Dugout canoe at Dickson Mounds Museum

Native Americans used various parts of forest plants to make tools for everyday living, for personal articles, for hunting and fishing, and for farming and gathering food.

Wood
Native Americans used wood for the construction of items ranging from dugout canoes and posts for houses to sewing needles and hunting equipment. Various groups used white oak to make awls and other tools. Young saplings formed the frames of cattail mat-covered summer houses. Native Americans also used wood for fuel in their hearths.

Tree Bark
Bark was used to cover houses. Tribes used the inner bark of basswood and willow to make woven fabrics. They boiled the inner bark of oaks and hickories to make dyes.

Leaves
The Potowatomi people mixed tobacco with staghorn sumac leaves (Rhus typhina) for ceremonial pipes.

	Kickapoo house made with tree saplings covered with cattail mats from the Illinois State Museums' Peoples of the Past exhibit.

To learn more about Native American houses, see the Native American module section on Houses.

For a Native American and Forest Activity, see Dye Plants (html).