate a variety of berries, nuts, tubers and plants; and some groups harvested maple and birch sap. While Iroquoian women planted and harvested, men were made to clear the woods for farming.

Amid most Algonquian peoples, horticulture for subsistence was largely marginal, except for the cultivation of wild rice in some communities. Odawa, Algonquin, Mi'kmaq and Abenaki peoples planted few crops. On the other manus, farming was important to the Wolastoqiyik economy, specially the growing of corn. The Ojibwe relied on wild rice, which was harvested in the late summer, and may take been responsible for its spread exterior the lands where it was typically found. The Nipissing did some cultivating of corn, but they besides traded fish and furs for Wendat corn. Hunting and fishing provided the bulk of sustenance for Algonquian peoples. They hunted deer, conduct, moose and caribou, and, where available, seals, porpoises and whales. In hunting they used bows, arrows, lances, traps, snares and deadfalls, and used hooks, weirs, leisters and nets to fish. Meat was either boiled or roasted for immediate consumption or smoke-stale for future use. In the Great Lakes surface area, Algonquian peoples also nerveless maple or birch sap in the early on spring.

The indelible presence of settler-colonial political and social frameworks brought about considerable civilization alter amid all Eastern Woodlands groups. Hunting, gathering and line-fishing have become marginal subsistence activities except among some nations, for whom angling has remained a significant source of income, but non without its challenges. Agricultural practices declined as reserve populations grew, lands were partitioned and new employment opportunities arose.

Dwellings

Wigwams used by the Eastern Woodlands hunters. They were covered with birchbark, skins or mats (artwork by Gordon Miller).

A reconstructed longhouse at Ste-Marie Among the Hurons, virtually Midland, Ontario. Built c. 1640, reconstructed 1960s.

Crop storage among the Iroquoian peoples permitted sedentary (permanent) and fenced-in settlements ranging from pocket-size hamlets with a few families to towns where as many as 2,000 persons resided. Population density was high among the Wendat. Although estimates vary, at that place may have been from 70,000 to 90,000 northern Iroquoians at the time of contact. A typical village independent a big number of elm- or cedar-bark longhouses.

Seasonal activities among the Algonquians tended to inhibit a strictly sedentary being, although the abundance of certain food, especially fish and some horticulture, permitted a greater caste of sedentation than amidst Subarctic peoples further north. Dwellings were smaller and less permanent than among Iroquoians, varying from conical birchbark tipis to domed wigwams or rectangular structures that housed several families. Village size varied seasonally, with the largest population concentrations generally occurring in summer.

Transportation

The long, narrow snowshoes (left) and bear paw snowshoes (correct) of the Eastern Woodland hunters were used for different snowfall conditions. Babiche is commonly used equally lacework for snowshoes.

In building a canoe, bark is stripped from the birch, placed inside a staked frame, sewn and fastened. Ribs are fixed in position and seams sealed with spruce gum (artwork by Lewis Parker).

The Iroquoians travelled mainly on land or in elm-bawl or birchbark canoes. The Algonquians made slender birchbark canoes (the Mi'kmaq used caribou-skin canoes) and in winter used snowshoes, sleds and toboggans. Trade and visiting appear to take been common activities amid neighbouring Algonquian peoples. They also traded with Iroquoian peoples, importing corn and fish nets from the Wendat, for case.

Clothing

Mi'kmaq military smashing coat, back view (courtesy Glenbow Museum/Museum of Victoria, Melbourne, Commonwealth of australia).

Clothing of the Eastern Woodlands Indigenous peoples was made of fauna skins and furs. While the men hunted animals for hides (every bit well as for meat), women were responsible for tanning the skins and creating the article of clothing. Women also decorated the clothing with beads, quills and other natural products. Typical clothing for the people of the Eastern Woodlands included robes, breechcloths, leggings and skirts. For footwear, people wore moccasins, which are slipper-like shoes fabricated out of animal hide.

Social Organization

A quango separates into family groups to talk over important matters concerning the village, such as war.

Activities at a Haudenosaunee longhouse feast include dancers, gamblers, storytellers.

Prior to contact, the largest political unit of measurement among most Eastern Woodlands Algonquian peoples appeared to exist the ring-hamlet, a customs consisting of various bands. Each band or ring-hamlet possessed at least i chief, whose position was usually hereditary within the male person line. Patrilineal groups designated by an animal totem seem to have been characteristic of Eastern Woodlands Algonquian peoples. Village-band territories were not strictly demarcated, and all members had access to basic subsistence resources.

In Iroquoian society, longhouses sheltered several related families. Residence in these households was matrilocal (upon marriage a man would motion into his wife'south longhouse). As well, descent, inheritance and succession followed the female line. Ane or more than households formed a matrilineage. Several lineages composed an exogamous clan — where individuals must marry outside the social group — designated past a particular totem emblem. Clan mates among the Haudenosaunee, regardless of village or customs affiliation, considered themselves to exist siblings. Nations were composed of iii to 10 clans whose members were scattered in several villages. Amongst some groups, clans were united into moieties (kinship groups).

Nigh Iroquoian peoples possessed both civil chiefs and state of war chiefs. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy had a council of almost 50 permanent and hereditary offices, which have survived in modified form to the present. Condolence ceremonies commemorated deceased confederacy chiefs, bestowing upon their successors the honorary names associated with the office. The Wendat had a similar political system.

Culture and Art

Mi'kmaq quillwork chair seat.

Norval Morrisseau, Windigo, tempera on dark-brown paper, ca. 1963.

Intricate beadwork and quillwork is one characteristic of Eastern Woodlands art. Women used feathers, porcupine quills, shells, dyes and similar items to beautify their family'southward clothing, moccasins and belongings. Iroquoian peoples often decorated association symbols on their longhouses.

Beadwork was sometimes more than decorative; it could concord political meaning. Eastern Woodlands peoples created wampum, tubular purple and white beads made from shells used for ornamental, formalism, diplomatic and commercial purposes. In some early on treaties, wampum belts featured the major tenets of the agreement. To have a wampum belt in formal council was to concord to attach to the principles embodied in its woven design. The wampum thereafter served to help perpetuate the memory of the treaty.

In some Eastern Woodlands cultures, fine art was also expressed on the body. Tattooing of the confront and body was common for both men and women. These tattoos held symbolic significance and could showcase a person'due south heritage and association identity.

A noteworthy fine art form of the Haudenosaunee is the False Faces, wooden masks with metallic optics and, sometimes, horsehair that were carved by men for utilize in curing ceremonies (meet False Face Society).

A revitalization of certain aspects of traditional cultures, including languages, arts, crafts, dances and rituals, besides every bit a greater political awareness, has served to reinforce identity and esteem later more than three centuries of cultural erosion by colonialists.

In contemporary art, the Woodland school of art refers to the colourful and pictographic paintings of artists such every bit Norval Morrisseau, Daphne Odjig, Jackson Beardy and Alex Janvier. Featuring supernatural beings, animals or people, this fine art expresses Ethnic identity and civilization (meet Indigenous Fine art in Canada and Gimmicky Ethnic Art in Canada).

Language

Iroquoian languages vest to two branches, a southern one composed of Cherokee, and a northern branch that includes the Erie, Neutral, Wenro, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Petun and St. Lawrence Iroquoians. The languages of the St. Lawrence Iroquoians, the Wendat, Petun and Neutral are all extinct. Efforts are being made to bring dorsum the Wendat language. The 6 Iroquoian languages spoken in Canada today (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora) moved with their people from New York State afterward the American Revolution. These languages are still spoken today, simply they are endangered (see Indigenous Languages in Canada).

Within the Eastern Woodlands, there are two branches of the Algonquian family, Central Algonquian (Ojibwe, Odawa, Nipissing and Algonquin) and Eastern Algonquian (Abenaki, Mi'kmaq and Maliseet). Languages within each branch show a high degree of mutual intelligibility, with the Central Algonquian forming dialect bondage.

Religion and Spirituality

Woods False Confront Society mask, mid-19th century, 6 Nations Reserve, Ontario, Iroquois (courtesy ROM).

The Haudenosaunee had a number of medicine societies focused on healing, the best known beingness the False Face Society. During ceremonies, members wore elaborately carved wooden masks. The Haudenosaunee also practised the Longhouse Religion, a blend of ancient Indigenous traditions and innovations introduced by the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake.

Algonquian peoples practiced Midewiwin (Grand Medicine Society). Once widespread, the Midewiwin became less prevalent after the arrival of Europeans in the 18th and 19th centuries. Today, the largest Midewiwin societies are found in parts of Ontario, Manitoba, Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota.

By and large speaking, Ethnic peoples in the Eastern Woodlands possessed religious specialists known equally shamans. Among the Algonquian, the shaman performed magical rites to ward off evil spirits, such every bit the Windigo, and assisted in locating game. Shamans in Iroquoian communities performed similar roles, ensuring the spiritual and concrete well-being of their people. Eastern Woodlands peoples and their shamans engaged in healing practices and in seasonal rituals often associated with crop harvests and periodic feasts. The Wendat, for example, held elaborate Feasts of the Expressionless, usually at the time when villages were to be moved to new locations. The bones of dead relatives were gathered and placed in mass graves with personal items. Algonquian peoples likewise held Feasts of the Dead, although they were not identical to those of the Wendat. During the 17th century, these feasts attracted large numbers of people, ofttimes from several nations.

Vision quests associated with the acquisition of a personal supernatural guardian existed among Eastern Woodlands cultures. Generally speaking, young males would venture out alone into the wilderness with no food or h2o and expect for a spirit guide to reveal to them keen knowledge. In some nations, such as the Odawa and Menominee, young girls too participated. Once the adolescent performed the quest, they returned to their hamlet an enlightened adult. Some Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands still participate in vision quests (see Religion and Spirituality of Indigenous Peoples).

Contact with Europeans and Colonization

Euro-Indigenous Relations Prior to 1763

Although the Norse made sporadic visits to the Arctic and eastern seaboard between the tenth and 14th centuries, major European influences began when fishermen to the One thousand Banks started trading for furs in the early 16th century just prior to Jacques Cartier's contacts with Mi'kmaq and St. Lawrence Iroquoians in 1534–35. During the late 16th century, the fur merchandise expanded to involve, either direct or indirectly, virtually Eastern Woodlands peoples. During this period, the St. Lawrence Iroquoians disappeared from their homelands and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy gained prominence.

By the early on 17th century, there had been European settlements on Sable Isle (temporary), at Tadoussac, briefly on Saint Croix Island in nowadays-mean solar day Maine and at Port-Royal in the Annapolis Valley. In 1609, Henry Hudson explored the coast of what became New England and the river named after him, while Samuel de Champlain accompanied an Algonquin, Innu and Wendat war party against the Mohawk near Lake Champlain, an event that marked the beginning of European participation in inter-tribal hostilities that lasted for a century.

By 1626, when the Dutch established New Amsterdam (New York City), intensive trade had largely exterminated fur bearing animals along the Atlantic coast. During the first one-half of the 17th century, epidemics brought on by European diseases, equally well as warfare, drastically reduced Ethnic populations. Meanwhile, new trade relationships with Europeans disrupted the subsistence cycles of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. A diversity of trade items replaced Indigenous equivalents, resulting in dependency relationships, and new forms of territoriality and leadership.

In New England, the Pequot War (1636-7) and King Philip'southward War (1675–76) decimated the Ethnic population and effectively removed their ability to oppose European settlement. Some Abenaki people moved to St. Francis near the St. Lawrence later about 1675. In the Corking Lakes area, the Haudenosaunee intensified their attack on other Iroquoian-speaking peoples and Algonquian groups during the 1640s and 1650s, forcing many to flee their homelands (see Iroquois Wars). Remnant groups of Wendat and Petun peoples (some sources as well include the Neutral and Erie) fled westward and became known as Wyandot. One group settled at Lorette (or Loretteville) almost Québec City, becoming the Huron-Wendat. The Haudenosaunee, their population reduced by warfare and disease, replenished numbers by adopting war captives and refugees.

By the belatedly 17th century, Haudenosaunee power was in flux. Ojibwe and Algonquin peoples moved into present-day southern Ontario; their descendants continue to occupy reserves in that location today. In 1722, the Haudenosaunee accustomed the Tuscarora, a northern Iroquoian–speaking people who had fled from what is now North Carolina, into their confederacy. Following this addition, the confederacy became known as the Half dozen Nations.

Throughout the start half of the 18th century, most Algonquian-speaking peoples of the Eastern Woodlands were allied with the French and traded furs in substitution for European commodities. Except for a group of Mohawk who had settled near Montréal, the bulk of the Haudenosaunee were allied with the British.

Ethnic-British Relations, 1763 to 1867

After the French and Indian War (1754–1763) (see Seven Years War) and the fall of New France to the British, a loose coalition of nations including the Odawa and Ojibwe became displeased with the new regime'southward policies, which included the appropriation of land, the crushing of whatever opposition by forcefulness and the finish of symbolic gift exchanges. In 1763, Odawa chief Obwandiyag (known equally Pontiac in English) led his grouping of Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi and some Wyandot to lay siege to Fort Detroit. His allies captured Fort Michilimackinac and state of war raged throughout the region, but the brotherhood rapidly faltered. Pontiac agreed to peace in 1766. The incident, known as Pontiac's War, demonstrated Indigenous peoples' continued struggle for autonomy, and influenced the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which recognized Indigenous territorial rights and laid the foundation for future treaty negotiations. In practice, the Proclamation did not apply to Maritime colonies, and therefore, colonial administrators in these areas felt empowered to seize lands and found reserves without treaty negotiations.

Near Algonquian-speaking peoples were centrolineal with the British during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), just the struggle carve up the loyalties of the Haudenosaunee in New York State, many of whom subsequently moved to lands granted to them by the British in what is now southern Ontario (come across Haldimand Proclamation). Members of all the six nations in the Haudenosaunee Confederacy settled along the One thousand River, and some Mohawk settled at the Bay of Quinte. Country cessions, a growing economical dependency on European colonists and general demoralization stimulated a revitalization move in 1799 that was led past the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. The new Longhouse Religion (also known as the Handsome Lake Religion) spread to other Haudenosaunee communities in the U.s.a. and Canada. Handsome Lake and Pontiac are frequently seen equally early leaders of Ethnic cocky-determination in the "Pan-Indian" movement.

After the War of 1812, some Ojibwe, Odawa and Potawatomi moved from the Usa to the Georgian Bay area and a portion of the Oneida settled on the Thames River. During the first half of the 19th century, the colonial regime established reserves for Algonquian-speaking peoples around Georgian Bay; and the Robinson-Huron and Robinson-Superior treaties of 1850 secured large tracts of land northward of lakes Superior and Huron for the government. In the Atlantic provinces, the colonial government, non bound by the terms of the Imperial Proclamation, established some 60 Mi'kmaq communities.

Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian Government

Equally European settlements throughout the Eastern Woodlands grew larger and more numerous, the hunting and gathering lifestyle of Algonquian and Iroquoian speakers cruel increasingly nether threat. Horticulture, sometimes the result of missionary influences, supplemented a diet that came to include stored foods as well as locally obtained fish and game. Some Indigenous peoples found employment in the resource industry, working in lumber, mining and the fur merchandise or as part-time labourers.

Equally settler dominance over the resource industry grew, Indigenous peoples in the Eastern Woodlands became increasingly marginalized, and were often relegated to poorly serviced and oftentimes remote reserve communities. The introduction of Christian residential schools further exacerbated culture loss, removing children from their homes and language. At such schools, students suffered abuse and fail, engendering further cultural assimilation in their home communities. Deprived of traditional skills and suffering nether the weight of cultural loss, reserve communities grew increasingly dependent on government sources of economic back up. Lack of employment opportunities and inadequate preparation resulted in poverty on most reserves that were not situated near large urban centres.

The Indian Act, enacted in 1876 as a combination of the Gradual Enfranchisement and Gradual Civilisation Acts, placed reserve councils nether the control of the federal government. Under these terms, the regime could replace traditional council systems with elected models that aligned more than closely to assimilative goals. Many reserve communities resisted these changes. On the Six Nations reserve, the government imposed an elected council structure in 1924, merely residents were, and go along to exist, largely unsupportive of the organisation; the traditional council model continues to function in opposition to the government sanctioned one. By the 20th century, many Eastern Woodlands Indigenous peoples had adopted Christianity — among some, only in name — the result of extensive missionary work in the field of education. Many Haudenosaunee connected to practise the Longhouse Organized religion of Handsome Lake.

Following the Great Depression of the 1930s, many Indigenous peoples began moving to urban centres in Canada and the United States to work. The 1794 Jay'southward Treaty allows Indigenous peoples in Canada to travel freely into the U.s. for work, study or residence. Later on near 1960, government-sponsored job programs on reserves and customs-led revitalization of arts and crafts practices helped to lessen economic dependency in some communities.

Contemporary Life

The Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands have been involved in Canada-wide and international campaigns to protect Indigenous rights (see Idle No More) also every bit community-specific causes, including the negotiation of modernistic-day treaties and self-government. For example, in October 2016, the Algonquins of Ontario signed a land claim agreement-in-principle (i.e., a pace towards a final contract) with the Canadian and Ontario governments that covers 36,000 km² of country in eastern Ontario. While the final details of what will be Ontario'southward first modern treaty may take years to ratify, it remains an historic agreement — 1 that has taken 26 years to negotiate.

Source: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aboriginal-people-eastern-woodlands

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