Eastern Woodland Natives

CornmealCornmeal is really just flour made from corn instead of wheat, which is what our flour and bread is made from. It can be used just like wheat, but it tastes different. Some people like it much better than wheat flour! It was the main food for the Natives who farmed in this region. Even though the Natives ate lots of corn, they didn’t eat it on the cob like we do today, or even kernels. It was always dried and made into flour.Their corn was also different from the varieties we eat today. We are use to seeing the golden yellow kernels that grow on the ears. ‘Indian corn’ was very different. It didn’t look the same or taste the same either. Each cob could be filled with different colours of kernels – yellow, gold, brown, red, white and even black.

Food ceremoniesThere were six annual ceremonies for the Natives, and four related to the corn crops!All included feasting and music produced by rattles and drums.The festivals were: New Year Festival, Maple Festival, Corn Planting Festival, Strawberry Festival, Green Corn Festival and Harvest Festival of Thanksgiving.The ‘Green Corn Festival,’ was a celebration and feast that took place in August when the green corn crop was harvested and eaten. Only some of the corn was eaten; most of it was left in the fields to dry to be harvested later.

Other foodwild tubers

The Natives also ate berries, wild tubers (roots, like potatoes), barks and herbs, and sunflowers. Tobacco was also grown and harvested, but just for smoking. It cannot be eaten.Maple syrup was tapped from trees in March and April. The Natives also made a type of fast food called Trail food that was made by combining maple syrup, grease and cornmeal. Fish, ducks and geese, deer and other wood animals were hunted and eaten. Men were away during the much of winters hunting and trapping animals. Food was always cooking in a pot in the longhouse and available to anyone anytime they wanted it – they could just help themselves.

Tools

Stone axes

arrowheads

Stone Axes - They were used for stripping bark, clearing trees from fields and removing fat from hides. A stone was found, then chipped into shape using a harder hammerstone. It was then ground and polished using a sandstone and then fitted with a handle. The process took many hours, so axes were highly valued and not lent to others. Arrowheads - They were made from flint, which is a type of sedimentary rock. When the rock broke, it left sharp edges. Arrowheads were used for hunting and were shaped like triangles. The smallest ones were for hunting birds, the bigger ones to spear bears or deer. Flint knives were often oval or teardrop shaped. Knives – They were pointed at both ends, so they could be fitted with a handle.

TransportationSnowshoes worn during winter and allowed the Natives to walk swiftly across the snow without sinking. They were made from tree boughs bent into frames and laced with animal sinew. These snow shoes made it easy to walk on top of snow that could be two or three feet deep. This way hunters could easily catch up to a moose or deer that was floundering helplessly in the deep snow. The canoes were made from elm bark which was a common wood. Birch bark could be used making the canoe lighter and faster. The size of the canoe varied between 3 m and 8 m. The bark was stripped in late spring and then soaked in steaming water. The bendable bark was then placed over a frame and then sewn together using a large bone needle and basswood cord and thread made from sinew. Then the canoe was painted with pine gum, making it watertight.

ReligionDuring the long winter nights, Elders in the villages huddled around longhouse fires and passed on the clan stories to the younger generations.Nothing was written down; everything was passed down orally through stories. The stories usually included animals as well as people.Each myth, legend or story had a purpose - to explain a part of nature or creation. Often these stories had morals or lessons that the younger generation was suppose to learn. All creatures of nature- trees, plants, animals, the moon- had spirits of their own that either helped or punished a person. A spirit could be prayed to for help and guidance.

The Iroquois believe in the Great Spirit, the Creator of all things.A little less powerful than the Great Spiriti were Good Spirit and Evil Spirit. Both of these spirits had many little spirits to help them. The Good Spirit made all the good things on earth. The Evil Spirit, the twin, was responsible for all the bad things on earth.The Iroquois believed in an afterlife. They believed their spirit would join the Good Spirit in the wonderful place where the Good Spirit lived as long as the Iroquois honored the Good Spirit (and all the good spirit little helpers) and lived a good life. There were always bad spirits around, doing their best to block this from happening.

Some bad spirits caused disease. Other bad spirits caused bad behavior in people. The False Face Society was an Iroquois healing group. The Iroquois False Face Society knew they could not kill a bad spirit. Their job was to scare the bad spirits away. They used masks and chants and rattles and dance to scare the evil spirits and to chase them away.One bad spirit was the flying head. The False Face Society was very familiar with the flying head. He lived in the forest and caused all the disease he could. He was a very bad spirit. If someone had a spooky dream, and saw a flying head, they would go to the False Face Society and ask for help.

A resemblance to grade 6?To chase the flying head spirit away, the dreamer would be told to:1. Carve a face on a living basswood tree.2. Once the face was carved, the tree would be cut down.3. The piece of tree that had the outline of a flying face carved on it would be taken to the wood carver. 4. The wood carver made a wood mask following the lines of the carved face on the log. The masks created by the wood carvers always had twisted features and looked scary.5. Once the mask was ready, the dreamer and his or her family clan hosted a feast. They were responsible for the preparation of all the food. During the feast, with the help of chants and rattles, the members of the False Face Society, invited a good spirit to take the place of the bad one.

6. From that time on, the mask was treasured and honored. It was now the home of a good spirit that had to be protected by the dreamer and the clan.Most of the ailments that were brought to them were easy fixes. If someone came to them with a headache, the ceremony would be performed in the longhouse for everyone to enjoy. The society would put on their masks, and dance, and blow ashes in the sufferer’s face. In minutes, they were done, and the person was suppose to be better.Their reward was some tobacco and some corn mush given to them by the grateful family, who was sure that the sufferer was now cured.

The person they cured automatically became a member of the society. If you were helped, it was important that you go on to help others. That was the Iroquois way.Each spring and fall, members of the False Face Society each wore a mask and went from home to home, chanting and shaking rattles, and making as much noise as they could. This was the twice-annual evil spirit house cleaning festival. The noise they made was designed to scare away any little evil spirits that they might have overlooked during the previous months.

ClothingThe Eastern Woodland Natives dressed differently from the Plains Natives. Walking through forests and farmed fields meant protecting your legs and arms. They made clothes from soft deerskin. The women and men wore leggings, shirts, and moccasins. The sewing needle was a small bone from the ankle of a deer.The women wore a skirt or a dress that covered most of their leggings. In the winter, the men added a smock that went down to their knees for warmth. They decorated their clothes with dyed porcupine quills.The women wore their hair long. Warriors wore their hair in a "mohawk" - a wide stripe of hair left down the middle of their head. Men removed all body hair by scraping it off. Both men and women decorated their bodies with tattoos.

The Gustoweh The Iroquois Nation was similar in most ways. One difference between them was the Gustoweh.A Gustoweh is a type of hat worn by each Native group in the Iroquois Nation. Each Gustoweh was a wood frame made from strips of ash wood. When finished, it looked a bit like an upside down basket that fit the head of the Native. It was then covered with fabric or animal skin and adorned with eagle or hawk feathers. Each member of the Iroquois Confederacy wore a different number of feathers or a slightly different arrangement of feathers. This was one way to identify different groups within the Iroquois nation.

Who is who?As the picture shows , each Gustoweh was different for each Iroquois tribe. The Mohawk had three feathers sticking straight up.The Seneca had one feather straight up.The Onondaga had one feather up and one feather sticking towards the back.The Cayuga had one feather sticking out the back. The Oneida had two feathers sticking up and one feather sticking out the backThe Tuscarora wore a Gustoweh that had no feathers.

1500 years ago, the area we now call Ontario was ruled by the Algonquians who shared land with the Huron, Neutral and Petun nations. The Iroquois travelled south to settle among those nations peacefully.1000 years ago, legend has it an Iroquois man killed a Seneca chief. Different Natives groups broke into sides as war broke out.The Iroquois lost and were eventually exiled to less fertile land south of the Great Lakes.The Iroquois tribes fought amongst themselves and became weak and poor, while the nations north of the Great Lakes became strong and peaceful civilizations.The Iroquois kept asking to return to their old lands, but the other nations insisted on their decision for the Iroquois to remain south of their land.

600 years ago, the Iroquois decided to work together and form a confederacy based on peace among their five nations.For hundreds of years, the 'Five Nations' grew stronger and sub-councils by different tribes were formed, like a war party with a separate war chief. The main council remained peaceful.The Iroquois became upset that the Huron Natives controlled all of the fur trade with the French. They wanted to move north and be involved with the trading as well. The Iroquois decided to attack the other Eastern Woodland Farmers.In 1642, the Five Nations war party attacked Contarea, a major Huron village located on Lake Simcoe, near what is now the city of Orillia. Within hours, the village was destroyed.

Moving quickly, they surprised other Huron towns, claimed the lands, and wiped out the entire Huron people within a year.By the end of the next year, the Petuns and Neutrals were also wiped out. The Iroquois became the most powerful group of Natives in the area.

WampumTo the Natives, Wampum was simply the Quogue or clamshell polished and fashioned into beads. These beads could be made into a string or even a belt. It was important because Wampum was a system of recording important things. The Natives did not have a written language, so Wampum was a way to record these important events, contracts or stories. The person who wore the wampum had the authority to speak about the story, so it was also used as a symbol of position and title within the community. The great circle wampum, for example, was a belt worn only by a chief as a symbol of his position. Wampum was also given to seal a promise.

Wampum was made from dyed beads or shells, arranged in a certain way. To make wampum, you must:First, you needed to collect the right size shells or make certain sized beads.Then, you needed to dye your materials. Individual beads and shells were dyed various shades of solid purple, solid cream, or a mix of purples and cream. No other colors were used in making wampum.Next, you had to string your beads on a thread in a certain order, depending upon what you wanted to say. The designs made out of certain combinations of colors had both symbolic and actual meaning. Long messages were made by sewing the strings of beads together to make a wampum belt.

Wampum moneyWampum became very valuable. Once European settlers came to live in the same area as the Natives, they started using wampum as money. The colonists would even trade wampum belts with other colonists. To the Iroquois people, wampum was a written record. They did not have money in their culture. They did, however, trade wampum for other items they needed that the Europeans had.

The Peace PipePeace pipes were a sacred symbol for Native Americans. Like all Native American art, peace pipes were fashioned with great care. Smoking a peace pipe had great significance: it could seal a political agreement or a treaty with the another tribe. It could also be used to arrange a marriage. Like many other aspects of the Native culture, peace pipes also have a legend behind them. One night, two young men were walking in a ravine. Suddenly, they saw a beautiful young maiden coming towards them. She had a dress made out of fine material. Each man fell in love with the girl instantly. As she approached them, they noticed that she held a pipe in her hands. The girl took the pipe and offered it to the sky, the earth, and then held it toward the men.

The girl put the pipe on the ground and then turned into a buffalo. The buffalo pawed the ground, stuck her tail out behind her, and picked up the pipe with her hooves. Then, the cow turned into a girl again. She explained that she was giving them a peace pipe. She told them that a peace pipe should be a part of all sacred ceremonies and treaties.