ABSTRACT
Dense deciduous forests covering eastern North America from the Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic seaboard were the backdrop for dozens of Indian nations making a living by long-fallow farming and deer hunting, the two sources of food interdependent in that cornfields fostered browse for deer, drawing them toward settlements. Over and above similarities due to ecologically linked economics, the nations of the Eastern Woodlands traded and traveled extensively, in peace and for war. The Late Woodland period takes these peoples from the decline of Middle Woodland Hopewell, in the fifth century ce, to European invasions intensifying in the seventeenth century. Descriptions of indigenous nations left us by these invaders help archaeologists interpret Late Woodland sites, although it is often surprisingly difficult to identify the sites of historically named towns. This chapter considers northern Midwest, Northeast, and Middle Atlantic regions during the Late Woodland period, the Southeast being covered in the next chapter as Mississippian.
