Tribes of the Eastern Woodlands

LESSON ONE

Because of where our school is located, we start our study of Native America in the Eastern Woodlands.  By beginning in this region we are also able to examine life before the influence of the European settlers. 

Though I face the continual challenge of finding creditable sources, I am grateful that my school does not ask that students work from a text book.  It has encouraged me to create my own visual guide through lessons and to pull and cross-reference information from many sources.  As I have mentioned earlier, I am a great proponent of PowerPoint as tool for the elementary classroom.  While there is other fabulous technology out there, I have found that PowerPoint and a simple projector sufficiently allow me to create an interactive teaching environment. 

For this first lesson, my goal is to establish a sense of where and when we are as we delve into the Eastern Woodlands.  To do so, we look at series of slides:

As we begin our study of the Eastern Woodlands, why do you think some maps might distinguish between the Northeast and the Southeast?  What do you know about these regions today that might impact how the Native American people lived here years ago?

When you picture the Eastern Woodlands, imagine an endless forest, long before buildings and highways and parking lots existed.  Have you ever hiked in a forest like this?  What kind of animals or resources might people have had access to?

We will be exploring the Eastern Woodlands in the 1400s, a hundred years before the first Europeans arrived.  There are a lot of names for the native people of the Americas.  “Indians” was a mistake Christopher Columbus made that stuck.  Most tribes called themselves “the people.” 

At this point, I pass out a blank map of the Eastern Woodlands region and ask students to read the information on the slide to record the location of each tribe.  This introduction, allows students to review and apply their U.S. state geography skills!  The Tribe Location Worksheet is the second form included in this packet - All Eastern Woodlands Worksheets - which I made and use for this unit.

This is a list of 8 of the many tribes of the Eastern Woodlands.  Using your geography knowledge,  identify the area where these tribes lived.
 (Many Native American people still live in these areas today!

When my students are finished, we go through the map together and check our work.