![[Pasted image 20250201171645.png]] Encouraged by the wealth found by the Spanish in the settled civilizations to the south, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century English, Dutch, and French explorers expected to discover the same in North America. What they found instead were small, scattered communities, many already ravaged by European diseases brought by the Spanish and transmitted among the natives in the century before the new European explorers arrived. Rather than gold and silver, there was an abundance of land, and the timber and fur that land could produce. The [Woodland Indians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Eastern_Woodlands) living east of the Mississippi did not construct the large and complex societies of those to the west. Because they lived in small autonomous clans or tribal units, each group adapted to the specific environment in which it lived. Although often connected through trade and intermarriage, these groups were not unified and warfare among tribes was common as each group sought to increase its hunting and fishing areas. Eastern tribes shared many  common traits. A chief or group of tribal elders made decisions, and although the chief was male, usually the women selected and counseled him. Men hunted, but women farmed and controlled a larger portion of the tribes’ food supplies. Gender roles were not as fixed as they were in the patriarchal societies of Europe, Mesoamerica, and South America. --- Next: [[1.20 Women]] Back: [[1.18 Cahokia]]