culture and the nature of the IndiansÆ desires as well as the structure of European culture and the desire of the white settlers. To understand what happened to any group of Indians it is necessary to look at the particulars of their culture as well as the particularities of the culture of the settlers in that area at that moment of history (Leach, 1992. P. 37).
Native Americans of Southern New England
At the time of earliest European contact with Indians in the 16th and 17th century, Southern New England was a clearly distinct cultural zone. Farther north in this region, the native tribes were much less likely to practice horticulture, and so the economic basis of the southern New England tribes marked off their culture as distinct from that of their neighbors. This group was also marked off û and in a perhaps even more important way û by the fact that the Indians of Southern New England all spoke one of five Eastern Algonquian languages, and so were distinctly set off from their Abenaki-speaking neighbors inland (Trigger, 1978, p. 160).
Indians living in southern New England used the resources of forests, lakes, rivers, wetlands, and sea to provide food and other basic raw materials. But they were not simply food collectors, depending as they also did on cultivating food crops. They may be viewed as in a transitional phase (at the time of European contact) between food collection and horticulture, having bypassed the stage of pastoralism that many cultural groups go through at this period in their development (Drake, 2000, p. 19).
The Indians of this region trapped deer and hunted large sea mammals such as seals as well as killing whales who beached themselves. They caught both freshwater and marine fish along with snaring a wide variety of birds, including swan, grouse, goose, cormorants and turkeys.
But, like most societies before the Industrial Revolution, they depended heavily on plants for their dietary staples,...