I live in the waaay coastal northeast US (basically an island), and I've been through my share of blizzards. Some of them seem to come out of nowhere, even while glued to the latest accu-weather forecast. They can be absolutely crippling. We have a long history of Natives here (Wampanoag Indians) who must've dealt with it in the past.
Made me wonder if some native tribes who live in similar areas would be able to predict weather in any way. Maybe watching mammals burrow unexpectedly, or birds behaving differently?
Also, what would Natives do during a blizzard? Just wait it out in their longhouse (or whatever dwelling they used) and eat food stores? We're deaths common?
Hope this is the right sub for this question. Thanks.
There were/are a lot of ways that different groups of Native Americans and First Nations people predicted weather, and dealt with them. The first is that many communities actually had dedicated individuals whose job was predicting weather. I live in Bella Coola, and in the Nuxalk tradition, a lhukwala, medicine person, was expected to know what weather was coming. There was a dedicated individual whose job was predicting the arrival of each salmon run. All individuals were also expected to be able to predict incoming storms, and I've heard many examples of elders telling people to bring in the washing when the sky is perfectly clear, and so on, and considering that some of the passages out in the channels were in view of the open ocean for more than a day of paddling, it was really important to know when it was safe and not (One of the villages has a story about a foolish chief's son who took almost a third of the village across when it wasn't a good time, and the weather caught them and killed them).
The reason why this was possible is because people in in-situ cultures are very good at storing knowledge about weather patterns. The words for directions both here and further up the coast are all related to the kind of weather that comes with the wind that comes from that direction. Some directions have multiple names, based on multiple types of winds that bring specific weather patterns. Languages that curve around the coast will even end up in situations where a word at the north end, where the coast is north-south, will have a word meaning north. At the south end of the coast, where the coast goes south-east/north-west, the same word that in the north means north, now means north west, because the wind that defines the direction follows the contour of the land.
For us, we have two types of winter storms, ones that come from the east, and ones that come from the north/north-west. When they happen, they aren't too hard to predict, they come in the same periods of the year, and preceded by the same weather patterns, and when they come, people stay in their long-houses, or out on their traplines in their tents/cabins.
People who were out travelling tended to carry food designed for it, dried fish, dried meat, dried berries, and knew what to do. You carried fire or built fire, gathered wood, wore appropriate clothing, and went on. Because of how much time people spent out of doors compared to today, and the amount of knowledge that a person was assumed to have in relation to weather and survival, deaths due to exposure were likely less common, though deaths on the water from exposure were likely higher, because people did take a lot of risks we would consider excessive.
Not a prohistorian, but I do believe I know this one. As you mentioned in your question, they would wait it out in their longhouses. Considering how well built, insulated, and warm their houses were I can't see any other sensible thing to do. Also, their houses had all the food, supplies and clothes they prepared for the winter, so I don't think they would want to risk not being able to access their stuff. From personal experience, a fire going in a well-insulated house really does warm the place up nicely. Based on that and what I've read, I don't think they had much trouble bringing the longhouse up to a livable temperature.
One more thing to note is that Native Americans were all different depending on location. The source I have attached applies specifically to Northern Michigan, and I know beach tribes were a little different.
As for predicting blizzards, I am pretty sure the answer to that question is no, short of seeing a storm cloud in the distance. Predicting weather at all is a new thing for humans (I'm talking like 1920s/1930s at the earliest. But via anecdotal evidence, I've heard that weathermen from the 60s were full of baloney). If anybody would have had meteorological tools that actually worked before then, I'm sure we would all know about it.
Sources: http://www.northernexpress.com/michigan/article-5543-the-indians-in-winter.html
Weather predicting: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WxForecasting/wx2.php
EDIT: Just want to say about weather prediction. The idea of it has been around for a long time, and someone else has described how weather was interpreted in the past. My interpretation of the question was "Were they able to predict blizzards?" rather than "Did they have any methods to try to predict blizzards?". My answer is still the same to the question that I was answering: They were not able to reliably predict any storm. Nobody was until the 20th century.
Hi there! While you wait for an answer re: blizzards, you may be interested in this section of our FAQ:
"Changes in the land" by Bill Cronon considers how the landscape of New England changed overtime with the influx of European settlers. I remember he spends at least a part of a chapter discussing how different tribes in different parts of New England prepared for and endured the winter. Plus it's a fantastic book.
"Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, “to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.” So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man?" — Thoreau, Walden
This doesn't answer your question, but something tells me that they were well adjusted to the harshness of cold weather. Despite the freezing weather in Ohio, I'd say I'm in 60-70 degree weather 95% of the time. I'm slightly cold during my commutes but aside from that modernity keeps me pretty warm (and not used to cold temperatures).
Conversely, you have the steriotype of people in Russia, Minnesota, etc. that go skiing, make snow angels and ice fish in shorts and a tee shirt...
Here is a similar passage by Emerson
"The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?" — Emerson, Self Reliance