Peoples of the Forests, Lakes, and Rivers

A group’s total way of life reflects an accommodation to environmental constraints enables individuals to meet their needs.

Climate:

• Sub-arctic climatic features:
• pronounced summer-winter cycle
• Long severe winters; moderately warm summers
• Powdery snow, deeper in some places in forests where wind does not pack it
• Affects fauna
• Spring thaw/fall freeze up limits travel and subsistence activities
  

The Annual Round:

• Movement between suitable locations in a territory to harvest a variety of resources
• Usually involves fairly small groups of people ca. 10-15
• Limited carrying capacity of sub arctic lands
• Larger congregations at fishing spots take advantage of peak spawning runs.
• Summer: travel difficult overland; mosquitoes people gathered along shores of lakes and rivers; fished
• Fall: dispersed to hunt animals for fat, hides and winter food migrating caribou, moose, small game
• Winter: freeze-up limited mobility
• After freeze-up people were mobile again, winter camps, often lake shore for fishing hunters would range to brush camps the area
• Spring: before thaw hard times until birds arrive
• After thaw people good be mobile again in boats etc.

Subsistence:

• Big-game hunters
• Barren ground caribou migrations
• Chutes and snare corrals, spread at river crossings, and spear and bow and arrow when herd dispersed Moose and woodland caribou tend to be solitary. Hunters tracked them, even when forced into deep snow
• Other animals:
• Bear: not a major resource but important for fat; specially respected by some people
• Beaver: important resource for some people, lodges open in winter
• Small animals: caught in snares and deadfalls
• Dog: domesticated; hunting animal; pack animal among Chipewayan
• Birds: seasonal resource; limited use in shield area; became more used after guns and twine nets
• Fish: important to some shield peoples; important to most Cordilleran peoples
• Hooked, netted in water, trapped, speared, and dip net





• Housing:
• variety of shapes and sizes for various uses
• Hide or brush over a wood frame where a group moved frequently
• Tipi-shaped, domed (more efficient for heat)
• Wood, in some parts of the southern sub arctic of Eurasia mostly after contact.

Clothing and bedding:

• Severe winters required insulating clothing and bedding furs; also high caloric intake, fire and continuous movement while outside
• Women prepared hides and sewed clothing
• Ng: shirts, dresses, leggings, furred robes, parkas, and specialized footwear

Western Subarctic Culture

These peoples live in the boreal forest in what are now Canada's western provinces and territories. They were originally hunter-gatherers dependent on caribou, moose and the fur trade. Most spoke Athapaskan languages except the Crees and Inland Tlingit. Major ethnicities in the Yukon, Northwest Territories and the northern parts of the western provinces.

"Hän Hwëch'in", which in the language means "people who live along the river", the river being the Yukon.