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The Algonquians are one of the most populous and widespread North American indigenous American groups, consisting of the peoples who speak Algonquian languages. They historically were prominent along the Atlantic Coast and in the interior regions along St. Lawrence River and around the Great Lakes.
Before contact with Europeans, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, with many of them supplementing their diet by cultivating maize, beans and Cucurbita (the "Three Sisters"). The Ojibwe cultivated wild rice.
The Algonquians of New England such as the Piscataway (who spoke Eastern Algonquian), practised a seasonal economy. The basic Social group 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 gathering as the circumstances required. This custom resulted in a certain degree of intertribal mobility, especially in troubled times.
In warm weather, they constructed portable , a type of hut usually with buckskin doors. In the winter, they erected the more substantial longhouses, in which more than one clan could reside. They cached food supplies in more permanent, Root cellar.
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 , moving about in birch bark . 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, they hunted , , and pinniped. They gathered , , and Mark Kurlansky, 2006 and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round.Dreibelbis, 1978, page 33
From April through October, natives hunted bird migration birds and their eggs: Canada geese, Brent Goose, and others. In July and August they gathered strawberry, raspberry, blueberry and nuts. In September, they split into small groups and moved up the streams to the forest. There, they 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 longhouses. 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, with some invoking Liebig's law of the minimum.
The southern Algonquians of New England relied predominantly on slash and burn agriculture.Stevenson W. Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country Life 1640-1840 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1950), 2, 35-37, 63-65, 124. New England and New York areas 1580-1800, 1953. Note: The Lenni Lenape (Delaware) in New Jersey and the Massachuset in Massachusetts used fire in ecosystemsRussell, 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 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 used fire.Gowans, William. "A Brief Description of New York, Formerly Called New Netherland 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) in New Jersey used fire in ecosystems. 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 England 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 100 square miles as opposed to 41 in the north.
Scholars estimate that, by the year 1600, the indigenous population of New England had reached 70,000–100,000.
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 people 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.
Midwest
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 people, Menominee, Miami people, Sauk people and Meskwaki. The latter were also known as the Sac and Fox, and later known as the Meskwaki Indians, who lived throughout the present-day Midwest of the United States.
Upper west
Ojibwe/Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, and a variety of Cree groups lived in Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Western Ontario, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Canadian Prairies. The Arapaho, Blackfoot and Cheyenne developed as indigenous to the Great Plains.
List of historic Algonquian-speaking peoples
See also
Footnotes
Further reading
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Categories: 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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