Tribal bonds and allegiances were a strong influence among most of these northeastern Indians, especially so in times of war. The Five Nations of the Iroquois were actually only the most infamous among a number of such native alliances, ranging from the Illinois Confederacy and the Miami to the Powhatan of northern Virginia, who proved strong enough to withstand red and white enemies for several generations. But if the Algonquian tribes suffered greatly at the hands of the Five Nations, they compounded their miseries by their frequent fighting among themselves. There were perhaps a hundred Algonquian groups in the Woodlands – tribes, tribelets, families, all acting like tiny independent nations, all sooner or later quarreling with each other or starting long-lasting feuds in never-ending vicious cycles. There were constant small raids throughout the area, usually for no other reason than personal glory, for revenge, or simply to acquire someone else’s property. And always the successful raiders left behind some sign or mark to identify them; an important matter, since it helped enrage and challenge the victims’ friends and families, who sooner or later went out to revenge the deed. Whole family groups or entire villages were often destroyed in large-scale attacks, which became still more violent after the white men encouraged the competition for animal furs and hides.
Whatever its original purpose, however, every successful war party tried to take as many live prisoners as possible, and warriors often went to considerable personal risks in doing so. The prisoners were taken back to the victors’ village for a ritual peculiar to the northeastern Indians. Bonfires were lit, and with the braves working themselves into frenzy, their male prisoners were tied to a stake and tortured with fire, stabbing, horrible mutilations, and even dismemberment. Such orgies lasted from a few hours to several days, and all during that time the terrified victims were exhorted to show their bravery while literally being torn to pieces. Sometimes the remains of the victims were eaten in cannibalistic rituals. Only children and female prisoners were spared such tortures; they usually remained in the village as slaves until they were adopted or married into the tribe.

Algonquian mythology usually differed considerably from tribe to tribe, but there was enough in common to point to a shared heritage. Their great supernatural spirit, usually called Manibozho or Manabus, restored the world after his mythical enemies had destroyed it by a great flood. The creation of man followed, and, as in Old World sacred literature, the Great Spirit gave the people precise directions – a native Ten Commandments – for leading their lives. There also was a god of thunder and lightning, which took the form of a great bird, which among the white people later became the Thunderbird.
Many of the European newcomers, steeped in the Christian religion, were deeply disturbed by some of these native legends and traditions. The notion of destroying the world by drowning the undesirable elements was eerily familiar to them, though among the Indians there was no Noah nor a man-made ark. Instead, the American animals that survived had found refuge on a mountaintop with the Great Spirit, who then formed the people out of the mud. This order of events confused the Europeans, whose Christian religion taught them that man had been created long before the Biblical flood. One cannot help but wonder, in fact, if this difference is not the natural result of pre-historic events: the Flood, which may be associated with the melting of the Ice Age glaciers, was followed in the New World by the arrival of the first humans, while in the Old World human beings had already existed long before that time. But whites were particularly appalled to note that the Algonquian god sometimes acted most suspiciously like the Christians’ Satan, and as a result, many a European settler became convinced that Indian beliefs – and all Indians, in general – were the work of the devil.
Indian customs often unsettled the white men at any rate. Whenever an Algonquian community was confronted by a problem, for example, they gathered around a large campfire, prepared some food and deliberated. They called on their shamans to help in finding a solution to the problem, chanted their native songs, accompanied by drums and rattles, and perhaps passed a pipe around the campfire circle as well. Such gatherings were common to most Indians, but it was not until serious problems with the white settlers arose that they took on a new and ominous meaning: Europeans often feared – sometimes with good reason – that all this drumming and dancing and chanting in an Indian camp meant preparations for a war party.
The Indians of the northeastern area were the first to be thoroughly disrupted by the white man’s arrival in North America. Things might have remained peaceful if the newcomers had been content to stay near the coast, but they soon began to cast their eyes on ever bigger farms, clearing away the forest lands and destroying the game in the process. Though the Algonquians gradually withdrew deeper and deeper into the forest, there was a limit to such retreats, for their powerful enemies, the Iroquois, held the country to the west, and would most certainly not allow anyone to enter their territory. Bloody conflicts soon embroiled many of the Algonquians, especially in New England, and many groups became so depleted that they all but ceased to exist as a people. With the ever-growing fur trade, fierce new wars broke out among the remaining tribes, made still more deadly with the introduction of firearms. As the furry animals gradually disappeared from one section after another, this competition became ever more brutal, with the Five Nations always in the front line, and since most of the northeastern Indians had already held long-standing feuds, they could usually be persuaded to join the white man whenever they were at war with one of the other tribes. By the early 1800s, most of the tribes were mere shadows of their former existence. Treaty upon treaty had been forced on them, usually half understood and vaguely explained, inducing them cede their lands and moving them ever farther west until many wound up in what was called the Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Those few who managed to resist the white man’s advance and cling to their lands, achieved a questionable victory at best; most stayed on in a hostile environment, helpless in the face of a fast-changing world, and for the most part barely surviving in extreme poverty.