Red Paint People facts for kids

The Red Paint People were an ancient group of people who lived in North America. They lived in the areas we now call New England and Atlantic Canada. These people lived a very long time ago, between 3000 BCE and 1000 BCE. That's about 3,000 to 5,000 years ago!

They got their name because of how they buried their dead. They used a lot of red ochre, which is a natural clay earth pigment. They would cover both the bodies and the items buried with them in this red powder. Sometimes, they are also called the Moorehead burial tradition after a scientist named Warren K. Moorehead, who studied them.

Scientists also call this time period the "Maritime Archaic" or "Late Archaic" period. This means they lived a long time ago and often lived near the sea. We don't know much about what happened to the Red Paint People or if any groups today are their direct descendants.

The Red Paint People had very special burial customs. Their burials were more detailed than those of later groups in the same area. After the Red Paint People, a group called the Susquehanna culture lived in the southern part of their land. The Susquehanna people used pottery, but they didn't use the same stone tools as the Red Paint People.

How They Lived and What They Used

The Red Paint People were skilled at living off the land and sea. They spent their lives fishing, hunting, and gathering food along the coasts and rivers. Some places where they lived show that they stayed there all year round. This means they didn't always move from place to place with the seasons.

Their food came from many sources. They ate fish that lived in the sea and fish that swam up rivers. They also ate shellfish, meat from animals, and wild plants. This included berries, acorns, nuts, and roots.

The Red Paint People made tools from stone and bone. They did not use pottery or metal tools. They even had boats that were strong enough to catch large fish like swordfish! They traded with other groups, and their trading network reached from Labrador all the way to the New York side of Lake Champlain.

How Scientists Studied Them

People knew about the graves with red paint as early as the 1840s. But the first scientific study happened in 1892. Charles Willoughby from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University led this study.

Willoughby even showed a small model of his dig site at a big event in Chicago in 1893. This model caught the eye of Warren K. Moorehead. Moorehead then did more digging and published his findings in the early 1900s. He believed these people were older than other cultures in the area. At first, some disagreed, but later scientific tests proved Moorehead was right.

In the 1930s, some people thought the Red Paint People might have disappeared because of giant waves called tsunamis. However, scientists no longer believe this theory.