INDIGENOUS WOMEN IN THE NORTHEASTERN AMERICAN CONTACT PERIOD investigates what we know about women’s matriarchal culture before contact with Europeans and then examines decades of dramatic change and social upheaval. We will look at work and responsibilities, everyday items like tools and clothing, skills such as pottery, and more.

// ABOUT THE SERIES – WHEN TWO WORLDS MET //
Over a two-hundred and fifty-year period, from 1500 to 1750, European encounters with the Indigenous Peoples of North America increased in frequency and intensity, and European settlement of North America rapidly expanded. While both societies incorporated aspects of the others’ material world, the changes were most dramatic in the Eastern Woodlands tribes. The People retained their cultures and beliefs (for the most part), but their lives and their material world were significantly altered. When Two Worlds Met is a series of seven programs exploring the Algonquin and Iroquoian language-speaking peoples of the northeast in the early Historic Period during this interaction time, we will use original materials, including documents and objects, as gateways to expand our understanding of this controversial and complex era. Maps, surviving images, and accounts are some of the documents we will consider. Material culture will be explored through drawings, accounts, and surviving objects. Each of the seven programs focuses on a different topic in the more significant theme of the impacts upon Indigenous Northeastern North American life and culture of European interactions and actions in the early Contact Period.