TheAlgonquians are one of the most populous and widespread North Americanindigenous North American groups, consisting of the peoples who speakAlgonquian languages. They historically were prominent along theAtlantic Coast and in the interior regions alongSaint Lawrence River and around theGreat Lakes.[2]
Before contact with Europeans, most Algonquian settlements lived by hunting and fishing, with many of them supplementing their diet by cultivatingcorn, beans andsquash (the "Three Sisters"). TheOjibwe cultivatedwild rice.[3]
At the time of the first European settlements inNorth America, Algonquian peoples resided in present-dayCanada east of theRocky Mountains,New England,New Jersey, southeasternNew York,Delaware, and down theAtlantic Coast to theUpper South, and around theGreat Lakes in present-dayIllinois,Indiana,Iowa,Michigan,Minnesota, andWisconsin. The precise homeland of the Algonquian peoples is not known. At the time of the European arrival, the hegemonicIroquois Confederacy, based in present-day New York andPennsylvania, was regularly at war with their Algonquian neighbors.[citation needed]
The Algonquian peoples include and have included historical populations in:
Colonists in the Massachusetts Bay area first encountered theWampanoag,Massachusett,Nipmuc,Pennacook,Penobscot,Passamaquoddy, andQuinnipiac. TheMohegan,Pequot,Pocumtuc,Podunk,Tunxis, andNarragansett were based in southern New England. TheAbenaki were 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 traded with French colonists who settled along the Atlantic coast and the Saint Lawrence River. TheMahican were located in western New England in the upper Hudson River Valley (around present-day Albany, New York). These groups cultivated crops, hunted, and fished.[4]
The Algonquians ofNew England such as thePiscataway (who spokeEastern Algonquian), practised a seasonal economy. The basicsocial unit was the village: a few hundred people related by aclankinship 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.[citation needed]
In warm weather, they constructed portablewigwams, a type of hut usually withbuckskin doors. In the winter, they erected the more substantiallonghouses, in which more than oneclan could reside. They cached food supplies in more permanent,semi-subterranean structures.[citation needed]
In the spring, when the fish were spawning, they left the winter camps to build villages at coastal locations and waterfalls. In March, they caughtsmelt in nets andweirs, moving about inbirch barkcanoes. In April, they nettedalewife,sturgeon andsalmon. In May, they caughtcod with hook and line in theocean; andtrout,smelt,striped bass andflounder in theestuaries and streams. Putting out to sea, they huntedwhales,porpoises,walruses andseals. They gatheredscallops,mussels,clams andcrabs[5] and, in southern New Jersey, harvested clams year-round.[6]
From April through October, natives huntedmigratory birds and their eggs:Canada geese,brant,mourning doves and others. In July and August they gatheredstrawberries,raspberries,blueberries and nuts. In September, they split into small groups and moved up the streams to the forest. There, they huntedbeaver,caribou,moose andwhite-tailed deer.[7]
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 insouthern 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 invokingLiebig's law of the minimum.[citation needed]
The southern Algonquians of New England relied predominantly onslash and burn agriculture.[8][9][10][11][12][13] They cleared fields by burning for one or two years of cultivation, after which the village moved to another location. This is the reason theEnglish 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.[14]
Scholars estimate that, by the year 1600, the indigenous population of New England had reached 70,000–100,000.[14]
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 theShawnee,Illiniwek,Kickapoo,Menominee,Miami,Sauk andMeskwaki. 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.[15]
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 ofIndian removal legislation; they forced the people west of theMississippi River to what they designated asIndian Territory. After the US extinguished Indian land claims, this area was admitted as the state ofOklahoma in the early 20th century.[15]
Ojibwe/Chippewa,Odawa,Potawatomi, and a variety ofCree groups lived inUpper Peninsula of Michigan,Western Ontario,Wisconsin,Minnesota, and theCanadian Prairies. TheArapaho,Blackfoot andCheyenne developed as indigenous to theGreat Plains.[16]
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