Both Adrian van der Donck's 1653 book entitled A DESCRIPTION OF NEW NETHERLAND and Virginia DeJohn's 2006 book entitled CREATURES OF EMPIRE provide many first-hand colonial accounts of the wild and domestic animals that inhabited the eastern woodland forests................. Both provide excellent glimpses into what was Americas first frontier, the eastern seaboard in the early and mid 17th century.......... .....Each paint a vivid portrait reminding us that the first frontier in what was to become the USA("from sea to shining sea") was in fact the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sa=X&channel=ipad_bm&biw=1024&bih=729&q=A+description+of+New+Netherland&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgVuLSz9U3SDYpL69IBwCdf2WbDgAAAA&ved=2ahUKEwjM7ouk1sjfAhUJq4MKHbc6CpQQgOQBMAd6BAgSEDo
VAN DER DONCK'S A DESCRIPTION OF NEW NETHERLAND:

The Fauna in New Netherland(New York City and surrounding northern New Jersey and Hudson Highlands up to present day Albany Ny) was as varied as the flora. Nan der Donck and other thers too, reported the presence of lions(Pumas), black bears, moose, deer, wolves and various sorts of birds and fish. According to Van Der Donck, lions were never glimpsed by Dutch colonists, but were known through pelts brought from the Indians. Same with Lynx, which can still be found in the Adirondack Mountains.

 The Dutch every so often saw bears but these were not dangersous as they took flight as soon as they smelled humans. Van der Donck asserted that moose were easy to tame. Large number so deer featured in New Netherland. Wolves were not too much of a nuisance to the Dutch since their main prey was deer. Occasionally, they would tak a calf, sheep goat or pigs, although pigs wer no easy prey if they were in a group.Various types of snakes inhabited New Netherland, most of which were not dangerous, with the important exception of the rattlesnake.Of the fur-bearing animals, beavers were the most valued although raccoons, mink, otterrs, foxes and wildcats(bobcats, pumas, lynx) were also hunted.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Creatures_of_Empire.html?id=8bq7X_JcJZ0C&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button

DEjOHN'S CREATURES OF EMPIRE:

Peter Wynne related the curious fact that Virginia's Indians "keep nothing tame about them." William Strachey made a similar observation at somewhat greater length, reporting that native people in Virginia did not "breed Cattell nor bring up tame poultry" in their villages. Although they had lots of turkeys (which Strachey apparently did not regard as tame), these Indians did not "keepe byrds, squirrells, nor tame Partridges, Swan, duck, nor Geese. Native peoples in New England had no "Tame Cattle," sniffed John Josselyn, "excepting Lice, and Doggs of a wild breed that they bring up to hunt with." 

Indians in Mexico had domesticated turkeys, perhaps as early as 3500 BC, and the keeping of these birds eventually spread to ancient Puebloan peoples in what is now the southwestern United States. Inhabitants of the Andes had domesticated llamas and guinea pigs, and the peoples of tropical South America kept Muscovy ducks.

 Virtually all Native American peoples had dogs. Even so, this list sharply contrasts with Old World inhabitants' roster of domesticated beasts, which included sheep, goats, swine, cattle, horses, and donkeys.44 What colonists attributed to backwardness in fact stemmed from circumstances beyond the Indians' control. The Americas simply had very few large animal species capable of being domesticated. Two possibilities—indigenous American horses and camels—became extinct, either through climatic change or overhunting, around 11,000 BC. Various Indian groups grew to depend on bison and caribou, but did so by exploiting the animals' predictable migratory habits rather than by domesticating them. The two large mammals most familiar to eastern Algonquians, deer and bears, were not suitable candidates. 

Eastern Algonquians did not domesticate local fauna mainly because they could not do so, but also because there was little reason for them to try even with small animals. Indians in Central and South America probably domesticated turkeys and other birds to assure their rising populations of a protein supply in a region lacking large game animals.46 But at least since around AD 1000 , far less dense Algonquian populations along the eastern seaboard of North America enjoyed a varied diet of wild and cultivated plant foods along with abundant game and fish. With ample protein readily available through hunting, eastern Indians had no incentive to domesticate animals for food, even if likely candidates had been present.

Before the English settlers arrived, eastern Algonquians were familiar with only two kinds of tame beasts: hawks, which they kept around their houses to chase small birds out of cornfields, and dogs. Most colonists, however, asserted that Indian dogs barely qualified as tame creatures. Peter Wynne maintained that Powhatan Indians in Virginia kept "nothing tame about them" even, in his opinion, the "Certeyne kind of Currs" they used for hunting. John Josselyn similarly described New England Indians' dogs as being "of a wild breed." 

To drive the point home, these men and other colonists suggested that Indian dogs scarcely differed from wolves. Powhatan dogs, according to John Smith, "are like their Wolves, and cannot barke but howle" instead. John Lawson encountered Indian dogs "which are seemingly Wolves, made tame with starving and beating," during his travels in the Carolina piedmont. 

Going even further, John Josselyn claimed that an "Indian Dog is a Creature begotten 'twixt a Wolf and a Fox" and that the Indians merely found such hybrid animals in the woods, avoiding the effort that actual domestication entailed. Indian dogs were not in fact wolves, or wolf-fox mixes. Archeological evidence indicates that dogs appeared as a distinct species in North America as much as 11,000 years ago. The colonists' testimony betrayed their preoccupation with the animals' behavior; the dogs did not seem "tame" in any sense that the English understood.

They did not sound like English dogs, and failed to act as colonists thought that dogs should. Colonists may further have disparaged Indian dogs simply because of their connection with Indian people. The English tended to ascribe to dogs the status of their owners: the gentleman's hound was a noble beast, but the peddler's companion was nothing more than a filthy cur. The nasty creature that nipped at the heels of English visitors in Indian villages could only be worse. 

Indians maintained a loose association with the animals but did not monitor their breeding or even exert much control over their daily activities. John Smith's comment about the way Indian dogs howled reinforces this impression. Since only fully domesticated dogs can bark, Indian dogs probably interbred in the wild with wolves. 

Unlike other North American Indians, eastern Algonquians appeared to make little use of their dogs. Inuit peoples in the Arctic used dogs to find seal breathing holes in the ice; the Montagnais of Labrador used them in hunting; Plains Indians trained them to pull heavily laden sleds; Miamis sacrificed them in religious rites; and Hurons consumed them regularly. But eastern Algonquians did not eat their dogs (except perhaps in times of famine) and may not have worked with them.

 English testimony about hunting, the one activity that might have involved dogs, was more than a little ambiguous.  Some colonists asserted that Indian hunters indeed brought dogs along with them. Peter Wynne in Virginia, for instance, claimed that the Powhatans employed them while hunting "land fowles." But no colonist, not even John Josselyn in his elaborate account of the moose hunt, actually described Indians hunting with dogs. Colonists may have simply assumed that native hunters used dogs because hunters in England generally did.

 Yet native dogs performed other important functions that English observers failed to notice because they took place in or near Indian villages where colonists seldom set foot. Indian dogs earned their keep in part by scavenging, ridding villages of food scraps and reducing the presence of vermin. Carolina Indians did not "starve" their dogs (as John Lawson alleged) so much as leave them to subsist on whatever refuse they could find on their own. 

Possessing a keen sense of smell, dogs also served as useful scouts on treks through the woods and as sentinels in villages. The first Indians to approach Englishmen near Plymouth were warned by their dog of the colonists' presence and thus made a quick escape. Seventeen years later, during the Pequot War in Connecticut, a howling dog alerted Indians in Mystic Fort to an imminent attack by colonial forces. The precise nature of Indians' relationships with their dogs is more difficult to discern. It is not clear, for instance, if native dogs belonged to an individual, a family, or an entire village. Whether Indians regarded dogs as pets, kept more for companionship than utility, is also unknown. 

That eastern Algonquians did place dogs in a special category distinct from other animals, however, seems likely. Narragansetts occasionally used rough drawings of dogs—but apparently not of any other animal—as signature marks on English documents. In addition, burial sites in southern New England dating from AD 800 to 1100 have been found to contain both human and dog remains. Since deceased persons were typically interred with items reflecting their status, occupation, or preference, the dog remains perhaps signified that a favorite animal had been buried with its owner.