Eastern Woodlands Quotes

And you know, it was like I was breathing my own self back into me to say these word,s to remember that these things existed--the green trees of the eastern woodland at home in North America, their strong and supple branches, sunlight through the trees.

Vanilla lily Meaning: Ambassador of love Sowerbaea juncea | Eastern Australia Perennial with edible roots found in eucalyptus forests, woodlands, heaths, and sub-alpine meadows. Grass-like leaves have a strong scent of vanilla. Flowers are pink-lilac to white, papery, with sweet vanilla perfume. Resprouts after fire.

Rather than the thick, unbroken, monumental snarl of trees imagined by Thoreau, the great eastern forest was an ecological kaleidoscope of garden plots, blackberry rambles, pine barrens, and spacious groves of chestnut, hickory, and oak. The first Europeans in Ohio found woodlands that resembled English parks—they could drive carriages through the trees.

Nothing moved in that high wilderness save the wind. They did not speak. They were men of another time for all that they bore christian names and they had lived all their lives in a wilderness as had their fathers before them. They'd learnt war by warring, the generations driven from the eastern shore across a continent, from the ashes at Gnadenhutten onto the prairies and across the outlet to the Woodlands of the west. If much in the world were mystery the limits of that world were not, for it was without measure or bound and there were contained within it creatures more horrible yet and men of other colors and beings which no man has looked upon and yet not alien none of it more than were their own hearts alien in them, whatever wilderness contained there and whatever beasts.

Entrances and Exits Between 4 million and 2 million years ago, at least 11 different hominid species existed in central, eastern, and southern Africa. These species fall into three genera: Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Kenyanthropus. At any given time during this era, from four to seven different species existed simultaneously.8 Paleoanthropologists surmise that at least six of the hominids were Australopithecus. Like earlier hominids, australopithecines can be thought of as bipedal apes, distinct from chimpanzees.9 The brain size of australopithecines (380 to 450 cm3) was slightly larger than that of chimpanzees (300 to 400 cm3). Though the cranium, facial features, and dental anatomy were apelike, they were distinct from the corresponding chimpanzee features. The australopithecines stood about four feet tall and matured rapidly, like the great apes. Skull, pelvis, and lower limbs all display features that indicate these hominids walked erect. Still, the bipedalism, called facultative, was distinct from the obligatory bipedalism employed by Homo hominids. Some paleoanthropologists think the australopithecines could also climb and move effectively through trees. This idea is based on their relatively long upper arms, short lower limbs, and funnel-shaped torsos. Work published in 2000 indicates that some australopithecines might have knuckle-walked like the great apes.10 The earliest australopithecines lived either in a woodland environment or in a mixed habitat of trees and open savannas. Later australopithecines lived only on the grassy plains. Their capacity to climb and move through trees, as well as walk erect, gave these hominids easy mobility in their varied environment. The oldest member of Australopithecus, Australopithecus anamensis, existed between 4.2 and 3.8 million years ago, based on fossils recovered near Lake Turkana in Kenya. Australopithecus afarensis fossils have been recovered in eastern Africa and date to between 4 and 3 million years old. “Lucy” (discovered in the early 1970s by Donald Johanson) is one of the best-known specimens. She is nearly 40 percent complete, with much of the postcranial skeleton intact.11 Remains of Australopithecus bahrelghazali, dated at 3.2 million years ago, have been recovered in Chad. Some paleoanthropologists think, however, that A. bahrelghazali is properly classified as an A. afarensis. Australopithecus africanus lived in South Africa between 3.0 and 2.2 million years ago, based on the fossil record. One of the best-known A. africanus specimens is the “Taung child” discovered in 1924 by Dart. The Taung child was the first australopithecine found.12

By the time Columbus discovered America, the Indians were already using beads for decoration. Beads were made from shells, bones, claws, stones, and minerals. The Algonquin and Iroquois tribes of the eastern coast made beads from clam, conch, periwinkle, and other seashells. These beads were used as a medium of exchange by the early Dutch and English colonists. They were called “wampum,” a contraction of the Algonquin “wampumpeak” or “wamponeage,” meaning string of shell beads. The purple beads had twice the value of the white ones. The explorer, followed by the trader, missionary and settler, soon discovered that he had a very good trade item in glass beads brought from Europe. The early beads that were used were about 1/8 inch in diameter, nearly twice as large as beads in the mid-1800’s. They were called pony beads and were quite irregular in shape and size. The colors most commonly used were sky-blue, white, and black. Other less widely used colors were deep bluff, light red, dark red, and dark blue. The small, round seed beads, as they are called, are the most generally used for sewed beadwork. They come in a variety of colors. Those most commonly used by the Indians are red, orange, yellow, light blue, dark blue, green, lavender, and black. The missionaries’ floral embroidered vestments influenced the Woodland tribes of the Great Lakes to apply beads in flower designs. Many other tribes, however, are now using flower designs. There are four main design styles used in the modern period. Three of the styles are largely restricted to particular tribes. The fourth style is common to all groups. It is very simple in pattern. The motifs generally used are solid triangles, hourglasses, crosses, and oblongs. This style is usually used in narrow strips on leggings, robes, or blankets. Sioux beadwork usually is quite open with a solid background in a light color. White is used almost exclusively, although medium or light blue is sometimes seen. The design colors are dominated by red and blue with yellow and green used sparingly. The lazy stitch is used as an application. The Crow and Shoshoni usually beaded on red trade or blanket cloth, using the cloth itself for a background. White was rarely used, except as a thin line outlining other design elements. The most common colors used for designs are pale lavender, pale blue, green, and yellow. On rare occasions, dark blue was used. Red beads were not used very often because they blended with the background color of the cloth and could not be seen. The applique stitch was used. Blackfoot beadwork can be identified by the myriad of little squares or oblongs massed together to make up a larger unit of design such as triangles, squares, diamonds, terraces, and crosses. The large figure is usually of one color and the little units edging it of many colors. The background color is usually white, although other light colors such as light blue and green have been used. The smallness of the pattern in Blackfoot designs would indicate this style is quite modern, as pony trading beads would be too large to work into these designs. Beadwork made in this style seems to imitate the designs of the woven quill work of some of the northwestern tribes with whom the Blackfoot came in contact.

Elsewhere Lankford reiterates that this belief system was by no means confined to the Plains, the Eastern Woodlands, and the Mississippi Valley. It is better understood, he argues, as part of 'a widespread religious pattern' found right across North America and 'more powerful than the tendency towards cultural diversity.' Indeed, what the evidence suggests is the former existence of 'an ancient North American international religion ... a common ethnoastronomy ... and a common mythology. Such a multicultural reality hints provocatively at more common knowledge which lay behind the façade of cultural diversity united by international trade networks. One likely possibility of a conceptual realm in which that common knowledge became focused is mortuary belief [and] ... the symbolism surrounding death.

On the Plains, as in the Eastern woodlands, as on the Pacific Coast, there were irreconcilable differences between the Indians’ way of life and the life the white immigrants wanted to build. One had to give way. The white man had the numbers and the technology. It is easy to today to sit back and criticize the United States for its treatment of the Indians, or the individual settlers and frontiersman for what they did to the Native Americans, but for them the choices were to go back to where they came from or to go forward and seize what they wanted or needed.

Within one hundred years of the establishment of the Jamestown colony in 1607, settlers were well on the way to eliminating the ancient eastern woodlands of North America in what was to become the largest and most rapid deforestation in human history, until the current industrial-scale assault on the world’s tropical rainforests.

Here in the eastern woodlands we have the black, common, tulip, and white morels, and one unfortunate little cousin called (I am so sorry) the Dog Pecker.

This ballgame is extremely important in the Mayan tradition, and forms of it are found to the north, in the territories of the Aztec empire and in the Caribbean, as well as into North America even as far as Canada, in different forms, but with a similar sacred significance. A form of it known as chunkey was important in what is called the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex in North America, while the modern sport of lacrosse descends from a form of sacred ballgame existing among the Eastern Woodlands and Plains nations.