From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Aboriginals: Introduction/J.r. Miller
Whether they favour a lee-of-the-mountains or a coastal itinerary, scholars generally agree on the path of diffusion. Over thousands of years various groupings made their way eastward, and in some cases also northward and northeastward into portions of the northern United States and Canada. Many of the northeastern woodlands peoples in the United States and Canada are believed to have reached their locations approximately 12,000 years ago. In the western region, by contrast, the First Nations who would develop the Plains culture in the historic period probably reached and settled on the grasslands about 10,000 years ago. Whatever their eventual destination and whenever they reached it, all these communities developed ingenious adaptations to the lands in which they found themselves. In some cases, such as the nations that became known as Iroquoians, they acquired economic skills in horticulture to complement their abilities to hunt, gather natural foods, and fish.
Among the groups who eventually became established in various parts of modern-day Canada, there was a similarity in their adaptation to the climate and topography of the regions they inhabited. So, for example, with seaside-dwelling peoples such as the Beothuk of Newfoundland and Mi’kmaq (Micmac) of Nova Scotia and other parts of the Maritimes, there was a heavy emphasis on harvesting the resources of the ocean as well as on hunting game in a seasonal round. For those who were located in good arable regions, such as the Iroquois Confederacy south of the lower Great Lakes or the Huron near Georgian Bay in what is now Ontario, the growing of crops emerged as a critically important activity. These eastern woodlands horticulturalists were famous for their dependence on what they called the Three Sisters: corn, beans, and squash. In some specialized localities, such as the lands along the northwestern shore of Lake Erie, the Iroquoian nation that would be known to Europeans as the Petun or Tobacco people also grew the item that provided their name. In more northerly regions, such as the lakes and forests of the Precambrian Shield, there was heavier reliance on hunting-gathering and on pursuit of an annual round of seasonal movements to take advantage of the availability of beaver, moose, fish, or other naturally occurring resources.
Vitally important, though insufficiently appreciated, aspects of the economies and lifeways that aboriginal peoples developed well before the coming of the Europeans were a common spiritual outlook and an interest in commerce. In spite of their many material and social differences, all these groups shared a view of humans and their place in the world that scholars call animism. Many of the essays on individual aboriginal families that follow point out, in Janet Chute’s words, their “respectful treatment of animal bones” and other habits that reflect a particular attitude towards the non-human world. Aboriginal peoples believed, in short, that all creation was alive, or animate, and everything and everybody, including animals and fishes, were beings. Hence, a traveller might make an offering of tobacco at dangerous rapids to placate the spirit of the watery turbulence and secure his safe passage. Hunters would follow rigid rituals before setting out in pursuit of the beaver to ensure that their fellow being, the beaver, would allow itself to be taken by its human kin. After a successful hunt or fishing foray, prayers would be said to thank the beings who had given up their lives so that humans could live. This view of humankind’s similarity to all other things in the natural world stood in sharp contrast to the attitudes towards creation held by European newcomers.
Like Europeans, however, natives shared a heavy involvement in trade. Because they lived in economically different zones that produced varied products, there was a strong incentive to travel to exchange goods they had in surplus but their neighbours wanted. Those who were well located geographically and produced a surplus of foodstuffs, such as the Iroquoians in the east or the Nuu-chah-nulth on the west coast of Vancouver Island, were able to establish themselves as intermediaries facilitating the transfer of products from one region to another. The essays on the Wakashans and Tsimshians, for example, note the importance of an oily fish, oolican or eulachon, in inter-group trade on the northwest coast. Similarly, copper from the north shore of Lake Superior might end up, through intermediaries along the way, in the hands of the Mi’kmaq on the Atlantic. Or, from the western woodlands, furs and bone products might be traded to the agricultural Mandan south of the forty-ninth parallel by a people such as the Assiniboine who acted as commercial go-betweens. On the west coast, a number of groups played a similar facilitating role between northerly regions that had one type of product and other locations that specialized in different items.
