"The European explorers who ‘discovered' the Americas in the 15th Century came to a land already inhabited by a diverse and substantial indigenous population. According to Aboriginal creation stories, their ancestors had lived here forever. According to archaeologists, human beings had been living in what is now Canada for at least 12,000 years and probably much longer.
The indigenous peoples in this land were divided into a number of nations, which ethnologists classify on the basis of cultural and linguistic characteristics. In the east, from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes area, Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples mingled and divided the available resources in the sub-Arctic boreal forest and north-eastern deciduous woodlands. The former were generally nomadic, living by hunting, gathering and fishing. Generally, the Beothuk in Newfoundland, the Mi'kmaq, Abenaki and Malecite in the Maritimes, and the Algonquin, Attikamekw, Naskapi, Montagnais (now known as Innu), Odahwah, Nipissing, Ojibway and Cree in Quebec and Ontario all gathered in summer at sites of major fisheries to socialize, trade and make alliances. In the fall, they would disperse into kin-based hunting bands for the winter. On the other hand, the nations that spoke Iroquoian languages were much more sedentary. The Five Nations (also known as the Iroquois or Hodenosaunee), as well as the Huron, the Neutral, the Petun and the Erie, lived in villages of as many as 2,000 people in the area around Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake Huron. Their homes were 10-30 metre-long ‘longhouses' made of wood and covered with bark that each housed three to five families. They enjoyed a milder climate than most of their Algonquian neighbours that permitted the most northerly extension of indigenous agriculture in North America, growing corn, squash, beans, sunflowers and tobacco…"
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Armand
paints brigs for the British fleet.
