Providing meat for their families was primarily the job of men, although women sometimes hunted small animals. Hunting methods, based on extensive knowledge of the habits of game animals, included shooting with a bow and arrow or gun and setting various kinds of traps. Hunters had different arrows for different kinds of game: small ones [...]
The new United States government followed the British tradition in its relations with Indian Nations: treaties with Indians had the same force as with foreign nations and aboriginal title was recognized and land obtained through purchase. The 13 original states that formed a compact in 1781 signed treaties for peace and alliance. In 1789, the [...]
From the mid-1600s to the early 1800s, Indians sold furs, labor, and goods to European traders throughout the Great Lakes region, while continuing to support their households by hunting, fishing, and gathering. The United States government pressured them to cede their land to settlers moving west. By the 1830s and 1840s, almost all the Indians [...]
Ceremonial centers built by American Indians from about 2,200 to 1,600 years ago existed in what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, as well as elsewhere. The people who built these centers had previously lived more simply as hunters and fisherman and some had begun to domesticate native plants, such as goosefoot, [...]
In the early 17th century, French traders began to use Huron (or Wyandot) middlemen to trade with the Native peoples in the Great Lakes region. Native people belonged to several “ethnic” groups. The members of an ethnic group (for example Ojibwa or Menominee) spoke the same language and shared a common history and identity, but [...]
After the American Revolution, the U. S. began to sign treaties with Native groups, identified as Tribes, and increasingly tried to take on a dual role of protector and supervisor with sometimes disastrous results. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Indians still lived in villages where several Native groups, European traders, and mixed-ancestry [...]
Historians and anthropologists (including archaeologists, ethnographers, and many linguists) have tried to describe and understand continuity and change in Native societies both prior to and after European arrival. In recent years, ethnographers, who conduct research in communities, have tried to explain how present-day innovations are related to long-held Native values and understandings as well as [...]
About 2,200 years ago, a remarkable network of ceremonial centers containing mounds and earthworks began to develop where thousands of years before there had been small groups of big game hunters. At the ceremonial centers, rituals attracted people from many different ethnic groups. They created a network of multiethnic settlements and partnerships bolstered by gift [...]
