The Algonquian Village was awarded this Special Places medal on April 2, 2007. Click on the plaque to visit other Best Places in AW.

America's Long Walkers, rest your feet at:
The Giant Beaver Lodge

A welcome to you from the northeastern Algonquian neighborhood. Please make yourself at home here.

The Northeast is a heavily populated area of the Americas, with both waterways and ocean ports as sites of major Indian settlement. The Three Sisters (corn, squash and beans) are heavily cultivated. There are signs that trees themselves are cultivated for use. Due to more temperate climate in the more southerly regions of the Northeast, the Algonquians who live further to the north depend more heavily on hunting and gathering than do their southerly neighbors. Waterways provide water for drinking, washing and bathing, as well as transit for trade purposes.

Near the oceans, a variety of sea life was harvested for consumption. Shells were used for decoration and as tools and trade. Inland, mammals were hunted for food, clothing, and tools. Just about every part of the deer, for instance, was utilized. Flesh and marrow were eaten, hide was obtained for garments and for housing, bones became tools, and the animal's fat was used to help prepare and soften hide. Sinew served as rope or twine.

Other foods and resources, cultivated or gathered, include the strawberry, grape, currant, blueberry, plum, acorn and the hickory nut. Some of these and other plants have curative properties, and many (among them the acorn) took extensive preparation before use.

Homes are most typically wigwams. The Algonquians live in families who together form tribes for which each individual feels a strong identity. For defense, a collection of wigwams belonging to a tribe is often surrounded by a palisade.

Canoes are useful for river and lake travel. Saplings provide the framework, with elm or birchbark sealed with pitch providing a watertightness to the conveyance. Root fibers and sinew tie sectons of bark together. Sometimes other boats are made from large hollowed-out logs. Due to weight, these are not handy for portage.

The Algonquians make fine baskets and pottery. While not as highly decorated as the pots of the Southeast, they are important artifacts. Often, braided plant material would be impressed against the clay leaving its decorative imprint.

Eastern Abenaki (includes Penobscot, Caniba, Aroosagunticook, Pigwacket)

Western Abenaki

Etchemin

Lenape / Delaware (includes Munsee, Northern Unami, Southern Unami)

Loup A (Nipmuck or Pocumtuck)

Loupe B

Mahican / Mohican (includes Stockbridge, Moravian)

Maliseet / Malaseet-Passamquoddy

Massachusetts / Natick (North Shore, Natick, Wampanoag, Nauset, Cowesit)

Mi'Kmaq / Micmac / Mi'kmag / Mi'kmaw

Mohegan-Pequot (Mohegan, Pequot, Niantic, Montauk)

Nanticoke (Choptank, Piscataway)

Narragansett / Conoy

Pamlico / Carolina Algonquian / Pamtico / Pampticough

Powhatan

Quiripi-Naugatuck-Unquachog-Shinnecock