Living With the Land
D2.Geo.8.3-5
Read each information text, then answer the questions.
The Haudenosaunee and the Eastern Forests
An information text written for this worksheet. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy is made up of six nations: the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora. Their homelands are in the forests and river valleys of what is now New York State. In the past, families lived in longhouses built from wooden poles covered with elm bark. Many families, related through their mothers, shared one longhouse. Women farmed corn, beans and squash together in the same fields. The Haudenosaunee call these crops the Three Sisters. Men hunted deer in the forests and fished in the rivers and lakes. Villages moved every ten to twenty years, when the soil and the firewood nearby were used up. Today the Haudenosaunee nations have their own governments and communities in New York, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Canada.
- 1. Who hunted deer and fished in the rivers?
- 2. Why could many families share one longhouse?
- 3. What were longhouses covered with?
The Lakota and the Great Plains
An information text written for this worksheet. The Lakota are one of the nations of the Great Plains, a wide grassland in the middle of North America. After horses arrived on the Plains in the 1700s, many Lakota bands followed the great herds of bison across the grasslands. The bison gave them almost everything they needed: meat for food, hides for clothing and for the covers of their tipis, and bones for tools. A tipi could be taken down and packed in a short time, so a whole camp could move with the herds. In winter, camps stayed in sheltered river valleys, out of the wind. In the late 1800s, hunters from the United States killed millions of bison, and the Lakota lost much of their land. Today the Lakota have their own governments, and many live on reservations in South Dakota and North Dakota.
- 1. Why was a tipi a good home for people who moved often?
- 2. Name three things the bison gave the Lakota.
- 3. How did horses change Lakota life?
LessonPrint · D2.Geo.8.3-5 · Set 25 · free to copy for classroom use