Did Indians what is now the Atlantic coast from the Carolinas to the Maritimes eat lobster?

At one time they were thought to be a garbage item and nuisance, prisoners back between the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century were served them in prison, they were used as fertilizers and given away, not until they got over fished after the first world war, did they become a luxury, like Caviar and other things, these things became a food for the rich, as a chef I cooked many, do not really like them

Indians could swim. It's called holding your breath. People all over the world have eaten crustaceans since ancient times.

They were gathered by hand, like crabs were.

And European settlers didn't need to "learn" about lobsters. They have sea coasts in Europe.

They didn't need to. American lobsters were so abundant in the 15th century, they'd wash up on shore in piles. Native Americans just picked and ate them from shorelines, and used them as bait&fertilizer. Europeans didn't fish/dive for them until the 18th century, they collected them on shorelines like the NAs. Lobster trapping wasn't invented until the 19th century.

The fish basket goes back thousand of years, and it was probably just chance that they found locations where they could capture them.

How they discovered diving is harder to say, but we still see it now how divers go down for them without any gear around the world

Chetak