Dictionary.net

A family of Indian tribes, bearing a strong resemblance to each other in manners and customs and language, which at the time of the beginning of English colonization numbered about a quarter of a million, and occupied, beside part of Canada, most of the area now in the United States east of the Mississippi and north of latitude 37. They were in the hunting-and-fishing stage, tilling little ground, and nomadic. The chief tribes in the family, beside the Canadian members, were the Abenakis, Massachusetts tribes, Pequods, Narragansetts, Mohegans, Delawares, Nanticokes, Powhatan tribes, Pampticoes, Shawnees, west of the Alleghanies the Chippewas, Pottawatomies, Miamis, Sacs, Foxes, Kickapoos and, west of the Mississippi, the Blackfeet and Cheyennes.