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Contributor: Suzanne Riordan. Lesson ID: 13135
Why are some called Iroquois? Which tribe harvests the wild rice? How did they make their canoes? Did they have a democratic government? Learn all about the Native American tribes of the northeast!
You may have heard of a Native American tribe called the Iroquois.
Iroquois was a term used by the Europeans to describe a set of people.
There's some confusion over where this word came from. Some say it came from a word meaning real snakes, an insult to the people by their enemies!
The word was taken up by the French and slightly changed and then changed again by the British until it became a word that native people did not recognize, but it was still used to describe them!
Maybe you'd also like to know that Iroquois is a word that describes not one nation but six!
The picture above is a clue!
In the northeastern United States, Native Americans thrived by living off the dense forests, the rivers and streams teeming with fish, and the rich soil for growing crops.
If you've studied the geography of North America, you probably remember that the northeastern U.S. is known for its dense forests, rich soil, and many rivers and springs. You know it has warm summers, cold winters, and good rainfall.
Many Native Americans settled in this area, called the nations of the northeastern U.S. These nations lived in the area that stretches from Maine to Minnesota and south to Kentucky.
Altogether, there are over 500 Native American tribes, so historians have grouped them to make understanding and studying them easier. They are grouped by the region in which they live and the languages they speak.
This lesson will focus on two language groups who lived in the northeast region.
Iroquois-Speaking Nations
The people who were called Iroquois by the French and British called themselves something entirely different. They were called the Haudenosaunee. As you may have guessed from the picture at the beginning of the lesson, the name Haudenosaunee means people who build a house.
The houses they built were called longhouses because they were long; the average was about 65 feet. Their width and height were always equal, so a longhouse could be, for example, 20 feet wide and 20 feet high.
Several families would live in each house, each having a separate space along the sides and sharing a fire in the middle. There were holes in the roof to let out the smoke.
The Haudenosaunee also built palisades around the longhouses for protection. Palisades were high fences made of sharpened branches.
They referred to their main food as the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash.
The Haudenosaunee people came together to form a league called the Iroquois League or the Six Nations, which included the following tribes.
Each tribe sent an elected leader to represent it at council meetings, where they would discuss and vote on issues important to the people. It was a representative republic, which the American Founding Fathers used as an example when forming the U.S. government!
These nations all spoke similar languages, which are now called Iroquois languages.
Listen to some sample phrases in the Mohawk language in the video below.
Now, watch this next video to learn more about how they lived. Take notes on their homes, work, food, and family.
Algonquian-Speaking Nations
Another confederacy of nations living in this area spoke a different language. They were the enemies of the Iroquois and most likely gave them the name of real snakes!
The nations of this confederacy spoke the Algonquian languages.
The Algonquian peoples lived in several parts of the northeast region, including the Great Lakes area and along the Atlantic coast.
They lived by hunting and fishing and, like the Iroquois, grew the three sisters for food. However, the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota had a special food that the others didn't because they could harvest the wild rice that grows there.
Watch the video below to discover what this special crop still means to the Ojibwe.
Like the Iroquois, the people of the Algonquian-speaking nations lived in longhouses but only in the winter. In the summer, they used wigwams: round, domed shelters made over a frame of wood poles.
Besides the Ojibwe and Shawnee, some other Algonquian nations of the northeast are noted below.
With all the rivers and lakes in the northeast region, you can guess how these tribes traveled around!
Watch the next video to learn how these people built their canoes with fire!
Now that you've learned about the two main language groups of native nations in the northeast, move on to the Got It? section to record what you've learned in a graphic organizer and create a map showing each tribe's location!
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