Before the beginning of the Christian period, the Indian was living a simple life in a village. He made pottery, stewed meat, and enjoyed trade with distant tribes. He had adopted the bow and arrow, used chipped flint for arrowheads, grew tobacco for pleasure and ceremonies. However, he had no domestic animals.

(Paul Wallace, c. 1960)

As much as we can judge, before Europeans, there seemed to be very little fighting between tribes.

(G. Elmore Reaman, 1967)

The Northeastern Indians were the true red men. They were called this because the northern people covered exposed parts of their skin with a mixture of bear grease and red-ochre. This gave them protection from the wind and cold in winter, and from mosquitoes and flies in the summer.

(Alice B. Kehoe, 1981)

James Green: Native peoples of the Americas, Oxford University Press, 1993, page 14