The Red Paint People lived in Maine and the Maritimes about 4000 years ago. They are so called because they used the mineral red ocher in burial ceremonies, sprinkling quantities of it on the dead and over all the gifts they placed in the graves. They are considered to be part of the Archaic Period that ended about 3000 years ago with the advent of the Ceramic Period.
THE RED-PAINT PEOPLE OF MAINE by Warren K. Moorehead
It is rather strange that in Maine there should recently have been discovered the evidences of an unusual culture of considerable age. We are accustomed to regard the South, the Mississippi valley, and the Southwest as sections in which one expects to be confronted by archeological problems; but it is in the most easterly portion of the United States that we have now found indications of a culture different from that existing anywhere else in this country. Excepting the strange remains of the cave-people of the Ozark mountains, explored by Dr Charles Peabody and the writer' in 1904, perhaps nothing found in the United States inrecent years is comparable in interest with the problem of the "Red-paint People" of the lower Penobscot valley.
Web page article by Brian Robinson www.seacoastnh.com/history/prehistoric/redpaint.html
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