Algonkin tribes occupied the Atlantic seacoast from Nova Scotia and New
Brunswick south to Virginia, and stretched west as far, at places, as the
Rocky Mountains. They also occupied a large area in the interior of
British America north of the Great Lakes. Brinton names more than thirty
tribes of this great group. Among the best known of these were the Lenape
(Delawares), Blackfeet, Ojibwas, and Crees.
It was chiefly Algonkin tribes with whom the first white settlers met. The
Indians who supplied the Pilgrims with corn in that first dreadful winter
were Algonkins; so were Powhatan and Pocahontas, King Philip and
Massasoit. Of course whites came into contact with the Iroquois in New
York, and with the Cherokees, the Creeks, and their kin in the south, but
much the larger part of their early Indian acquaintance was Algonkin.
There are a number of borrowed Indian words in our English language of
to-day. _Wigwam_, _wampum_, _squaw_, _papoose_, _moccasin_, are examples.
These have been taken from the Indian languages into our own, and most of
them—all of those mentioned—are Algonkin. They soon became common to
English speakers, and were carried by them everywhere they went. All the
western tribes had their own names for all these objects, but we have
forced these upon them, and to-day we may hear Utes speak of _wigwams_ and
Navajo talk about _squaws_ or _moccasins_.
We shall speak of two Algonkin tribes. One—the Lenape—is eastern; the
other—the Blackfeet—is western. The former are woodland, the latter Plains
Indians. The Lenape lived in settled villages, and had a good deal of
agriculture; they were also hunters, fishermen, and warriors. Their houses
were like those of their Iroquois neighbors, but each family had its own.
They were huts of poles and interwoven branches with a thatching of corn
leaves, the stalk of sweet-flag, or the bark of trees. Sometimes at the
center of the village, surrounded by the houses, was a sort of hillock or
mound from which the country around might be overlooked. The women made
good garments of deerskin with skillful beadwork. In cooking they used
soapstone vessels. For pounding corn they had mortars of wood, dug out of
a section of a tree trunk, and long stone pestles.
In districts where the wild rice or _zizania_ grew abundantly great
quantities of it were gathered. The women in canoes paddled out among the
plants, bent the heads over the edge of the canoe and beat out the grain.
This was a food supply of no importance to the Lenape, but the Ojibwas and
their neighbors used much of it.
[Illustration.]