Category: Munsee

Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples living along North America’s eastern seaboard knew about earthquakes long before Europeans appeared in the region, according to an expert.

Tribal nations like the Seneca and Cayuga of the six-nation Iroquois Confederacy (also including Mohawk, Tuscarora, Onondaga and Oneida) as well as Algonquian peoples like the Natick (Massachusetts Indians) and Mi’kmaq of Atlantic Canada all have a word for earthquake, according to Boston College seismologist John Ebel.

Researching which tribes in the region have a word for earthquake could be useful, “because that would suggest that earthquakes were a rather repetitive thing,” Ebel noted in a recent talk at the Seismological Society of America’s Annual Meeting.

Seismic East Coast

A statement by the Society noted that while northeastern North America might not feel like earthquake country compared to California, the region has a long record of witnessing large quakes. Since the past 400 years (coinciding with European colonisation), there have been written records that have documented these quakes.

However, according to Ebel, the record can be extended into the past with the help of Native American knowledge and can help scientists better understand earthquake hazard in the area.

He cited two instances. Ebel pointed to Moodus, Connecticut. ‘Moodus’ comes from an Algonquin dialect and means “place of noises.”

“For hundreds of years, people have heard “booms”—as if echoing in an underground cavern—in the area. Ebel said the Moodus noises are similar those he heard as a graduate student camping in the Mojave Desert following a magnitude 5.1 earthquake,” the statement observed.

“The Moodus noises sounded like distant thunder of a boom coming up from the ground, very similar to what I heard from the California aftershocks several years before,” said Ebel, who noted that modern seismic instruments have recorded earthquake swarms in Moodus. “So the ‘place of noises’ means that they were…

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Attendees of the 2024 Roanoke Island American Indian Festival Powwow in Manteo are shown here. Photo: Biff Jennings, courtesy Algonquian Indians of North Carolina, Inc.

The 14th annual Roanoke Island American Indian Festival is set for this weekend.

Taking place from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on the Manteo High School practice field, sponsors for the festival and powwow are the Algonquian Indians of North Carolina Inc. and the Roanoke-Hatteras Indians of Dare County.

The nonprofit Algonquian Indians of North Carolina is composed of people who are genealogically descended from the original historic Roanoke-Hatteras (Croatan) Indians of Dare County. “We are dedicated to keeping alive the heritage and culture of our ancestors, for the benefit of our members and the community at large. Historically, our tribes were known for fishing, hunting and farming,” its website states.

There will be food, exhibits, health screening, survival techniques and vendors. Because no seating will be provided, those attending should bring a lawn chair, blanket, beach umbrella and related items. Only service animals are allowed.

Pea Island Preservation Society, Inc. said in a release from their organization that they’ll have a table set up at the festival.

The society’s Outreach and Education Director Joan Collins said in a press release that the festival is a important reminder that many who live and have lived in the area have American Indian ties.

“The historic U.S. Life-Saving Service and later U.S. Coast Guard station once at Pea Island on the Outer Banks is perhaps one of the best local reminders,” Collins said. “The plaque which hangs on the outside wall…

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Dancing in the circle at the Roanoke Island Festival and Powwow at Manteo High School last year. Photo by Biff Jennings

By Joan L. Collins – Director, Outreach and Education Pea Island Preservation Society, Inc.

On April 26-27, from 11:00 a.m. until 4 p.m. each day, the 14th Roanoke Island American Indian Festival will be held at the Manteo High School Practice Field.  The school is located at 829 Wingina Ave, just a few minutes’ drive from downtown Manteo  The Festival and Powwow, which is sponsored by the Algonquian Indians of North Carolina, Inc., and the Roanoke – Hatteras Indians of Dare County, includes tribal members with deep roots to Roanoke Island and the surrounding area.

Single dancer at the Roanoke Island Festival and Powwow
at Manteo High School last year. Photo by Biff Jennings

This family friendly event is an exciting opportunity to experience the culture and traditions of Algonquin tribes on the North Carolina coast.

While many are familiar with the story of the early English colonists and the Lost Colony on Roanoke Island, knowledge of tribes who lived in this area before and after the colonists arrived is not well known. The Powwow and Festival provide the opportunity observe and celebrate first hand the culture of Algonquian speaking tribes practiced by tribal members today.  It is intended to provide deeper understanding and appreciation of tribal traditions and to bring community members together to share experiences.  Powwows are wonderful family events not only to enjoy but to learn.

The event is also an important reminder that many who live in the area, past and present, are those with American Indian ties.   The historic U.S. Life-Saving Service and later U.S. Coast Guard station once at Pea Island on the Outer Banks…

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NEWPORT CITY – New England certainly is a large historic piece of the United States settlement and Vermont is no exception. A film produced, written, and directed by Jay Craven, a Northeast Kingdom resident, outlines how Vermont became a state. The one hour and 43-minute movie, ‘Lost Nation’, had a public showing at the North Country Union High School Auditorium Wednesday evening. 

“‘Lost Nation’ is set in places that are the ancestral homelands of the Abenaki, Mohigan, Lenape, Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, Nonotuck, Wabanaki, Mohawk, Haudenosaunee, Matinecock, and Pennacook tribal nations,” reads an information piece that appears on the screen before the movie starts.  

Craven made the movie through his Semester Cinema Program, where 30 professionals and mentors collaborated with 40 students from ten colleges to have film-intensive learning workshops that include pre-production work, appearances from visiting artists, and six weeks of production on a feature for national release. 

The writing itself took Craven close to two years. The actual shooting took six weeks, but they spent another nine weeks preparing the location for the production. The film was shot in Massachusetts and Vermont. They shot some in Massachusetts because that state has a film incentive program. 

“They cover 25 percent of what you spend while you are there,” he said. “That’s a huge incentive for us. We shoot some in Massachusetts in order to take advantage of the film incentive (program).”

They initially wanted to shoot all of it in Vermont, but finances made it problematic. 

Craven got the idea for the film the day after he moved to Vermont in 1974. 

“I was presented with the hard reality that there was no heat in my house, and I needed to start cutting wood for a wood burning furnace,” he said. Craven went on to say that a neighbor loaned him a farm truck. “The brakes went out….

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A few miles west of the Parkersville location, we enter Birmingham, Iowa. It was laid out in 1839. Moving on we cross into Jefferson County.

Shortly we pass the former location of the small hamlet of Collette. It was a station on the Peavine Railroad that ran from Fort Madison to nearby Batavia.

Colette was established in 1887. When train service was discontinued in 1939, the city was abandoned.

An unassuming spot southeast of Libertyville, Iowa has historical significance. After the 1832 conflict that has come to be called the Black Hawk War, this area became the boundary between land titled to the U.S. government and the domain of the Sauk and Meskwaki.

Shortly, we enter Libertyville, Iowa.

Libertyville was laid out in 1842.

In the center of town is a historical marker that reads: “Here passed the Dragoon Trails. Blazed in 1835 by the First U.S. Dragoons under Colonel Stephen W. Kearney.”

These soldiers played an important role in opening the Iowa frontier.

Another unassuming area is about a mile west of Libertyville. In 1838, the Sauk and Meskwaki ceded more land to the US government.

Along the portion of Agency Road west of Libertyville were several small towns: Absecum, County Line, and Cotton Grove.

When the stagecoach picked Absecum for a station in 1855, it was given a post office and the one in nearby Cotton Grove was closed.

The village of County Line was located west of Absecum.

When the Rock Island Railroad put a depot there in 1876, the government selected it for a post office and closed the one in Absecum.

That led to Absecum’s downfall. County Line had two houses, a church, an elevator, a depot, and a post office. The village disappeared after the railroad line closed in 1932.

As we cross into Wapello County, we approach the location of the former village of Cotton Grove.

Little is…

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Released: 2025-03-31

The 2021 Census of Population revealed that 243,155 people reported the ability to speak an Indigenous language well enough to conduct a conversation. There were more than 70 distinct Indigenous languages reported on the census questionnaire. Within this rich diversity of Indigenous languages, the data reveal varying levels of vitality and patterns of acquisition and use.

The history of colonial practices in Canada has had a profoundly negative impact on the use of Indigenous languages. Perhaps most notably, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report detailed many of the harms done to the languages of First Nations, Métis and Inuit children through the residential school system, in an effort to assimilate Indigenous people and break their ties to their culture.

In response to the Calls to Action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the Indigenous Languages Act was passed in 2019. With its passage, the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages was created to “help promote Indigenous languages and support the efforts of Indigenous peoples to reclaim, revitalize, maintain and strengthen their languages.”

Today, the Centre for Indigenous Statistics and Partnerships at Statistics Canada, in collaboration with the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages, is releasing nine new reports on Indigenous languages in Canada, providing relevant data on the vitality and patterns of language acquisition and use. Among these reports, eight are framed around one of the major Indigenous language families in Canada—Algonquian, Athabaskan, Inuktut (Inuit), Iroquoian, Salish, Siouan, Tsimshian and Wakashan—and one report focuses on languages that are not part of any specific family (Haida, Ktunaxa [Kutenai] and Michif).

Algonquian, Inuktut (Inuit) and Athabaskan language families are those spoken most often

Indigenous languages are generally classified into one of eight major language families, such as Athabaskan languages or Inuktut (Inuit) languages. In terms of language knowledge, the largest Indigenous language family in 2021 was Algonquian languages, with 163,815 speakers. The…

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This report is a collaborative research project between Statistics Canada and the Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages. It is intended to provide a general overview on the vitality, acquisition and use of Indigenous languages belonging to the Algonquian language family. For more information on the work of OCIL see Office of the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages – Home.

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Algonquian languages

The Algonquian family represents the largest speaker base among all Indigenous languages in Canada. Among all people who reported the ability to speak an Indigenous language, more than two thirds were speakers of an Algonquian language. Algonquian language speakers were present in every province and territory in Canada, in 2021, and they made up the majority of all Indigenous language speakers in nine of ten provinces. Algonquian languages stretch beyond Canadian borders and are present in languages such as Arapaho in the United States, and Kickapoo, spoken in both the United States and Mexico.

Within this report the following Algonquian languages are presented:

• Blackfoot
• Atikamekw
• Cree languages
• Innu (Montagnais)
• Naskapi
• Mi’kmaq
• Wolastoqewi (Malecite)
• Anicinabemowin (Algonquin)
• Oji-Cree
• Ojibway languages
• Algonquian languages, not included elsewhere (n.i.e.)

Summary language statistics are provided for these languages in table 2.

Knowledge and mother tongue

In 2021, there were 163,815 people who reported that they could speak an Algonquian language well enough to conduct a conversation. The number of those who reported that an Algonquian language was their mother tongue—that is, the language first learned as a child and still understood—was 123,130.

The largest group within the Algonquian language family was those who reported Cree languages, with 87,875 speakers and 66,205 having a Cree mother tongue; this was followed by Ojibway languages (26,165 speakers and 15,890 mother tongue), and Oji-Cree (15,305 speakers…

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