Native American Culture of the Northeast
A regional overview of the Northeast from Khan Academy.
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Place and Time: The Hopewellian Period
The Native American Northeast reaches from the province of Quebec in Canada today, through the Ohio River Valley, and down to the North Carolina coast. The Appalachian Mountains are the main feature of the Northeastern landscape. They include rolling hills and tall peaks.
Native Americans settled in large numbers in this area. This was especially true during the Hopewellian period, from 200 BCE to 500 CE. They came because of the mild climate, easy-to-reach waterways, and good farming conditions. The best known groups in this area include the Algonquians, Iroquois, Susquehannocks, Mohicans, and Hurons.
Food: A Shift Toward Three-Sister Farming
The Hopewellian period brought a cultural shift from hunting and gathering to early farming systems. Some historians estimate that Native Americans were farming squash in Illinois as early as 5000 BCE. Corn farming spread through trading networks to the Ohio River Valley from the Southwest by 350 BCE. Soon people began to plant and grow beans.
Together, the corn, squash, and beans became known as the sacred “three sisters.” The Iroquois people created that term. According to the Iroquois, the three crops would only thrive if planted close together.
The Algonquians kept hunting and gathering for food while they also began to farm. Women gathered berries and worked the cornfields. Men hunted and sometimes helped with farming. Northeastern Native people who lived near rivers also fished for salmon and collected shellfish. With plenty of food, the Iroquois and Hurons made detailed pottery to store the surplus. They also wove baskets to help with farming.
How Communities Were Organized: Villages and Communities
All three sisters quickly became cash crops. These were crops in high demand by Native Americans on the Plains and West Coast, who were eager to trade. In return for the foods, they received large shells, pearls, copper, and silver. Groups within the region traded food and goods with other Northeastern peoples, depending on their area’s special product. For example, the Susquehannocks of Pennsylvania traded wampum beads for nets and furs from the Hurons of the Great Lakes region.
Native people in the Northeast usually lived in villages of a few hundred people. Hochelaga, which is Montreal today, had several thousand people. It was surrounded by large cornfields. In farming Hopewellian societies, men planted and harvested. Women worked in the home, took care of the children, and processed the crops.
Hopewellian culture began the tradition of mound-building. It would spread down to the Southeast in the next century. Across the Ohio River Valley, Native Americans built mounds of earth. These may have been used for burials and ceremonies. Large mounds and animal-shaped earthworks still exist across this area today.
Beliefs and Social Order: Making Alliances and Democratic Ideas
As the Northeast became more agricultural, it also became more urban. We think of farming areas as less crowded today. But farming then required people to live together in fortified villages to protect their harvests. Many Native people in the Northeast lived in longhouses, homes up to 100 feet long. The Algonquians farmed but also kept hunting and fishing. So they “commuted” from less permanent villages of wigwams. But some groups, like the Iroquois, began to have success in farming and so in trading. As they did, violence between tribes grew.
Competition over trade led to ongoing conflict between the Iroquois and Algonquians. The Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas hoped to end the fighting between tribes. Between 1100 and 1400 CE, they set up the Iroquois League, or the Great League of Peace. The Iroquoians met for about a year to find a solution. They wanted to end a cycle of violence and revenge between tribes.
The Iroquois League created a system where each member group kept some independence over local matters. But the League would work together on trade policies and on diplomacy. The Iroquois League put forward republican principles. It also put forward a two-level system of federalism for the first time in North America. So many historians argue that the Iroquois League was the first American democracy. It was set up at least four hundred years before the U.S. Constitution of 1787.