Pre-Contact Farming and Associated Technologies of Cultivation, Part I

 

By John Nass, Jr.

Editor, President Mon-Yough Chapter #3                                                                          

Introduction

      With summer finally here and gardening in full-swing, I thought there might be interest in pre-contact farming by Native Americans since many of the cultigens grown today were first domesticated in the Americas. The three groupings that played a significant role in the daily caloric intake were maize, beans, and cucurbits in the of squashes and pumpkins.  The methods employed by Native Americans are loosely used today by gardeners as opposed to full-time farmers. 

     This issue of volume 7 will focus upon the field methods employed. The second issue will consider the technologies used to both produce food, but also the tools used to process such foods.

     While countless hours have been spent examining the evolution of farming and  its impact upon social systems and settlement patterns in the eastern Woodlands of North America, Americas, one component seemingly omitted in the conversation has been technology and associated behaviors (strategies and tactics) to create and maintain gardens and agricultural fields. My interest are the strategies and tactics used by populations living within the lower Upper Ohio River Valley region and referred to as the Monongahela Tradition (Means 2007).

     At the heart of the matter is the cultivation of maize Between the 9^th and 11^th centuries AD, maize replaced components of the mixed plant complex used by Late Woodland groups living within the lower Upper Ohio River Valley and beyond (Johannessen 1993; King 1999; Simon 2000; Smith 1989; Wymer 1992, 1993). Whether this shift in subsistence was by choice or 

Left: Map of the Ohio Valley Locating the Boundaries of the Monongahela Tradition. 

by necessity (population growth), the heavy reliance upon maize by post AD 1000 populations is evident in stable carbon ratios derived from human bone collagen from adults from sites in West Virginia sites (Farrow 1985) and Pennsylvania (Table 1). In addition, the dietary shift is also evident when comparing the dental pathology of Late Woodland children and adults vs. Monongahela children and adults from Pennsylvania (Dirkmaat 1992; Morgan 2013a and b; Sciulli 1995). The incidences of dental pathologies are much higher in Late Prehistoric populations than in preceding Late Woodland groups. Stable carbon ratios from the West Virginia and Pennsylvania skeletal samples are accumulative over the lifetime of the individuals, but to achieve these levels would require a daily consumption of between 1-1.5 pounds of processed maize. Villages of 80-200 adults would thus require a considerable amount of maize and this can only be obtained via the cultivation of several hectares of land.

TABLE 1

Delta or Stable Carbon Isotopic Values for Sites from West Virginia and Pennsylvania
State	No. of Individuals	Radiocarbon Date (Calibrated)	Delta Value Range	Site Mean	Source
West Virginia
46Oh9	3	Ave. AD 1200	-9.29 to -10.88	-10.2	Farrow 1986
46Oh13	1	Ave. AD 1050		-11.59	Farrow 1986
46Oh16	5	Ave. AD 1225	-9.37 to -12.99	-10.59	Farrow 1986
Saddle Site	2	Ave. AD 1225	-9.06 to – 9.25	-9.16	Church and McDaniel 1995
Pennsylvania
Jones Site	3	AD 1050-1270 AD 1175-1210	-8.90 to -9.60	-9.0	Nass 200
Boyle Site	1	Avg. AD 1150		-12.2	Sciulli1995
Ryan Site	2	Avg. AD 1200		-15.30	Sciulli 1995

     Of interest to the author are the subsistence pursuits - strategies (the balance of farming and foraging) and tactics (when and where to plant, what seed to plant, the amount of area needed, how often to shift from one field to another) - employed by these pre-contact populations. This is of particular importance considering the stable carbon data which point to a high consumption of maize already in the Drew Phase, c. AD 1050-1200/1250.  Equally important is the type of artificially created environment used by pre-contact Monongahela populations for the cultivation of maize, the labor requirements, and the prevailing technology for the cultivation of maize, squash, and beans.  

     While answers to some relevant questions about farming strategies and tactics are difficult to provide, others questions might be answered by studying the preserved portions of prehistoric fields discovered in the Midwest and the southeast. Two types of fields have been identified: ridge and furrow and hills.

     In Wisconsin the remains of a buried Oneota field were described by Boszhardt (et al. 1984) and Gallagher (et al. 1985). The field consisted of ridges 5-26 cm in height by 23 to 120 cm in width. The ridges were separated by furrows 47-90 cm apart. A similar type of field has been identified at a Middle Mississippian site on the Macon Plateau (Kelly 1938) and possible Middle Mississippian fields on aerial imagery from Illinois (Fowler 1969).  A 17^th century lithography also shows Native Americans using a ridge and furrow system for planting maize. These do bear some resemblances to what are called “garden beds” in the upper Midwest (Moffat 1979; Riley and Freimuth 1979; Riley et al. 1981).

    

When a village would relocate, the selection of a new location for the community entailed several considerations, especially the suitability of the area for farming. Recent ideas regarding site location and soil productivity have evaluated the qualities of soils for supporting the farming of maize. Opinions regarding farming potential are based on modern soil descriptions. This is because the 

Above: 17^th century drawing of agricultural field being planted using rows.

  Left: 19^th century drawing of a garden           bed from southwestern Michigan.

 

prevailing county soil classification is designed more for post 1940s farming methods and for soil drainage relating to home construction and sanitation systems. It was also important to select soils that are compatible with the prevailing technology for land clearance and cultivation.

    Hart (1995) has proposed a subsistence-settlement model (a type of strategy) referred to as split-risk to explain changes in Monongahela settlement patterns after ca. AD1200. According to this model, within the uplands, village populations were scattered to take advantage not only of the longer 

Above: 17th century drawing of an agricultural field being planted using hills. 

growing season suggested by Johnson, but also the varied farming opportunities available in different topographic zones. The usage of varied environmental zones is not a new idea. The Hopi and Zuni Nations have employed the usage of varied ecological settings and landforms to ensure a sufficient maize harvested in the southwest by Hopi and Zuni kinship groups for centuries (Bonvillain 2002; Oswalt 2002). Family groups were specifically allocated plots of land according to its productivity. This was a strategy to insure parity among the kin groups. 

    

     A shift from subterranean storage of consumable resources to above ground, free-standing facilities adjacent to dwellings and eventually becoming attached to them also be came part of the build environment (Hart 1995) as settlement strategies shifted from seasonal abandonment to year-around occupation. 

     It is also understood that the choice of which agronomic strategies and tactics to employ were both under selection since both are examples of learned human behavior (Leonard and Jones 2002; Shennan 2002; Snow 2002). And since both social and situational learning transmit information within and between populations about their surroundings and life’s demands, learning can enhance the fitness of individuals just as differential reproduction or Darwinian selection enhances the biological fitness of individuals and populations (Hart and Trrell 2002).

     Native American agronomic models must also consider the nature of farming regarding the permanency of fields vs field expansion and/or periodic relocation of communities to new areas suitable for farming.

      Using Ֆ¹⁵N values from A.D. 15^th-16^th maize kernels and experimentation using modern maize kernels, Hart and Feranec (2020) were able to demonstrate Iroquoian agronomic practices were successful at maintaining nitrogen in their agricultural fields by maintaining organic matter in naturally fertile Alfesols and Inceptisols soils (Doolittle 2000, 2004; Mt. Pleasant 2011, 2015; Mt. Pleasant and Burt 2010; Hart and Feranec 2020; Schroeder 1999). In a different publication Hart and Winchell-Sweeney (2023) sought to further investigate Iroquoian agronomic practices relating to permanence of agricultural fields vs horticultural farming that required periodic expansion of existing and/or the clearance of new fields using differences in ꝸ¹⁵N ratios of charred maize macrobotanical remains. They argue that Native Americans, through a series of agronomic practices, were successful in maintaining needed nitrogen levels and, therefore, were able to maintain stable or permanent agricultural fields. While similar agronomic practices could be practices in the upper Ohio River Valley by Monongahela populations, the extension of their research to the upper Ohio River Valley is not possible at this time.