Everything about Algonquian Peoples totally explained
» This article is about the large number of peoples speaking Algonquian languages. For the Algonquin of Quebec and the Ottawa Valley, who are one of these peoples, see Algonquin.
The
Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread
North American
Native groups, with
tribes originally numbering in the hundreds, and hundreds of thousands who still identify with various Algonquian peoples. This grouping consists of peoples that speak
Algonquian languages.
History
Pre-colonial period
Before Europeans came into contact, most Algonquians lived by hunting and fishing, although quite a few supplemented their diet by cultivating
corn,
beans,
squash, and (particularly among the
Ojibwe)
wild rice.
The Algonquians of
New England (who spoke eastern
Algonquian) practiced a seasonal economy. The basic social unit was the village of a few hundred people related by a
kinship structure. Villages were temporary and mobile. They 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, villages were constructed of light
wigwams for portability. In the winter more solid
long houses were used, in which more than one
clan could reside. Food supplies were cached in more permanent, semi-subterranean buildings.
In the spring, when the fish were spawning, the natives left their winter camps to build light 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. They put out to sea and hunted
whales,
porpoises,
walruses and
seals. The women and children gathered
scallops,
mussels,
clams and
crabs, all dishes in New England today.
In April through October, they 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 they hunted
beaver,
caribou,
moose and
white-tailed deer.
In December when the snows began they recombined in winter camps in sheltered locations, where they built or reconstructed long houses. February and March were lean times. They relied on cached food, especially in southern New England. Northerners had a policy of going hungry for several days at a time. It is hypothesized that this policy 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. Fields were cleared by burning for one or two years of cultivation, after which the village moved to another location. This habit is the reason why the English found the region cleared and ready for planting. The native corn (maize), of which they planted various kinds,
beans and
squash improved the diet to such a degree that the southerners reached a density of 287 persons per square hundred miles, as opposed to 41 in the north.
Even with this mobile form of crop rotation, southern villages were necessarily less mobile than northern. The natives continued their seasonal occupation but tended to move into fixed villages near their lands. Society made the adjustment partially by developing a gender-oriented
division of labor. The women farmed and the men fished and hunted.
By the year 1600, a convenient terminus for the relatively unstressed native economy and society, the indigenous population of New England had reached, it's estimated, 70,000–100,000.
Colonial period
At the time of the first European settlements in North America, Algonquian tribes occupied what is now
New England,
New Jersey, southeastern
New York,
New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, all of
Canada east of the
Rocky Mountains,
Minnesota,
Wisconsin,
Michigan,
Illinois,
Indiana, and were occasionally present in
Kentucky. They were most concentrated in the New England region. The homeland of the Algonquian peoples isn't known. At the time of the European arrival, the hegemonic
Iroquois federation was regularly at war with their Algonquian neighbours, forcing them to settle in regions unoccupied by Iroquois.
For about two centuries, Algonquians provided the main obstacles to the spread of Euro-American settlers, who concluded hundreds of peace treaties with them.
Metacomet,
Cornstalk,
Tecumseh and
Pontiac were all leaders who belonged to Algonquian nations.
Tribal identities
Algonquian tribes of the New England area include
Mohegan,
Pequot,
Narragansett,
Wampanoag,
Massachusett,
Nipmuck,
Pennacook, and
Passamaquoddy. The
Abenaki tribe is located in Maine and eastern Quebec. These tribes practiced some agriculture. The
Maliseet of
Maine,
Quebec and
New Brunswick, and the
Micmac tribes of the Canadian
Maritime provinces lived primarily on fishing. Further north are the
Betsiamites,
Atikamekw,
Algonkin and
Montagnais/
Naskapi (
Innu). The
Beothuk people of Newfoundland are also believed to have been Algonquians, but they disappeared in the early
19th century and few records of their language or culture remain. In the west,
Ojibwe/
Chippewa,
Ottawa,
Potawatomi, and a variety of
Cree groups lived in
Minnesota,
Wisconsin,
Upper Michigan,
Western Ontario and the
Canadian Prairies. The
Arapaho,
Blackfoot and
Cheyenne are also indigenous to the
Great Plains. In the Midwest lived the
Shawnee,
Illiniwek,
Kickapoo,
Menominee,
Miami, and
Sac and
Fox, many of whom have since been displaced over great distances through
Indian removal. In the mid- and south-Atlantic are the traditional homes of the
Powhatan,
Lumbee,
Nanticoke,
Lenape (Munsee and Unami), and
Mahican peoples.
Identity problems
The tribal names used to identify individual groups of Algonquian peoples and their languages are often misleading. Even today,
intermarriage and tight
intercommunity alliances are common across the Algonquian peoples. Their languages are also quite similar. Across Canada,
Cree speaking people may be able to understand each other with little difficulty, and the
Ojibwe language is close enough to the Western Cree languages to remain partially understandable. These divisions have often been imposed by European efforts to manage native peoples, and to give them a European-style political identity better suited to the colonisers' ends. Within these communities, such identities often overlapped.
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