For thousands of years, canoes were central to the lives of Native Americans in New England. Travel by canoe connected people within and between the major watersheds, creating social and economic alliances and distributing scarce resources to far-flung communities linked by ties of kinship and common culture. European settlers, traders, and explorers adopted Native canoe technology in the 17th and 18th centuries, and a few dozen dugout canoes have since been recovered from the bottoms of ponds and lakes across northern New England.