Most of the eastern portion of what is today’s United States was still a woodlands region – that same region where the Adena and Hopewell cultures had flourished so long ago. It is an immense area, stretching from the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes southward into the Carolinas, and from the Atlantic coast westward to the Mississippi – a region inhabited by an enormous number of native tribes. Though each of these people regarded themselves as distinct – and usually as superior – to all others around them, most were in fact of Algonquian and Iroquoian background, with a few Siouan tribes sprinkled in here and there.
The northeastern corner of these woodlands, today’s Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Maine, was inhabited by the Algonquian Micmac and the various groups that made up the Abenaki confederation. The Micmac, perhaps 20,000 strong, were the dominant tribe in the Canadian Maritimes, but may have moved there in ancient times from farther north. They still lived too far north to make much use of farming, but they were skilled hunters, especially of sea mammals, which they pursued in their distinctive birchbark canoes. Together with the Beothuk of Newfoundland, the Micmac were probably the first North American natives to have contact with the Europeans – perhaps as early as the 11th century, when the Vikings began their settlements on the coast of North America. They definitely made contact with John Cabot, who captured three Micmac and took them back to England in 1497. The Micmac, in turn, do not seem to have appreciated such behavior, for Cabot disappeared in the same area during his second voyage a few years later. It was also Micmac warriors who had a run-in with Jacques Cartier on his first voyage to Canada, and every subsequent European expedition to the area seems to have encountered them with varying success. Many a European settlement in the region certainly came to agree with the Beothuk who called the Micmac ‘Shonack’ – ‘Bad Indians.’
To the west of the Micmac territory, in the Ottowa River Valley of southern Quebec, lived the Algonkin, a tribe referred to by the neighboring Iroquois as Adirondack – a derogatory name which literally translates into “they eat trees,” although the Algonkin’s small, semi-nomadic bands seem to have been excellent hunters and trappers. Their name is often spelled as Algonquin as well, though they should not be confused with the Algonquian language family, which included an enormous number of tribes in these woodlands.
The Abenaki, the ‘people of the dawn,’ were a loose confederation of such tribes as the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Maliseet, and the Passamaquoddy, among others, most of whom lived in scattered farming villages on the fertile flood plains of rivers in northern New England and southern Canada, adding hunting and fishing wherever possible. Though there may have been as many as 40,000 Abenaki before they made contact with the white man, they were the very first Native Americans to fall victim to the Europeans’ most powerful weapon. An unknown illness decimated them in the 1560s and 1570s; typhus hit in 1586, and for a century thereafter, various epidemics of smallpox, measles, and influenza took their toll. Wars with white men and red alike finished the job. By the time of the American Revolution, there were barely 1,000 Abenaki left to tell the tale.
To the southward, in New England and the lower Hudson River Valley, lived those native people who initially welcomed the Pilgrims and other Europeans to the Atlantic shores – the Pennacook, Massachusets, Wampanoag, Narragansett, Pequot, Mahican, Mohegan, Wappinger, and several smaller groups. The Pennacook, perhaps 12,000 strong, who occupied the Merrimac River Valley of New Hampshire and southern Maine, may at some early time have separated from Abenaki; but if so, blood relationship does not seem to have counted for much. The Pennacook, at any rate, fell victim not only to the inevitable white man’s diseases, but were severely decimated in the war over the fur trade by their northern brothers, the Micmac and Abenaki. The Massachusets, a small tribe of perhaps 3,000 people who lived in farming and fishing villages in the area of today’s Boston, became another early victim of contagious diseases. The Massachusets, in fact, disappeared as an organized tribe before much could be learned about them. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in the area in 1620, there were less than 800 Massachusets; eleven years later, the Puritans recorded fewer than 500.