Native Land Use and Settlements in the Northeastern Woodlands

The lives of Native peoples in the Northeast were threatened, not only by European plagues and warfare, but by the European desire for land. European peoples, in general, treated land as a inanimate commodity to be transferred and manipulated at will by human owners. Native peoples, in contrast, viewed the landscape as animate, communal territory, supporting both human and non-human inhabitants in reciprocal social and spiritual relationships. For Europeans, the region was a new world; to Native peoples, it was ancient, familiar territory. Native peoples in the Northeast had developed intimate relationships with the landscape, adapting to various changes in climate while traveling, building homes, hunting, fishing, foraging, and planting. The various sites that made up familiar landscapes for each of the different Native Nations are best described as homelands