All about the ancient tribes
Pennacook Tribe: The Pennacook were primarily fishermen, farmers, hunters and gatherers. At first, the Pennacook lived in birch bark wigwams but eventually began building fortified villages of longhouses due to an increase in tribal warfare.
The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee or “People of the Longhouses”) who resided in the Northeastern United States as well as Eastern Canada (Ontario and Quebec) built and inhabited longhouses. These were sometimes more than 75 m (246 ft) in length but generally around 5 to 7 m (16 to 23 ft) wide.
The Longhouse (or Birch Bark House) was a long, narrow house that was traditionally built by the American Native Indians of the Northeast Woodlands. The main tribes who used the longhouse were those belonging to the powerful Iroquois Confederacy which included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca people.
The Haudenosaunee (“people of the longhouse”) originally included the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca nations. In the 1700s, the Tuscarora became the sixth. Guided by the Great Law of Peace—their own constitution—this league came to jointly govern, while recognizing the sovereignty of each nation.
In the Southeast region, Native Americans lived in Wattle and Daub houses. These houses were made by weaving river cane and wood into a frame. The roofs were made of grass and bark. Wattle and Daub houses were permanent structures, perfect for farming people.
Modern wooden houses are held together with steel nails, but the Iroquois had no nails. Instead, they tied or lashed their buildings together with long strips of bark, or with ropes made by braiding strips of bark.
Longhouses were built and repaired as needed by the men.
After the Revolution After the American victory, the British ceded their claim to land in the colonies, and the Americans forced their allies, the Mohawks and others, to give up their territories in New York. Most of the Mohawks migrated to Canada, where the Crown gave them some land in compensation.
The Arapaho, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Comanche, Crow, Gros Ventre, Kiowa, Plains Apache, Plains Cree, Plains Ojibwe, Sarsi, Shoshone, Sioux, and Tonkawa. and were all nomadic tribes who followed the buffalo herds and lived in tipis.
The Iroquois were a League or Confederacy of Native American nations in the Northeastern part of America. Originally they were formed by five nations: the Cayuga, Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, and Oneida. Later, in the 1700s, the Tuscarora joined.
Most of the remaining Iroquois, except for the Oneida of Wisconsin and the Seneca-Cayuga of Oklahoma, are in New York; the Onondoga reservation there is still the capital of the Iroquois Confederacy. Large numbers of Iroquois in the United States live in urban areas rather than on reservations.
The Iroquois were a notoriously violent tribe known for torturing any warriors they captured in battle. They often tied their victims to a post, scalped them, and burned them alive.
The Haudenosaunee, or “people of the longhouse,” commonly referred to as Iroquois or Six Nations, are members of a confederacy of Aboriginal nations known as the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
These efforts were more successful in the Southeast than most parts of North America; indeed, five southeastern nations ( the Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole ) later became known as the “Five Civilized Tribes.” Europeans viewed even the most “civilized” tribes as inferior, however, and waves of European
Among the Southeast Indians were the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole, which are sometimes called the Five Civilized Tribes. Other prominent tribes included the Natchez, Caddo, Apalachee, Timucua, and Guale.
A traditional longhouse was built by using a rectangular frame of saplings, each 2 to 3 inches (5 to 7.5 cm) in diameter. The larger end of each sapling was placed in a posthole in the ground, and a domed roof was created by tying together the sapling tops. The structure was then covered with bark panels or shingles.