On land, caribou was their most important prey, providing meat, hides and sinew for clothing, and antler for tools.
For most groups, the sea provided the most important resources: for example, seals provided food for humans and dogs, oil to heat homes and cook food, and hides which could be made into boots, summer clothing, tents, harpoon lines and dog harnesses. Their ingenious technologies, from snowhouses to kayaks, allowed them to live in an unaccomodating environment, where they necessarily relied on animal resources to survive. The nations of this region were the last to come into contact with Europeans, when Russian, Spanish and British explorers arrived in the mid-to-late 18th Century.įinally, the Thule and their cultural and biological descendants, the Inuit, whom the French generally called ‘Esquimaux,’ lived in the arctic north of the tree line. The semi-sedentary patterns combined with the wealth of the coastal rain forest to enable highly elaborate artistic traditions to develop in wood carving, which they used to build homes and make canoes, utensils and various ceremonial and religious objects. The rich subsistence economy of the region enabled some of the densest and most complex hierarchical societies found amongst hunter-gatherers anywhere in the world. In the linguistically diverse coastal region, Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, Nuu chah nulth, Cowichan, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and others lived a lifestyle built around salmon and cedar. Those nations in the mountainous interior included the Kootenay, as well as various Interior Salish and Athapascan speakers, who lived a varied hunting and gathering existence. On the other side of the Rockies were the peoples of the cordillera and Pacific Coast.
They had a lifestyle similar to that of the Algonquian nations and subsisted mainly by hunting moose and caribou. In the sub-arctic forests that stretched from northern Manitoba through the Northwest Territories to the Yukon lived highly mobile Athapascan speaking nations, including the Chipewyan, Slavey, Sekani, Dogrib, Beaver, Sarcee and Hare among others. They survived mainly by hunting bison, which were abundant at the time and met nearly all their needs, providing not only food but also hides for clothing and lodge coverings, as well as horn and bones for tools and weapons.
In the northern Plains, the Assiniboine and Blackfoot lived a nomadic pedestrian existence. They enjoyed a milder climate than most of their Algonquian neighbours that permitted the most northerly extension of indigenous agriculture in North America, growing corn, squash, beans, sunflowers and tobacco. Their homes were 10-30 metre-long ‘longhouses’ made of wood and covered with bark that each housed three to five families. The Five Nations (also known as the Iroquois or Hodenosaunee), as well as the Huron, the Neutral, the Petun and the Erie, lived in villages of as many as 2,000 people in the area around Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron. On the other hand, the nations that spoke Iroquoian languages were much more sedentary. In the fall, they would disperse into kin-based hunting bands for the winter. Generally, the Beothuk in Newfoundland, the Mi’kmaq, Abenaki and Malecite in the Maritimes, and the Algonquin, Attikamekw, Naskapi, Montagnais (now known as Innu), Odahwah, Nipissing, Ojibway and Cree in Quebec and Ontario all gathered in summer at sites of major fisheries to socialize, trade and make alliances. The former were generally nomadic, living by hunting, gathering and fishing. In the east, from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes area, Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples mingled and divided the available resources in the sub-Arctic boreal forest and north-eastern deciduous woodlands. The indigenous peoples in this land were divided into a number of nations, which ethnologists classify on the basis of cultural and linguistic characteristics. Painting by Ron Volstad (Department of National Defence). This warrior is depicted as he may have appeared at Crysler’s Farm. Their most prominent service was rendered at the battle for Crysler’s Farm in November, 1813 where they played a role disproportional of their numbers. The warriors from the small Mohawk community at Tyendinaga near Kingston, although few in numbers, participated in much fighting during the War of 1812, seeing action at Sacketts Harbor and in the Niagara peninsula in 1813. Mohawk Warrior from Tyendinaga, Autumn 1813
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