Algonquian peoples

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This article is about the numerous peoples speaking Algonquian languages. For the "Algonquin" of
Quebec, see Algonquin people.

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Pre-contact distribution of Algonquian languages

The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language
groups. Today, thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples. Historically, the
peoples were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and into the interior along the St. Lawrence
River and around the Great Lakes. This grouping consists of the peoples who speak Algonquian
languages.

Contents
[hide]

1Pre-colonial period

2Colonial period

3Tribal identities

o 3.1Canada
 o 3.2New England area

o 3.3Mid- and south-Atlantic areas

o 3.4Midwest

o 3.5Upper west

o 3.6Western areas

4See also

5References

6Further reading

7External links

Pre-colonial period[edit]

Algonquian couple, 18th-century

A 16th-century sketch of the Algonquian village of Pomeiock.

Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing,
although quite a few supplemented their diet by cultivating corn, beans and squash (the "Three
Sisters"). The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice[citation needed].
The Algonquians of New England (who spoke the Eastern Algonquian) practiced a seasonal
economy. The basic social unit was the village: a few hundred people related by
a clan kinship structure. Villages were temporary and mobile. The people moved to locations of
greatest natural food supply, often breaking into smaller units or recombining as the circumstances
required. This custom resulted in a certain degree of cross-tribal mobility, especially in troubled
times.
In warm weather, they constructed light wigwams for portability. Wigwams are a type of hut which
usually had buckskin doors. In the winter, they erected the more substantial long houses, in which
more than one clan could reside. They cached food supplies in more permanent, semi-subterranean
structures.
In the spring, when the fish were spawning, they left the winter camps to build villages at coastal
locations and waterfalls. In March, they caught smelt in nets and weirs, moving about
in birchbark canoes. In April, they netted alewife, sturgeon and salmon. In May, they caught cod with
hook and line in the ocean; and trout, smelt, striped bass and flounder in the estuaries and streams.
Putting out to sea, the men hunted whales, porpoises, walruses and seals. The women and children
gathered scallops, mussels, clams and crabs, all the basis of menus in New England today.
From April through October, natives hunted migratory birds and their eggs: Canada
geese, brant, mourning doves and others. In July and August they
gathered strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and nuts. In September, they split into small groups
and moved up the streams to the forest. There, the men hunted beaver, caribou, moose and white-
tailed deer.
In December, when the snows began, the people created larger winter camps in sheltered locations,
where they built or reconstructed long houses. February and March were lean times. The tribes in
southern New England and other northern latitudes had to rely on cached food. Northerners
developed a practice of going hungry for several days at a time. Historians hypothesize that this
practice kept the population down, according to Liebig's law. The northerners were food gatherers
only.
The southern Algonquians of New England relied predominantly on slash-and-burn agriculture.[1][2][3][4][5]
[6]
They cleared fields by burning for one or two years of cultivation, after which the village moved to
another location. This is the reason the English found the region relatively cleared and ready for
planting. By using various kinds of native corn (maize), beans and squash, southern New England
natives were able to improve their diet to such a degree that their population increased and they
reached a density of 287 people per 100mi2 as opposed to 41 in the north.[7]
Even with mobile crop rotation, southern villages were necessarily less mobile than northern ones.
The natives continued their seasonal occupation but tended to move into fixed villages near their
lands. They adjusted to the change partially by developing a sex-oriented division of labor. The
women cultivated crops, and the men fished and hunted.
Scholars[who?] estimate that, by the year 1600, the indigenous population of New England had reached
70,000100,000.[citation needed]

Colonial period[edit]
At the time of the first European settlements in North America, Algonquian tribes occupied New
Brunswick, and much of Canada east of the Rocky Mountains; what is now New England, New
Jersey, southeastern New York, Delaware and down the Atlantic Coast through the Upper South;
and around the Great Lakes in present-
day Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. They were most concentrated in the
New England region. The homeland of the Algonquian peoples is not known. At the time of the
European arrival, the hegemonic Iroquois federation, based in present-day New York and
Pennsylvania, was regularly at war with Algonquian neighbours.

Tribal identities[edit]
Canada[edit]
The French and later English encountered the Maliseet of present-day Maine, Quebec and New
Brunswick; the Abenaki of Quebec, Vermont and New Hampshire; the Mi'kmaq band governments of
the Maritime provinces lived primarily on fishing. Further north are
the Betsiamite, Atikamekw, Anishinaabe and Montagnais/Naskapi (Innu). The Beothuk people of
Newfoundland are also believed to have been Algonquian, but their last known speaker died in the
early 19th century. Few records of their language or culture remain.
New England area[edit]
Colonists in the Massachusetts Bay area first encountered
the Wampanoag, Massachusett, Nipmuck, Pennacook, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy,
and Quinnipiac. The Mohegan, Pequot, Pocumtuc, Tunxis, and Narragansett were based in southern
New England. The Abenaki tribe was located in northern New England: present-day Maine, New
Hampshire, and Vermont in what became the United States and eastern Quebec in what became
Canada. They had established trading relationships with French colonists who settled along the
Atlantic coast and what was later called the St. Lawrence River. The Mohican tribe was located in
western New England and in the upper Hudson River Valley (around what was developed by
Europeans as Albany, New York). These tribes practiced agriculture, hunting and fishing.
Mid- and south-Atlantic areas[edit]
The Lenape, also called Delaware, were (Munsee) and Unami speakers that were in what is now
known as the eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, lower Hudson Valley and western Long
Island areas in New York. They encountered the European explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in what
is now New York Harbor in 1524. Branches of the Pequot occupied eastern Long Island.
Further south were the traditional homes of the Powhatan, a loose group of tribes numbering into the
tens of thousands, who were among the first to encounter English colonists in the Chesapeake Bay.
Historic tribes also included the Nanticoke, Wicocomico, Secotan, Chowanoke, Weapemeoc,
and Chickahominy peoples.
Midwest[edit]
The French encountered Algonquian peoples in this area through their trade and limited colonization
of New France along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. The historic peoples of the Illinois Country
were the Shawnee, Illiniwek, Kickapoo, Menominee, Miami, and Sauk and Fox. The latter were also
known as the Sac and Fox Tribe, and later known as the Meskwaki Indians, who lived throughout the
present-day Midwest of the United States.
During the nineteenth century, many Native Americans from east of the Mississippi River were
displaced over great distances through the United States passage and enforcement of Indian
removal legislation; they forced the tribes west of the Mississippi River to what they designated
as Indian Territory. After the US extinguished Indian land claims, this area was admitted as the state
of Oklahoma in the early 20th century.
Upper west[edit]
Ojibwe/Chippewa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and a variety of Cree groups lived in Upper
Michigan, Western Ontario, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Canadian Prairies.
The Arapaho, Blackfoot and Cheyenne developed as indigenous to the Great Plains.
Western areas[edit]
Algonquian peoples in the present states of Wyoming, Colorado, southwestern Nebraska and
northwestern Kansas were ancestors to the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.[8] The Gros Ventre are an
Algonquian-speaking tribe that migrated to north central Montana.

See also[edit]
Carolina Algonquian

Croatan

Great Trail

Pamlico

Roanoke tribe

Siwanoy

References[edit]
1. Jump up^ Stevenson W. Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture and
Country Life 1640-1840 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and
Museum Commission, 1950), 2, 35-37, 63-65, 124.

2. Jump up^ Day, Gordon M. "The Indian as an Ecological Factor in the

Northeastern Forests." Ecology, Vol. 34, #2 (April): 329-346.

3. Jump up^ New England and New York areas 1580-1800, 1953. Note:
The Lenni Lenape (Delaware) tribe in New Jersey and the
Massachuset tribe in Massachusetts used fire in ecosystems
 4. Jump up^ Russell, Emily W.B. Vegetational Change in Northern New
Jersey Since 1500 A.D.: A Palynological, Vegetational and Historical
Synthesis, Ph.D. dissertation. New Brunswick, PA: Rutgers University.
Author notes on page 8 that Indians often augmented lightning fires.
1979

5. Jump up^ Russell, Emily W.B. "Indian Set Fires in the Forests of the
Northeastern United States." Ecology, Vol. 64, #1 (Feb): 78 88. 1983a
Author found no strong evidence that Indians purposely burned large
areas, but they did burn small areas near their habitation sites. Noted
that the Lenna Lenape Tribe used fire.

6. Jump up^ Gowans, William. "A Brief Description of New York,

Formerly Called New Netherlands with the Places Thereunto
Adjoining, Likewise a Brief Relation of the Customs of the Indians
There." New York, NY: 1670. Reprinted in 1937 by the Facsimile Text
Society, Columbia University Press, New York. Notes that the Lenni
Lenape (Delaware) tribe in New Jersey used fire in ecosystems.

7. Jump up^ Cronon, William (1983). Changes in the Land: Indians,

Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New York: Hill and Wang.
p. 42. ISBN 0-8090-0158-6.

8. Jump up^ Frink, Lisa. (2006) Gender and Hide Production. Lanham,
MD: AltaMira Press. p. 30. ISBN 0-7591-0850-1.

Further reading[edit]
Cappel, Constance, The Smallpox Genocide of the Odawa Tribe at
L'Arbre Croche, 1763: The History of the Odawa People, Edwin
Mellen press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-7734-5220-6

Magocsi, Paul Robert (ed.), Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples,

Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1999.

Moondancer and Strong Woman, A Cultural History of the Native

Peoples of Southern New England: Voices from Past and Present,
Bauu Press, copyright 2007, ISBN 0-9721349-3-X

Tooker, William Wallace, The Algonquian Series, Harper, 1901.

External links[edit]
Media related to Algonquian peoples at Wikimedia Commons

Algonquian East DNA Project

(Waabu), "Aquidneck Indian Council: Documents on Algonquian

language and other topics", Scribd
Categories:
Algonquian peoples
 Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands
Great Lakes tribes
Indigenous peoples in the United States
First Nations in Ontario
First Nations in Quebec
First Nations in Atlantic Canada
First Nations in Alberta
First Nations in Saskatchewan
First Nations in Manitoba
Native American tribes in North Carolina

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