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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.
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.
- Eastern Woodland Culture Above the Great Lakes (Ojibwa Indians)
At the time Europeans reached the shores of North America, the Ojibwa Indians were the largest tribe on the continent. They referred to themselves as Anishnabe - a word that means the people.
- Eastern Woodland Culture Below the Great Lakes
There were many similarities between the Eastern Woodland Indians who lived below the Great Lakes and their cousins who lived in the rocky forests of the Laurentian Shield.
- Eastern Woodland Culture in the Southeast
Although the Eastern Woodlands Indians culture reached as far north as the headwaters of the McKenzie River in what is now Canada, it thrived particularly well in the forests and fertile soil along the Ohio River and south along the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. The map shows the most southerly range of the Woodland way of life.
- The Moundbuilders
The Mound Builders is a term used to describe several First Nation's cultures that built earthen burial mounds and other earthworks across a large area of North America that extended from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and from the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to the Appalachian mountains. The Mound culture emerged at about 3000 BC and disappeared around 1200 AD.
- An Elder's Stories About the Ojibwa Culture 70 Years Ago
I was born in the bush north of Lake Superior at a time when the spiritual traditions of the Anishinaabe (that's Ojibwa to you!) were still practised in a handful of communities.
