How did people first reach the Northeast? Some traditional Native American stories say that people were created there. Most scientists think they came from places south or west at the end of the most recent Ice Age, sometime between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago. Scholars debate the routes, having little direct evidence beyond scattered stone tools. These they try to trace back to the source of the stone, to sketch paths of travel.

The ancient pioneers faced formidable obstacles whichever way they chose. Deep iceberg-strewn lakes filled the Great Lake basins south of the glacier’s edge. To the east, an arm of the Atlantic called the Champlain Sea covered today’s Lake Champlain and the adjacent St. Lawrence lowland. The Hudson River roared through a deep trench to an ocean much lower and farther away than today. next >>

The travelers followed migratory waterfowl and other animals through the rugged north-south mountains, a formidable barrier with loose rocks strewn about the slopes and passes.

The low plains in what is now the Gulf of Maine and Long Island Sound—extending as far as 100 miles east of the present shoreline—were home to mastodons during the deepest cold weather, and likely attracted other large animals as the climate warmed. Eventually the seas rose with runoff from the ice, forcing the newcomers inland. Much evidence of their lives remains underwater.
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