Page 13 - The Native American Experience

Native Americans who lived in present-day New England were

Inupiat Arctic Arctic Circle part of the Wampanoag tribal confederation, which included the
Ocean Patuxet, Mashpee, and Nantucket peoples. These clans spoke
dialects of the Algonquian language, which was also spoken by
Yupik
nations as varied as the Delaware Lenapé, the Ojibwa in the up-
Tanaina
Aleut
per Midwest, and the Blackfoot of the Great Plains. As with many
other Native Americans throughout the continent, corn provided
Inuit
a nutritional staple that allowed the Wampanoag to thrive. English
Tlingit
explorer John Smith expressed his amazement at the bountiful
Chipewyan
Haida landscape shaped by the Patuxet in present-day Massachusetts.
NORTH AMERICA
Cree In his 1616 book A Description of New England, Smith wrote that
Kwakiutl
Onondaga Micmac
Nootka the land is “so planted with Gardens and Corne fi elds, and so well
Pacific
Ocean Chinook Blackfoot Algonquian
Yakima Ojibway inhabited with a goodly, strong and well proportioned people . . .
Palouse Ottawa Abenaki
Tillamook Walla Nez Percé Mandan Mohawk 6
Walla Crow Huron Oneida Narragansett [that] I would rather live here than any where.”
Winnebago Cayuga Mohegan
Sioux Sauk Seneca Pequot
Cheyenne Fox Delaware
Pomo Shoshone Pawnee Miami
Arapaho Shawnee Powhatan Great Plains and Western Nations
Ute
Paiute Osage
Arctic Hopi Kiowa Chickasaw Cherokee In the central part of North America, vast prairies covered the
Chumash Navajo
California Zuni Pueblo Creek Atlantic land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains. An
Wichita
Great Basin Comanche Choctaw Ocean
Papago Natchez estimated 50 million bison (often called buffalo) occupied these
Northeast
Apache Seminole
Northwest Coast grasslands. Bison provided food, clothing, and shelter to dozens
Great Plains of Native American nations, including the Ojibwa, Lakota, Paw-
Plateau nee, Kiowa, and Cheyenne.
Southeast
Southwest People of the Great Plains considered the bison as both a
Subarctic sacred animal and a provider of all necessities. The meat was
0 750 mi
roasted, dried, or made into soup. Bison hides were fashioned
0 1,000 km
into clothing, drums, and other items. Large hides were sewn
This map shows the major Native American cultural regions together to create cone-shaped shelters called tepees.
in North America as they were when the Europeans rst In the Pacifi c Northwest more than one hundred Native Amer-
arrived. It also names some of the tribes living in each region.
ican nations prospered along the coast from California to Alas-
ka. This cool, rainy region was home to communities including
the Tlingit in the north and the Salish, Pomo, and Yurok further
south. The coastal regions teemed with seals, walruses, whales,
oysters, lobsters, and other seafood. Salmon and other fi sh
were abundant in pristine mountain rivers that fl owed cold and
clear from the Sierra Nevada range. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-

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