The Eastern Woodlands is a cultural area of the

indigenous people of North America The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the Am ...

. The Eastern Woodlands extended roughly from the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

to the eastern

Great Plains The Great Plains (french: Grandes Plaines), sometimes simply "the Plains", is a broad expanse of flatland in North America. It is located west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains, much of it covered in prairie, steppe, a ...

, and from the

Great Lakes region The Great Lakes region of North America is a binational Canadian–American region that includes portions of the eight U.S. states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin along with the Canadian p ...

to the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

, which is now part of the

Eastern United States The Eastern United States, commonly referred to as the American East, Eastern America, or simply the East, is the region of the United States to the east of the Mississippi River. In some cases the term may refer to a smaller area or the East C ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by to ...

. The

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of ...

culture area is to the west; the

Subarctic The subarctic zone is a region in the Northern Hemisphere immediately south of the true Arctic, north of humid continental regions and covering much of Alaska, Canada, Iceland, the north of Scandinavia, Siberia, and the Cairngorms. Genera ...

area to the north. The Indigenous people of the Eastern Woodlands spoke languages belonging to several language groups, including Algonquian,

Iroquoian The Iroquoian languages are a language family of indigenous peoples of North America. They are known for their general lack of labial consonants. The Iroquoian languages are polysynthetic and head-marking. As of 2020, all surviving Iroquoia ...

Muskogean Muskogean (also Muskhogean, Muskogee) is a Native American language family spoken in different areas of the Southeastern United States. Though the debate concerning their interrelationships is ongoing, the Muskogean languages are generally div ...

, and

Siouan Siouan or Siouan–Catawban is a language family of North America that is located primarily in the Great Plains, Ohio and Mississippi valleys and southeastern North America with a few other languages in the east. Name Authors who call the ent ...

, as well as apparently isolated languages such as

Calusa The Calusa ( ) were a Native American people of Florida's southwest coast. Calusa society developed from that of archaic peoples of the Everglades region. Previous indigenous cultures had lived in the area for thousands of years. At the time of ...

Chitimacha The Chitimacha ( ; or ) are a federally recognized tribe of Native Americans who live in the U.S. state of Louisiana, mainly on their reservation in St. Mary Parish near Charenton on Bayou Teche. They are the only Indigenous people in the st ...

, Natchez,

Timucua The Timucua were a Native American people who lived in Northeast and North Central Florida and southeast Georgia. They were the largest indigenous group in that area and consisted of about 35 chiefdoms, many leading thousands of people. The v ...

, Tunica and

Yuchi The Yuchi people, also spelled Euchee and Uchee, are a Native American tribe based in Oklahoma. In the 16th century, Yuchi people lived in the eastern Tennessee River valley in Tennessee. In the late 17th century, they moved south to Alabama, G ...

. Many of these languages are still spoken today.

Background

The earliest known inhabitants of the Eastern Woodlands were peoples of the Adena and Hopewell cultures, the term for a variety of peoples, speaking different languages, who inhabited the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys between 800 BC and 800 AD, and were connected by trading and communication routes. The cultures had a tradition of building earthwork mounds and, in some cases, large shaped constructions known as effigy mounds. They had a variety of purposes, some apparently related to astronomical calculations and ritual observances. These peoples were generally hunters and gatherers, while also relying on some farming to produce food on the fertile land in the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. Because of this reliance on farming, these tribes did not migrate like the more northern Eastern Woodlands tribes and instead stayed in one place, which resulted in them developing new social and political structures. The Eastern Woodlands tribes located further north (Algonquian-speaking people) relied heavily on hunting to acquire food. These tribes did not plant many crops, however, some tribes, such as the historic

Ojibwe The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains. According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...

, grew wild rice and relied on it as one of their major food sources. The type of animals these tribes hunted depended on the geographic location of the tribe. For example, the tribes located close to the coast hunted seals, porpoises, and whales, while the more inland tribes hunted deer, moose, and caribou. The meat was either cooked to be eaten immediately or was smoke-dried, to preserve it for later consumption. The largest political unit among the Eastern Woodland tribes were village bands, which were led by one chief. In the Eastern Woodlands Algonquian-speaking societies, patrilineal

clans A clan is a group of people united by actual or perceived kinship and descent. Even if lineage details are unknown, clans may claim descent from founding member or apical ancestor. Clans, in indigenous societies, tend to be endogamous, mea ...

had names associated with animal totems; these clans comprised the village bands. The Eastern Woodlands Iroquoian-speaking societies had a

matrilineal Matrilineality is the tracing of kinship through the female line. It may also correlate with a social system in which each person is identified with their matriline – their mother's lineage – and which can involve the inheritance ...

kinship system, with inheritance and property passed through the mother's line. The Iroquoian village-bands were also composed of numerous clans. Individuals would marry outside their clan to form exogamous clans. They considered themselves to be sibling with the other individuals within the exogamous clan.

References

{{Authority control Eastern First Nations Native American tribes Eastern United States