Category: Native American History

Georgia Indian Tribes Image: Native Territories in Georgia In 1732, several gentlemen in England, headed by James Oglethorpe, a member of the British Parliament and a philanthropist, organized a plan for establishing a colony in America for the indigent and persecuted in Britain – where the one class might find relief from poverty, and the other from persecution. King George II granted to a corporation, “in trust for the poor,” the territory of Georgia, which was to be divided among the settlers. Liberal donations were made to defray the expenses of the first company of settlers to the new province.

Image: We Dined in the Hollow Cottonwood Tree By Robert Griffing During the Celeron Expedition in the summer of 1749, the French were on a mission to assert claims to the Ohio Valley. The party stopped for the night and dined in the enormous tree in the Allegheny Forest in Pennsylvania. From the diary of Father Joseph Pierre Bonnecamp: “We dined in a hollow cottonwood tree in which twenty-nine men could be ranged side by side.” Pennsylvania Natives When first discovered by Europeans, Pennsylvania was inhabited by groups of Native Americans. The life of the Indians reflected Stone Age backgrounds, especially in material arts and crafts. Tools, weapons, and household equipment were made from stone, wood, and bark. Transportation was…

Maryland Indian Tribes The first Marylanders were Paleo-Indians who came more than 10,000 years ago from other parts of North America to hunt mammoth, great bison, and caribou. By 1000 B.C., Maryland had more than 8,000 Native Americans in about 40 different tribes. Most of them spoke Algonquian languages. They grew corn, peas, squash and tobacco. They also hunted, fished and traded with tribes as far away as New York and Ohio. The word Chesapeake, as in Chesapeake Bay, came from the Native American word “Chesepiuk,” an Algonquian name for a village that the Roanoke, Virginia, colonists discovered in 1585 near the mouth of the Bay. Later, mapmakers used the word to name the Bay. People have said that Chesapeake…

North Carolina Natives Early History At the time of the first European contact, North Carolina was inhabited by a number of native tribes sharing some cultural traits, but also distinguished by regional and linguistic variations. Three major language families were represented in North Carolina: Iroquoian, Siouan, and Algonquian. Image: Map of Cherokee homelands and other eastern tribes Before being forced to move west to Oklahoma The Iroquoian tribes – the Cherokee, Tuscarora, Meherrin, Coree, and Neuse River – were related linguistically and culturally to the Iroquois tribes to the north. The Algonquian-speaking tribes represented the southernmost extension of predominantly Northeastern Woodlands tribes and were located entirely in the tidewater area of the state. These were the Bear River, Chowan, Hatteras,…

South Carolina Indian Tribes Image: Carolina Indian Village Depicted in a drawing by John White The cutaways in the drawing were done in order to show the interior design of the structures. For thousands of years before Europeans arrived in present-day South Carolina, the area was occupied by Native Americans – at least 29 distinct tribes. The Catawba, Cherokee, Chicora, Edisto, Pee Dee, and Santee tribes are all still present in South Carolina. The many places in South Carolina that bear the names of tribes attest to the important role Indians played in the state’s history. Sadly, the Indian population in South Carolina and throughout the United States greatly declined after the arrival of Europeans. Tribes were weakened by European…

Abenaki and Pennacook Native American Territories The native peoples who lived in northern New England – whose canoes cut the waters of the Connecticut, the St. Lawrence, Massachusetts Bay, and Cape Cod Sound – were called by many names, but the most common name is Abenaki, or People of the Dawn. The Abenaki occupied the greatest part of what would become New Hampshire, while a smaller tribe called the Pennacook lived in the southern part of the state. The Eastern Abenaki were concentrated in Maine east of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, while the Western Abenaki lived west of the mountains across Vermont and New Hampshire to the eastern shores of Lake Champlain. The southern boundaries of the Abenaki homeland were…