In the first three chapters of "The Way We Lived " we are introduced to many different cultures and experiences throughout the first history of civilized America. In chapter one we are taken back to 1492 New England to see the day to day lives of two very prominent and influential Native American tribes. We watch as these two tribes move from Maine to Chesapeake Bay and go from hunting and scavenging to farming and creating more inventive ways to store food. In Chapter two we are introduced to a lone indentured servant named Daniel Clocker, who works to make his way in the new colony of Maryland. We see the different class systems of colonial America and the new farming techniques of growing corn, tobacco, and grazing cattle. We see the main importance of the woman in these different societies and how they affect the home life. In Chapter three we are witnessing the creation of the plantation system and the birth of the slave trade. This chapter goes into the depth of slavery from capture to captivity to shipping to plantation. We witness the horrors of the Middle Passage and the death marches to the coast. Bringing cultivation to the new world brings with it death, destruction, slavery, invention, servitude but ultimately success. .
In Peter Nabokov and Dean Snow's essay "Algonquians and Iroquoians: Farmers of the Woodlands " we first witness a group of Penobscot Indians coming down from Maine and moving into their summer villages. In the text it states "The annual shifts between seasonal camps was determined by the habits of fishing and hunting " it would seem that the Indians frequently migrate from place to place, not upsetting the environment. The book tells us that the region these Indians inhabited was called "the woodland culture area " and is said to have resembled a checkerboard. Indian are said to have lived in New England since 16,000 B.C. In this region there are said to have been at least twenty known language families and over 10,000 years of adaptation to history.
