What is the history of Subarctic Indians?

Answer 1

Recorded history for subarctic Indians dates back about 450 years and the history of the various subarctic Indians or Aboriginals or First Nations (though not Nation States as we think of them today that term is used to describe Indians in Canada) dates back to the last ice age.

Subarctic refers to a climate zone and not a geographical area. It is the zone south of the arctic which has permanent, year round ice sheets. During the last ice age that zone was very far south of where it is now, well into the what is now the United States.

The arctic, as mentioned, has year round ice as a result even the warmest summers are not warm enough for most plants and animals. The land has few if any trees and the trees that are there are very small and stunted and in the south. Bushes are more common that trees closer to the ice sheets and in the far north even bushes can be uncommon or so small they hardly look like bushes at all.

The subarctic and arctic is delineated, or marked by, what is called the tree line. No that isn't where the trees line up it is where the forest starts, where trees can grow in enough numbers and high enough to be a forest, though not much of a forest compared to the forest in the lower parts of the subarctic.

Trees, or rather the forest (in Canada we often use the term "bush" to refer to the forest) is key to many subarctic Indians.

The subarctic includes prairies, and grass lands but most of the Subarctic is treed.

Which means as the ice retreats subarctic Indians move farther north with the trees. Those groups closest to the arctic have the hardest time surviving, and have the lowest population densities.

Starvation events are common among hunter gatherers in areas where there is not much flora and fauna (plants and animals). It is less common further south but still occurs regularly, as it did for all humans until the development of agriculture.

They remain a stone age culture, meaning they did not use metals though they did have some copper, likely from trade with Indians further south, until the arrival of Europeans in the 1500's.

They did have contact with Europeans before the 1500's. Subarctic includes Newfoundland and Europeans with metal tools and weapons arrived there around 1000AD but were driven off by the Indians living there.

After the 1500's their history is recorded but what that history is or means depends on your culture and the history of your culture but all Subarctic Indians suffered a population decline after the arrival of Europeans.

The intermixing of groups of people separated by thousands of years and very different cultures and agricultural practices results in the exchange of life forms, some of which may not have ever been seen by the other group.

While the Europeans had to deal with an older or new to them Syphilis which caused a pandemic in Europe the Indians had to deal with the much more deadly Small Pox that spread far inland long before the Europeans would.

Depopulation, subsequent invasion and displacement and in one case complete genocide has been recorded and is the base from which their history today continues.