Food Food
The Eastern Woodland Indians hunt all year. While the men hunt in the woods and fish in the streams, the women farm at home and grow corn, beans, and squash. They eat deer meat, bear, beaver, moose, and bison. Small game was hunted as well, such as raccoon, rabbit, squirrel, muskrat, and woodchuck. When the Indians were able to catch them, they ate turkey, ducks, geese, grouse, partridge, and seagulls.
In spring, summer, and fall they
farmed maize, beans, squash, pumpkins, and melons. People living near a bay had
lobsters, clams, and oysters. They also had seafood chowder and broiled oysters
over an open fire.
Besides vegetables they ate cattail roots, ground nuts, eels, and snakes. Women toasted, boiled, and dried their foods over an open fire. They also baked large grape leaves over hot coals or buried the wrapped foods in hot ashes. The woodland Indians always had stew cooking. If someone walked into your wigwam and you would have offered them some stew and they refused you would consider them rude. The stew is made of fresh meat, vegetables, and it was flavored with nuts and berries.
The Eastern woodlands would eat whenever they were hungry, normally without their family or relatives.
Arts and Crafts
There
are many different arts and handcrafts
of the Eastern Woodland Indians. For example, they made Dreamcatchers. The
Indians made this to catch the bad dreams that their babies had. They also had
pouches. The pouches were made out of skins. To keep skins, herbs, and lots of
other stuff that they might have needed on trips to other places. Most tribes
were fighting a lot so they have to have weapons and they had tomahawks.
Tomahawks are stones and sticks which made a club to throw at there enemies.
Another weapon these Indians used was a bow. This was used to fight against the
Europeans when they had first come. Belts such as the wampum belt were used to
tell stories of the tribes. They wampum belt was usually worn by the chief of
the village, some times used to tell the stories of the chief. The masks are
very important in Indian tribes. The corn mask was used to get there crop to
grow, especially the corn that’s why it’s called the corn husk mask. Other masks
helped cure warriors or give them good luck.
Those were the basics of the Eastern Woodland Indians arts and handcrafts, if you want to find out more about it get some books or go on the internet.
The Beliefs and Customs
The Iroquois believe that the Sky Woman was the goddess of creation. She fell from the sky and a group of birds caught her fall. The sky woman had good and evil brothers. The evil were responsible for the sick and death in the world, and the good brothers were responsible for the good things in the world.
They believed that spirits were all
around them. The Eastern woodland Indians would not throw the bones of a beaver
because it would insult the beaver spirit. A spirit lived in every tree bud,
and they would pray to the spirits to watch over them. They wood put pinches of
tobacco at the bottom of trees because they believed that the smoke from tobacco
carried words to the Great 
Spirit.
The Iroquois had many customs. They would dance around the sick and make special wooden dolls for sacred ceremonies. Each year women were given strings of beads for their birthdays. It was a special tradition to play lacrosse. In the winter, children made toboggans out of bark and would race them down hills.
They had many festivals too. Some of the festivals were, the Maple Festival, which they celebrated the coming of spring and maple syrup. The Strawberry Festival, which they celebrated for the coming of many wild strawberries. The Planting Festival, in which they cleared land and planted lots of vegetables.
Eastern Woodlands Clothing
Eastern Woodland Indians wore many different types of clothes. One of the tribes is the Ojibwe. The women wore a sleeveless dress made of deerskin, belted at the waist. Ornaments usually hung from their belt. Under their dress women would wear a woven skirt and leather leggings. On her feet she wore moccasins made of buffalo skins. For extra warmth she wore a fur robe over her dress. The men wore a buckskin breech cloth and leggings that extended all the way up their legs. Like the women they wore moccasins. Also in cold weather they wore buckskin robe. They wore lots of interesting clothes.
One of the other Eastern Woodland tribes is the Cherokee. The clothes they wore are very different from what we wear. The women wore skirts woven from plants. They sewed feathers into light netting to make capes. Men usually wore either breech cloth or leggings. They painted their skin and decorated with tattoos.
The last Eastern Woodland tribe that I researched was the Iroquois. The women wore deerskin vests and leather or cornhusk moccasins. All clothes were made of shells, beads, porcupine quills, and skins. They died their hair and wore pretty necklaces. Men wore all different clothes. In the summer, they wore deerskin breech cloths. In the winter men wore leggings and tunics. Tunics are like long shirts. Kids wore nothing at all. That is all the clothing worn by Eastern Woodland tribes. There are many other Eastern Woodland tribes. But they all wear the same clothes.
Eastern Woodland Indians Housing
There are many interesting facts about how the Eastern Woodland Indians lived. There were many different types of houses; the most popular are the wigwam and the longhouse which was home to several people. Some tribes lived in cold weather houses made of clay applied to an armature of poles with a cone or round shaped roof. The Seminoles of Florida used a chikee, a shelter without walls thatched with the palmetto tree's fan-shaped leaves. Wigwams housed ten to twelve people at one time. Their houses were designed so they could be moved very easily. When it got cold during the winter they had to move to a warmer climate. Long houses also housed several families but the families who shared thesehomes were all related to each other. All of the houses had a tiny hole at the top so that the smoke came out of the house. All the tribes lived near water for transportation because the Eastern Woodlands used canoes for transportation. The beds that they slept on were made of a thin layer of animal skin.
The villages where they lived were
often fortified by fencing reinforced by dirt which stopped the different tribes
by fighting. The wall that surrounded their villages
had only on
e opening which they could quickly close if any of their enemies came
near.
See, I told you there was lots of interesting facts about their housing.
Eastern Woodlands Travel
The Eastern Woodland Indians used many
methods of travel. Their favorite method of travel was to ride in birch bark
canoes. On their feet 
they wore leather moccasins. In harsh, snowy
weather they wore snow shoes. Another thing they traveled in is Elm and dugout
canoes. The Cedar tree was very helpful to the Eastern Woodland Indians. The
tree supplied supplies to make canoes, and even supplies to make houses. They
made toboggans to carry their supplies from place to
place.