Northeastern Woodlands: Precontact Life Ways, Changes during Contact, and Colonialism - Research Paper Example

 Northeastern Woodlands Self Reflection Paper: Northeastern Woodlands Introduction The most pervasive mythology I have been having in mind regarding Northeastern Woodlands Indians and which I have come to realize not to be accurate is that, skulking Indians lived only in primeval forests. As for me when the words Northeastern woodlands comes into mind the book The Skulking Way Of War by Patrick M. Malone comes into mind, and I always have this perception of Indians living in dark forest archaic times moving across the numerous lakes with their birch-bark canoes. I also envision them giving rise to now famous words used today like Tomahawk, squaw, sachem, as well as wigwam. The Northeastern woodlands Indians had three key language units, namely the Algonquian, the Iroquoian, and the Siouan. The Algonkian concentrated themselves in the Western Great Lakes towards New England coast, and downstream towards North Carolina coast. The Iroquoian lived around Eastern Great lakes towards the Appalachian Mountains. However, the Winnebago were the only northwestern woodlands Siouan speakers, and they mostly dwelled around the Great Lakes region (Oswalt, 2009). Thus, the aim of this self-reflection paper is to describe the North-eastern Woodlands native Indians pre contact life ways, changes they underwent during contact and their lifestyle during colonialism. Discussion What surprised me about the Northeastern woodlands indigenous people is that before contact with Europeans they were not a single unit, and instead they had numerous sub-cultural regions, whereby each region observed a rather specialized environmental adjustment. To begin with, the Algonquian sub-group occupied the area around Lake Superior and then northwards to Lake Huron, towards Ottawa Valley, while others occupied the area eastwards of New England and Atlantic Provinces towards the coast. The second sub cultural group was the Iroquoian-speaking tribes and they occupied eastern Great Lakes regions, area around mid St. Lawrence Valley, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and upstate New York. They mostly engaged in hunting, fishing, corn production and wild vegetable harvesting. The third sub-cultural region extended along the Atlantic coast, and the inhabitants were Micmac, Malecite, Abnaki sub cultural groups. Those dwelling along central coast included the Penobscot, the Penacook, the Mohican, and the Massachusetts, and they are known for growing modified corn (Oswalt, 2009). In order to counter aggression from Iroquois Confederacy, a coalition comprising five Algonquian speaking groups created the Wabanaki Confederacy, and they were made of Abenaki, the Mí'kmaq, Penobscot, the Passamaquoddy, and the Maliseet. However, the confederacy was divided in 1862 and never reconciled (Oswalt, 2009). Thus, the Northeastern woodlands group occupied an extensive region ranging from southern Canada, northwards towards Lake Erie plus Ontario, New England states, Atlantic states south to Virginia, Ohio valley, and the Great Lakes region (Oswalt, 2009). These areas are characterized by cold winters, deep snows, and hot plus humid summers. Hence, the first inhabitants initially centered on hunting and harvesting of natural foods, before later combining with smaller animal rearing and food growing. Those who combined hunting, gathering and horticulture, like the Nipissing, the Ottawa, and the Algonquin speakers, lived along the St. Lawrence River area and they relied also on fishing. But still their main food crops were corn, beans, as well as squash. They mostly planted the corn in hills combining them with beans and squash. During planting period they resorted to catching eels and shellfish and the men usually stalked seals on rocks near the seashore. Farming practices by the Iroquois-speaking groups was based on slash-and-burn and shifting cultivation, and when the ground had been exhausted, they moved to other areas, and it took them between 10-15 years to weaken the soil in that particular land and move on to another (Oswalt, 2009). It was interesting to learn that in they built dams referred to as wiers, using brush and stones removed from the river mouths, so as to get a huge number of fish. Thus, the Algonquian-speaking groups did not just subsisted on deer meat, bears, and wild fruits, but also obtained fish from the lakes and shellfish along the ocean shores. They also harvested various wild foods but within a seasonal cycle, for example maple sap, nuts, rice, and yellow water-lily roots (Oswalt, 2009). Horticulture and cultivation of corn was practiced in order to balance hunting and trapping, and the crops grown included several forms of beans, squash, while some regions had tobacco. During springs, they cleared the fields before planting and during summer they tend to look after the planted crops, so that between late summer and early fall harvesting was done. This made the entire period during fall to be a collective hunting session as they left their villages and built temporary camps within the different hunting territories. Notably, the Abenaki and the Micmac groups used dogs during hunting to catch deer and other game animals (Oswalt, 2009). It was not surprising to me that their religious view was based on animism point of view. Thus, they had shamans who believed in spirits and the guardian spirits, and who helped them in healing illnesses and performing agricultural ceremonies. Moreover, the Five Nations Huron practiced medicine through societies, the famous one being the False Face Society, a group specializing in curing illnesses. The Iroquoian-speaking warriors asked for assistance from guardian spirits through dreams and vision quests before engaging in wars. In terms of burial rites, they often put up heaps of earth on the deceased bodies. However, the Huron sub-group practiced complex ceremony referred to as Feasts of the Dead, and such ceremonies took place when villages were to be relocated to new areas (Oswalt, 2009). The Feasts of the dead involved collecting every bone of those who died in that particular village and then heaping them inside a mass grave, in order to accompany what they referred to as grave goods. In terms of clothing they wore attires derived from buckskin or the deer skin, but the hair and fur were completely removed. The males clothing comprised the loincloths, moccasins with leggings, and shirts, while the females wore clothing that had grass skirts with moccasins. Remarkably, they designed the dream catcher, which was some sort of protective charm that was believed to protect them from bad spirits when dreaming. It was made designed to look similar to a spider web, but with an attached wooden hoop woven on a slack net. It sounded to me bizarre that they decorated using sacred objects like feathers or beads, as it was intended to trap good dreams when sleeping into the web, before sliding them down into the feathers and then into the sleeping person (Oswalt, 2009). The types of social existence during pre contact were assorted and complex. While others like the Mesquakie emphasized on patrilineal arrangements, others had matrilineal relationships, especially the Iroquois League people (Oswalt, 2009). However, the Northern Iroquois organized themselves into matrilineage structures, while the Maliseet-Passamaquoddy had a social life based on bilateral arrangements. Under the matrilineage system, members lived in solitary longhouse, and each of the matrilineage was guided by matrons usually the eldest female. Such Matrilineages performed particular religious obligations, including serving as voices of moral authority during selection of leaders. The lineages on the other hand were clustered into clans, whereby every village had numerous clans, and as such, emphasis was placed on kin relationships and standards of reciprocity (Oswalt, 2009). I found it complex and confusing about their social arrangement, even as the most common aspect of such lineages was that the gathering/hunting groups based their relationships on bigger kin groups or clans. The clans in northeastern woodlands groups were frequently tied to certain animal totems, and membership within a particular lineage was based on social interactions. It appears that they had highly diverse and structured social arrangements, ranging from the massive Iroquois League, to the smaller types of social arrangements as practiced by the semi-nomadic gatherer-hunters. In general semi-nomadic gatherer-hunters band, were led by leaders who derived authority from consensus and alliances arising from confederacies (Oswalt, 2009). However, the sedentary northwestern woodlands horticulturalists had complex social organizations since they had stratified social arrangements and which necessitated hereditary leadership styles. The leaders referred to as sachems, or otherwise sagamores across New England, and werowances in the north acquired leadership through their automatic membership in honored lineages. The Narragansett had two distinct leadership structures, the civil authority and the war leader (Oswalt, 2009). What I have learnt from this learning experience that I did not know about the Northeastern woodlands indigenous people, is that power and responsibility was not attained through coercion or kinship, but mostly through consent. Hence, they had no hierarchical-founded central based authority (Oswalt, 2009). The groups banded mutually, and as such, they had distinct political alliances which operated under a three-tier arrangement comprising village councils, which then merged to form the national council, and then the various national councils merged to form a confederacy council. The objective was to uphold communal harmony by guaranteeing subsistence of the various groupings. However, the people of Northern Algonquians lived under loosely defined organization. In particular, yearly gatherings of confederacy councils were only meant to strengthen the existing economic plus political engagements (Oswalt, 2009). The village council comprised every village leader both men and women who met on a daily basis. Nevertheless, the council body comprised mostly men, and women required approval. Every clan was presided over by two diverse leaders who included the civil chief, together with the war chief. In particular, the civil chief was selected based on qualities such as performance during wars, intelligence level, and the ability to articulate issues on behalf of the group. On the other hand, the civil leader tasks comprised administering every local affair like organizing communal functions (Oswalt, 2009). The settlement patterns comprised small villages having at least two houses to bigger palisade towns sitting on several acres. The houses were built using skin, grass mats, and bark enclosed tipis or wigwams. The Iroquois built longhouses while the gathering-hunting groups like Micmac, Objibwa, and the Aenaki lived in camp bases, especially during winter as either a single nuclear family or extended family dwellings (Oswalt, 2009). The longhouses facilitated their mobile lifestyles, but during winter they built pyramidal or oval shaped wigwams that were framed using saplings, and then enclosed with partly covered bark strips or woven mats, in addition to skins. The key was to have something that can be easily constructed and carried any time, while at the same time withstand all weather conditions. The horticultural and agriculturally subsistence groups had houses that varied broadly. For instance, summer houses were designed as dome/ barrel shaped with sapling frames and then covered using woven mats and bark strips. The Great Lakes region groups like the Shawnee constructed houses using massive wooden structures in a circular framework, due to the necessity for space to be used during rituals or council meetings (Oswalt, 2009). The first contact between European and northeastern woodlands people, took place between 12th and 14th century when explorer Norsemen coming from Greenland explored the region, and then later Basque fishermen from Spain and Breton from France explored the Eastern coast massive fishing banks (Oswalt, 2009). However, real contact occurred during 15th century and it involved the French, Spanish, Swedish, English, Dutch and Portuguese explorers, traders, fishermen and settlers with an intention of acquiring Woodland Indians resources. Trade between them involved mainly items like furs, lumber, fish, and in some cases slaves. Early 17th century saw European settlements at Tadoussac, and Port-royal in the Annapolis Valley. Samuel de Champlain with the assistance of Montagnais war group fought against the Mohawk and this marked the start of intertribal hostilities. During first half of 17th century, serious epidemics brought by Europeans and warfare reduced the northeastern woodlands Indians populations, thus disrupting their subsistence sequence of hunting and gathering as they relied more so on European trade products (Oswalt, 2009). This then created new territories, rivalries and new leadership structures. The European settlements and wars extensively disrupted the Northeastern woodland cultures. In particular, the establishment of Jamestown colony along the shores of Chesapeake Bay created the notion of legitimatizing the English wholesale conquests of Northeastern woodland resources, especially land, trees and fur. The enormous deciduous plus coniferous trees such as pine, birch, and oak became important items for trade. Small-scale horticulture increasingly complemented their diet due to reduction in hunting grounds. Others were employed by European companies in positions like lumbering, mining as well as fur trade (Oswalt, 2009). During colonialism, elected structure comprising chiefs and their councilors became substitutes for customary political institutions inside the reserves, but not so much among the Iroquois who still maintained confederate chiefs. It was only until 1924 that the Six Nations conventional system was officially replaced with elective posts (Oswalt, 2009). Furthermore, late 20th century saw many Northeastern Woodland people adopting Christianity even though nominally, as many like the Iroquois still practiced Longhouse religion initiated by Handsome Lake. Also, their overreliance on government economic support, coupled with massive unemployment, and social problems like alcohol resulted in widespread poverty inside most reserves. Even though their agricultural methods altered considerably due to new technologies, introduction of new crops, and change in allotment of labor practices, indigenous agricultural activities declined considerably. This can be attributed to increased trading and their confinement in reserves whereby lands were subdivided and others displaced completely from their lands (Oswalt, 2009). Religious wise some lgonquian preserved their animistic world outlook during colonialism, while the Iroquois observed their Longhouse religion and principles. They also managed to revitalize their languages, music, songs, dances and crafts, especially pottery in order to reinforce their distinctiveness and esteem after enduring coerced cultural erosion practices. Conclusion This paper has provided a self reflection account of the way of life of Northeastern woodland Native Indians during pre contact, colonialism and post contact. Based on the study, there are massive variations between the various indigenous groups and this could be attributed to diverse landforms, different natural resources, climate, distinct drainage systems, as well as rivalries and competition for natural resources. Hence, such variations contributed to differences in the cultures of the various Northeastern woodland societies. This paper has shown how they on their land by planting corn, fishing, harvesting of wild fruits, while maintaining their traditional practices of Animism, and group lineages. The paper has also revealed how during colonialism they underwent massive culture change, even as their key activities such as hunting, fishing, and subsistence farming became marginal after being replaced with trade. Furthermore, their population numbers dwindled due to introduction of diseases, wars and displacement and this continued even after being left to oblivion in their reserves. Furthermore, the Northeastern woodlands Indian traditional beliefs, in terms of religion, language and social values either disappeared or combined with European Christianity. The paper acknowledges that their traditions together with beliefs need to be recognized and appreciated due to the valuable lessons they provide on ethnic identity and delivery of justice to them. . . Reference Oswalt, W. H. (2009). This Land Was Theirs:A Study of Native North Americans (9 ed.). Newyork: Oxford University Press. . Read More