Prehistoric agriculture on the Great Plains

Last updated
Chenopodium berlandieri or goosefoot, Bozeman, Montana Chenopodium berlandieri (3767481597).jpg
Chenopodium berlandieri or goosefoot, Bozeman, Montana

Agriculture on the precontact Great Plains describes the agriculture of the Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains of the United States and southern Canada in the Pre-Columbian era and before extensive contact with European explorers, which in most areas occurred by 1750. The principal crops grown by Indian farmers were maize (corn), beans, and squash, including pumpkins. Sunflowers, goosefoot, [1] tobacco, [2] gourds, and plums, were also grown.

Contents

Evidence of agriculture is found in all Central Plains complexes. Archaeological sites in Nebraska reveal cultivated crops such as little barley ( Hordeum pusillum ), sunflowers ( Helianthus annuus ), goosefoot ( Chenopodium berlandieri ), marsh elder ( Iva annua ), and maize ( Zea mays ). [3] Tribes periodically switched from farming to hunting throughout their history during the Plains Village period, [4] AD 950–1850.

Environment

A map showing the location of the Great Plains Map of Great Plains2.jpg
A map showing the location of the Great Plains

The primary constraint on agriculture on the Great Plains is that precipitation is often deficient for growing maize, the primary crop of Indian farmers. In addition, on the northern Great Plains the growing season is short. Agriculture on the Plains seems to have had an ebb and flow, advancing westward into the drier areas in favorable wet periods and retreating in drier periods. The periodic abundance or scarcity of bison was also a factor in human settlements on the plains. The animal was an important food resource for Plains people, as well as providing skins for clothing and shelters.

Precontact

A Wichita village surrounded by fields of maize and other crops Wichita Indian village 1850-1875.jpg
A Wichita village surrounded by fields of maize and other crops

Gathering wild plants, such as the prairie turnip ( Pediomelum esculentum , syn. Psoralea esculenta) and chokecherry ( Prunus virginiana ) for food was undoubtedly a practice of Indian societies on the Great Plains since their earliest habitation 13,000 or more years ago. [5] Over time Plains people learned to grow or facilitate the growth of native plants useful as food. Many native plants cultivated by Indians in the Eastern Agricultural Complex were also cultivated on the Great Plains.

Squash and beans were cultivated in what is now the United States, independent of Mesoamerica. [6] Maize is a tropical crop first cultivated in Mexico several thousand years ago, which found its way northward to what is now the United States more than one thousand years ago. Maize agriculture began on the Great Plains by AD 900, initiating the Southern Plains villagers period of western Oklahoma and Texas. It probably came about as an extension westward and northward of the Caddoan cultures of eastern Texas. The Plains Village culture consisted of hamlets and semi-permanent villages along major rivers such as the Red, Washita, and Canadian. Subsistence was a combination of agriculture and hunting. A drying climatic trend beginning AD 1000 or 1100 may have tipped the subsistence scale more toward hunting and less toward a dependence upon agriculture. [7] The Antelope Creek Phase of Plains villagers, dated from AD 1200 to 1450 in the Texas panhandle was influenced by the Southwestern Pueblo people of the Rio Grande valley in New Mexico. [8] The contemporaneous Apishapa culture of southeastern Colorado depended mostly upon hunting. [9] The historic descendants of the Southern Plains villagers are possibly the Wichita and Pawnee Indians. [10]

The earliest known dates for maize agriculture on the northern Great Plains are from AD 1000 to 1200. The Missouri River Valley in present-day North Dakota was probably the northern limit of pre-historic maize cultivation on the Great Plains. Prehistoric evidence of maize cultivation north of the border of the United States and Canada on the Great Plains is lacking but by the 1790s maize was being grown by Indian farmers as far north as the mouth of the Red River north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. [11]

The principal known Indian peoples who farmed extensively on the Great Plains when first discovered by European explorers were, from south to north, Caddoans in the Red River drainage, Wichita people along the Arkansas River, Pawnee in the Kansas River and Platte River drainages, and the Arikara, Mandan, and Hidatsa along the Missouri River in the Dakotas. Other peoples migrated or were pushed westward onto the Great Plains in late prehistoric or proto-historic times. Some of them, such as the Sioux and Cheyenne, gave up agriculture to become nomadic; other such as the Dhegiha (the Osage, Kaw, Omaha, and Ponca) and the Chiwere (Otoe, Iowa, and Missouria) continued to farm while also hunting buffalo for a major part of their livelihood.

Archaeologists have found evidence of agriculture practiced by Apache people (the Dismal River culture) living on the Great Plains in western Kansas and Nebraska in the 17th century. The semi-nomadic Apache were pushed southward and off the Great Plains by the fully nomadic Comanche in the 18th century. [12]

Cultivation and yields

Lacking iron tools and draft animals the prehistoric Indian farmer on the Great Plains primarily cleared and cultivated wooded land along rivers, especially the lighter soils on elevated river terraces which periodically flooded, renewing their fertility. They avoided cultivating the heavy soils of the open prairie with their deep mats of fibrous roots. [13] Rather than being concentrated, the cultivated fields of the Great Plains farmer were dispersed along river terraces. Fields cultivated by the Pawnee were as much as eight miles from their villages. [14]

The high productivity of maize enabled Indian farmers to produce large crops with simple tools on a small per capita amount of cultivated land—although farming on the drought-prone Great Plains was always a risky endeavor. [15]

The amount of land needed by a farming household was between two and seven acres (.8 to 2.8 ha) of cultivated land each year, the difference accounted for by the quality of the land. Fields were usually cultivated for two or three years and then fallowed. Fallowed acreage was two to three times that which was cultivated in a given year. Counting both cultivated and fallowed fields, a household needed 4 to 21 acres (1.6 to 8.5 ha) for subsistence. Households which depended more on hunting and gathering cultivated smaller amounts of land. [16] Yields of maize plots on the Great Plains are estimated at of 10-20 bushels (627 - 1,254 kg) per acre. Higher yields of up to 40 bushels (2,508 kg) per acre have been reported on newly cleared land. Land declined in fertility in subsequent crop years. [17] [18]

Among the Hidatsa, typical of Great Plains farmers, fields were cleared by burning which also fertilized the soil. The three implements used by Indian farmers were the digging stick, hoe, and rake. The digging stick was a sharpened and fire-hardened stick, three or more feet long, that was used to loosen soil, uproot weeds, and make planting holes. The hoe was made from a buffalo or elk shoulder blade bone, or scapula, lashed to a wooden handle. The rake was made from wood or an antler. Some Indian women preferred the bone hoe even after the iron hoe was introduced by European traders and settlers. [19]

Sunflowers were the earliest crop planted in spring. Sunflowers were planted in clumps around the edges of fields. Maize was next planted. Indian planting techniques are called Three Sisters agriculture. About five maize seeds were sown in a low mound of soil. The mounds were spaced about five feet apart. When the maize plants were a few inches high, climbing beans and squash seeds were planted between the mounds. The large squash leaves shaded the soil, preserving moisture and crowding out weeds. The beans fixed nitrogen in the soil and climbed up the corn stalks as support. [20] The Wichita, and possibly other southern peoples, planted or tended thickets of low-growing Chickasaw Plum trees separating and bordering their maize fields. Tobacco was planted in separate fields and tended by old men. Women did most of the other farming, although men assisted in clearing land. [21]

Indian farmers did not fertilize their fields with manure. As the soil declined in fertility with each crop year, unproductive fields were fallowed for two years and then replanted. [22]

Subsistence

Archaeologists have computed the subsistence of people in the Medicine Creek valley in Nebraska near the western limit of cultivation in pre-historic times. During the years 1000 to 1450 CE, the diet of the people of Medicine Creek depended upon game (mostly bison) for 30 percent of their subsistence, 30 percent from maize, 20 percent from other cultigens (squash, beans, and sunflowers), and 20 percent from wild plant resources. [23] Further east where agriculture was more reliable due to greater precipitation, the percentage of cultivated crops in the diet may have been greater. The dependence on agriculture and hunting for subsistence varied due to climatic conditions as the Great Plains had periods of greater and lesser precipitation. [24]

Farming year

The Pawnee in Nebraska were among the best of the Plains Indian farmers and had elaborate rituals connected with the planting and harvesting of maize. In spring, they planted 10 varieties of maize, seven varieties of pumpkins and squashes, and eight varieties of beans. The maize included flour, flint, and sweet corn plus one ancient variety raised only for inclusion in the "sacred bundles" common among Plains Indians. The Indians were aware that the different varieties of maize could hybridize if grown in close proximity and planted different varieties in fields a substantial distance apart. [25]

One of the rituals of the Pawnees during the spring planting season to ensure the fertility of the soil was the Morning Star ceremony and the ritual sacrifice of a young girl captured from an enemy tribe. The Morning Star sacrifice did not take place every year. The last human sacrifice by the Pawnee was in 1838. [26]

Common to many other Plains farmers, the Pawnee left their villages in late June when their corn crop was about knee high to live in tipis and roam the plains on a summer buffalo hunt. They returned about the first of September to harvest their crops. Maize, beans, and pumpkins were dried, packed into rawhide bags, and stored in bell-shaped underground storage pits. The Pawnee followed the harvest with a month of celebrations and in early December departed their villages again for a winter hunt, their stored agricultural products hidden beneath the ground. This yearly cycle of life was common among the Plains farmers, especially after the acquisition of the horse in the late 17th and 18th century gave them the mobility to undertake lengthy hunts far from their permanent villages. [27]

Trade

Trade between the farming and the nomadic hunting Indians was important on the Great Plains. The Mandan and Hidatsa villages on the Missouri River in the Dakotas conducted a large trade with the non-agricultural hunting Indians. In fall 1737, the French explorer La Vérendrye found a group of Assiniboine planning to undertake their annual two-month-long, thousand-kilometer round trip south to the Mandan villages to trade bison meat for agricultural goods. [28] Abundant evidence of similar long-distance trading between farmers and hunters occurred among other tribes of the Plains. [29]

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Minnis 262
  2. ↑ Minnis 303
  3. ↑ Minnis 305
  4. ↑ Minnis, p. 301
  5. ↑ Numerous references including Hirst, K. Kris, "The (pre) History of Clovis." About.com Archaeology, accessed 3 June 2013
  6. ↑ Gibbon, Guy E. and Kenneth M. Ames Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 1998: 238.
  7. ↑ Drass, Richard R. "Corn, Beans, and Bison: Cultivated Plants and Changing Economies of the Late Prehistoric Villagers on the Plains of Oklahoma and Northwest Texas" Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 53, No. 205, Advances in Ethnobotany (February 2008), pp. 7-31
  8. ↑ Derrick, Randall. "The Antelope Creek Focus: An Advanced, Pre-Columbian Civilization in the Texas Panhandle." http://www.panhandlenation.com/history/prehistory/antelope_creek.htm Archived 2012-03-15 at the Wayback Machine ; accessed Nov 10, 2010
  9. ↑ Gibbon, Guy E.; Ames, Kenneth M. (1998) Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia. p. 24. ISBN   0-8153-0725-X.
  10. ↑ "Plains Villager Research -- Texas Panhandle" Texas Beyond History http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/villagers/research/index.html, accessed 5 June 2013
  11. ↑ Schneider, Fred, "Prehistoric horticulture in the northeastern plains." Plains Anthropologist, 47 (180), 2002, pp. 33-50; Moodie, D. W. and Kaye, Barry. "The Northern Limit of Indian Agriculture" Geographic Review Vol. 59, No. 4 (Oct 1969), pp. 512-529
  12. ↑ Scheiber, Laura L. "The Late Prehistoric on the High Plains of Western Kansas: High Plains Upper Republican and Dismal River" in Kansas Archaeology, pp 141-148
  13. ↑ Scullin, Michael "Indian Gardening and Cooking" http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/offices/scullin/Cookbook.129831.html Archived 2008-07-09 at the Wayback Machine , accessed Aug 30, 2008
  14. ↑ Bamford, Douglas B. "The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains". Cambridge Core. Cambridge University Press. pp. 198–200. Retrieved 25 November 2021.
  15. ↑ Schroeder, Sissel "Maize Productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains of North America" American Antiquity, Vol. 64, No. 3 (July 1999), pp. 501-502; Jordan, William Chester The Great Famine: Northern Europe in the Early Fourteenth Century Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996, pp. 25-26
  16. ↑ Bamford, page 199
  17. ↑ Munson-Scullin, Wendy and Scullin, Michael, (2005) "Potential Productivity of Midwestern Native American Gardens" Plains Anthropologist, Vol. 50, No. 193, pp. 9-21
  18. ↑ Schroeder, Sissel "Maize Productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains of North America" American Antiquity, Vol. 64, No. 3 (July 1999), p. 512
  19. ↑ Wilson, Gilbert L. Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians St Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1987, p. 11-14
  20. ↑ Munson-Scullin, 2005
  21. ↑ Wilson, pp. 16, 121
  22. ↑ Wilson, pp. 114, 117
  23. ↑ Nepstad-Thornberry, Curtis; Cummings, Linda Scott; Puseman, Kathryn (2002). A Model for Upper Republican Subsistence and Nutrition in the Medicine Creek Locality. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama. p. 201. ISBN   9780817384258.. From Medicine Creek: Seventy Years of Archaeological Investigations edited by Donna C. Roper. Downloaded from Project MUSE.
  24. ↑ Bamford, Douglas B. (2021). The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 199–202. ISBN   9781139029728.
  25. ↑ Wilson, p. 59
  26. ↑ Welfish, Gene. The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1965, pp. 95-123
  27. ↑ Weltfish, pp. 239-271, 409-411
  28. ↑ Boyd, Matthew and Surette, Clarence "Northernmost Precontact Maize in North America" American Antiquity, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Jan 2010), pp. 117-133
  29. ↑ McGeshick, Joseph R., Smith, Dennis J., and Shanley, James. The History of the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, Montana, 1800-2000, Montana Historical Society, 2008, pp. 15-16

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Milpa</span> Mesoamerican crop growing system

In agriculture, milpa is a field for growing food crops and a crop-growing system used throughout Mesoamerica, especially in the Yucatán peninsula, in Mexico. The word milpa derives from the Nahuatl phrase mil-pa. Based on the agronomy of the Maya and of other Mesoamerican peoples, the milpa system is used to produce crops of maize, beans, and squash without employing artificial pesticides and artificial fertilizers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Mesoamerica</span> Account of archaic North American agriculture

Agriculture in Mesoamerica dates to the Archaic period of Mesoamerican chronology. At the beginning of the Archaic period, the Early Hunters of the late Pleistocene era led nomadic lifestyles, relying on hunting and gathering for sustenance. However, the nomadic lifestyle that dominated the late Pleistocene and the early Archaic slowly transitioned into a more sedentary lifestyle as the hunter gatherer micro-bands in the region began to cultivate wild plants. The cultivation of these plants provided security to the Mesoamericans, allowing them to increase surplus of "starvation foods" near seasonal camps; this surplus could be utilized when hunting was bad, during times of drought, and when resources were low. The cultivation of plants could have been started purposefully, or by accident. The former could have been done by bringing a wild plant closer to a camp site, or to a frequented area, so it was easier access and collect. The latter could have happened as certain plant seeds were eaten and not fully digested, causing these plants to grow wherever human habitation would take them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Three Sisters (agriculture)</span> Agricultural technique of Indigenous people in the Americas

The Three Sisters are the three main agricultural crops of various Indigenous peoples of North America: squash, maize ("corn"), and climbing beans. In a technique known as companion planting, the maize and beans are often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each year; squash is typically planted between the mounds. The cornstalk serves as a trellis for climbing beans, the beans fix nitrogen in their root nodules and stabilize the maize in high winds, and the wide leaves of the squash plant shade the ground, keeping the soil moist and helping prevent the establishment of weeds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wichita people</span> Confederation of Native Americans

The Wichita people or Kitikiti'sh are a confederation of Southern Plains Native American tribes. Historically they spoke the Wichita language and Kichai language, both Caddoan languages. They are indigenous to Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plains Indians</span> Native Americans/First Nations peoples of the Great Plains of North America.

Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of agriculture</span>

Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin. The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.

The Archaic Southwest was the culture of the North American Southwest between 6500 BC and 200 AD (approximately).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eastern Agricultural Complex</span> Agricultural practices of pre-historic native cultures in the eastern United States and Canada

The Eastern Agricultural Complex in the woodlands of eastern North America was one of about 10 independent centers of plant domestication in the pre-historic world. Incipient agriculture dates back to about 5300 BCE. By about 1800 BCE the Native Americans of the woodlands were cultivating several species of food plants, thus beginning a transition from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculture. After 200 BCE when maize from Mexico was introduced to the Eastern Woodlands, the Native Americans of the eastern United States and adjacent Canada slowly changed from growing local indigenous plants to a maize-based agricultural economy. The cultivation of local indigenous plants other than squash and sunflower declined and was eventually abandoned. The formerly domesticated plants returned to their wild forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grand Village of the Illinois</span> Archaeological site in Illinois, United States

The Grand Village of the Illinois, also called Old Kaskaskia Village, is a site significant for being the best documented historic Native American village in the Illinois River valley. It was a large agricultural and trading village of Native Americans of the Illinois confederacy, located on the north bank of the Illinois River near the present town of Utica, Illinois. French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette came across it in 1673. The Kaskaskia, a tribe of the Illiniwek people lived in the village. It grew rapidly after a French mission and fur trading post were established there in 1675, to a population of about 6,000 people in about 460 houses. Around 1691 the Kaskaskia and other Illiniwek moved further south, abandoning the site due to pressure from an Iroquois invasion from the northeast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ancient Maya cuisine</span> Diet of the Ancient Mesoamerican civilization

Ancient Maya cuisine was varied and extensive. Many different types of resources were consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material, and food was obtained or produced through strategies such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production. Plant domestication concentrated upon several core foods, the most important of which was maize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archaeology of Iowa</span> Aspect of archaeology in the United States

The archaeology of Iowa is the study of the buried remains of human culture within the U.S. state of Iowa from the earliest prehistoric through the late historic periods. When the American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased. More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increase on the reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements. The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. During the Historical period European traders and American Indians in Iowa gave way to American settlers and Iowa was transformed into an agricultural state.

Indigenous horticulture is practised in various ways across all inhabited continents. Indigenous refers to the native peoples of a given area and horticulture is the practice of small-scale intercropping.

The Antelope Creek Phase was an American Indian culture in the Texas Panhandle and adjacent Oklahoma dating from AD 1200 to 1450. The two most important areas where the Antelope Creek people lived were in the Canadian River valley centered on present-day Lake Meredith near the city of Borger, Texas and the Buried City complex in Wolf Creek valley near the town of Perryton, Texas. Settlements are also found in Oklahoma near the town of Guymon and along the Beaver River.

La Junta Indians is a collective name for the various Indians living in the area known as La Junta de los Rios on the borders of present-day West Texas and Mexico. In 1535 Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca recorded visiting these peoples while making his way to a Spanish settlement. They cultivated crops in the river floodplains, as well as gathering indigenous plants and catching fish from the rivers. They were part of an extensive trading network in the region. As a crossroads, the area attracted people of different tribes.

As is the case with most native populations that did not use systems of writing for most or all of their history, much of what is known about Native Americans comes from the records of the Europeans who first encountered them in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Some of these accounts are accurate, while some include parts that are accurate and other parts that reflect their biases towards native peoples. One aspect of native life which the European colonists often remarked upon, when they left written records, was their system of agriculture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prehistoric agriculture in the Southwestern United States</span>

The agricultural practices of the Native Americans inhabiting the American Southwest, which includes the states of Arizona and New Mexico plus portions of surrounding states and neighboring Mexico, are influenced by the low levels of precipitation in the region. Irrigation and several techniques of water harvesting and conservation were essential for successful agriculture. To take advantage of limited water, the southwestern Native Americans utilized irrigation canals, terraces (trincheras), rock mulches, and floodplain cultivation. Success in agriculture enabled some Native Americans to live in communities which numbered in the thousands as compared to their former lives as hunter-gatherers in which their bands numbered only a few dozen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern Plains villagers</span>

The Southern Plains villagers were semi-sedentary Native Americans who lived on the Great Plains in western Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and southeastern Colorado from about AD 800 until AD 1500.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pre-Columbian cuisine</span>

Pre-Columbian cuisine refers to the food and drink consumed by the people who inhabited the Americas before Christopher Columbus explored the region and introduced food and crops from Europe. Though the Columbian Exchange introduced many new animals and plants to the Americas, cultures of their own already existed there, including the Aztec, Maya, Incan, and Native American. The development of agriculture allowed the many different cultures to transition from hunting to staying in one place. A major element of this cuisine is maize, which began being grown in central Mexico. Other crops that flourished in the Americas include amaranth, wild rice, and lima beans.

The Oak Forest Site (11Ck-53) is located in Oak Forest, Cook County, Illinois, near the city of Chicago. It is classified as a late prehistoric to Protohistoric/Early Historic site with Upper Mississippian Huber affiliation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pernil Alto</span> Archaeological site in Peru

The Pernil Alto archaeological site is located in Rio Grande District of Palpa province in the Ica Region of Peru. Although the site was occupied earlier, archaeologists traced the adoption of agriculture by the inhabitants from about 3800 BCE to 3000 BCE. The excavators cite radiocarbon dates which establish Pernil Alto as the oldest known inland and sedentary agricultural village in the Central Andes of Peru and Bolivia. The date at which agriculture became the main source of subsistence for the inhabitants of Pernil Alto was 3300 BCE.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.