Native American Foods: Before and after Contact: Eighteenth Century

By 1700 the Indians of the central Eastern Seaboard were far outnumbered by colonists. European settlement of new lands repeated patterns of disease and loss of land established in the seventeenth century and was particularly evident in densely populated Indian areas. Continuing declines in population were due to deportations of enslaved Native Americans to the Caribbean and voluntary moves westward as people hoped to escape general anti-Indian harassment and violence. Only a few precontact Indian groups survived on the coasts and maintained their traditions, among them the Pamunkey community in Virginia. Others were able to maintain small tracts near ancestral homes, among them the Piscataway of coastal New Hampshire. The strong tribes and nations (Creek and Iroquois) who had maintained their sovereignty maintained access to traditional food and foodways.