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Eastern Woodland Indians Culture

A Brief Overview

Eastern Woodland Indians is a term coined by twentieth century anthropologists and happily picked up by school boards attempting to simplify a program of native studies.

Eastern Woodland Indians is a term describes a polygot of tribal societies that once inhabited an area in North America that extended from the northern coniferouis tree line and the headwaters of the McKenzie River, through the vast hardwood forests surrounding the Great Lakes and the shores of the Mississippi River, south to the Gulf of Mexico and east through the Carolina forests to the Atlantic seaboard.

Map of the Eastern Woodland culture before European contact

The Eastern Woodlands Indians culture became cohesive approximately 3000 years ago although there is no sharp cultural break between what is referred to as the Late Archaic Period and what developed into the Woodlands culture. In the minds of many anthropologists, the main distinction was the development of thick walled pottery that was widely distributed throughout many parts of the Woodlands territory, especially below the Great Lakes.

Subcultures within the eastern woodland Indians' territory

In the sense that all Woodland First Nations were living in heavily forested areas the cultures of the various Eastern Woodland Indians were similar. But variations in temperature and terrain from one end of the territory to another meant that there were significant differences in types of housing, food resources and clothing. And the restrictions imposed by the transportation and communication systems available in such a huge territory, meant that there were also many variations in social and political structures, religious beliefs, and language within the broad culture of the Eastern Woodland Indians society.

At the time of European contact, there were three large sub-groups of Woodland Indians that could be divided geographically (north, northeastern and southeastern) and very roughly into three language families...Algonquian, Iroquoian and Muskogean.

If you follow the links below you'll be able to discover some of the differences in culture between the Eastern Woodland Indians who lived in the north, those who lived in the middle of the continent and those who lived in the more temperate south.

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I've added a couple of pages on food that's available to harvest for free in the wild.

 

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