exhibit of just-planted Native American corn field, at Henricus Historical Park
The first humans to visit what is now Virginia could hunt animals, gather fruits from trees/vines, and pull handfuls of seeds from wild plants. However, the first humans to visit what is now Virginia were not able to plant, nurture, and harvest a crop - because those first humans lacked the expertise and resources to practice agriculture. That changed over time, however.
Through human intervention, several species of wild plants were domesticated in Eastern North America - not in Virginia, but to the west in the Mississippi River watershed. Evidence of the first domestication of plants is found at archeological sites in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky starting about 4,000 years ago (around 2000 B.C.).
About 1,000 years ago (around 1000 A.D.), additional domesticated species - corn, beans, and a new form of squash - were introduced from Mexico/southwestern United States. Fields were located on river floodplains and also in upland areas, where trees were killed in order to create open fields where plants could obtain essential sunlight. When the first Spanish sailors met Virginia natives in the 1500's, and when the English colonists established Jamestown in 1607, Virginia tribes depended upon home-grown food for a significant percentage of their annual diet.
Development of agriculture in Eastern North America was not a swift process. Domesticating plants was a major cultural change that required centuries of discovery, adaptation, and adoption... in contrast to modern times, when dramatic revisions of technology can be implemented in just a year(or whatever product release cycle Apple chooses to adopt).
The very first humans to arrive in Virginia, perhaps as much as 15,000 years ago, are called Paleo-Indians by acheologists. The Paleo-Indian lifestyle during the Pleistocene epoch was based on nomadic hunting and gathering wild foods. About 10,000 years ago, after perhaps as much as 5,000 years of initial human occupation in North America, the large megafauna (such as mastodons and caribou ) were exterminated by climate change and hunting pressure. Animal species changed, as the Ice Age of the Pleistocene ended and the chestnut-oak-hickory and southern pine forests grew up in Virginia.
In response to the loss of the megafauna and the increase of deer and smaller game, nomadic groups changed the technology for their projectile points, their hunting patterns, and their food gathering/settlement patterns. As the climate and the forest changed, people began to visit the same places repeatedly to hunt and gather wild foods. The first Virginians shifted from "roving hunters" and became "sedentary foragers." They develop a greater understanding of how and where to gather food from wild plants, but the Archaic Period Native Americans in Virginia do not plant crops and depend upon a human-generated harvest.
The sedentary foragers established camps in specific places, creating openings in the woods where soil is disturbed and enriched by organic wastes. The hunters/gatherers would have re-visited those camps regularly, and middens (mounds of discarded materials) mark some of those locations. The Native Americans during the Archaic Period probably defended some specific territories, those with valued natural resources, against food collection by rival groups. Archeologists use these major changes in behavior/technology to distinguish the Paleo-Indian Period of humting large megafauna from the Archaic Period of settling down and huntinf smaller game with differently-shaped stone projectile points.
As part of that repeated gathering of food from the same places, Native Americans focused on gravel bars, mud flats, and floodplain terraces along river bottoms and along the edges of swamps. Generation after generation of hungry people would have looked for plants with the biggest fruits/seeds, and especially for plants whose seeds hung on after ripening.
As one author, Bruce D. Smith, has noted,1 the intermittently-overflowing rivers:
In North America, people started farming with local wild plants, altering their growth patterns and "domesticating" the plants over perhaps 1,000 years. Humans shaped the genetics of a few wild plant species through selective collection practices. In particular, humans altered the natural genetic pattern of a few floodplain annuals that produced edible seeds.
For example, seed pods on most native plants shatter as soon as seeds are ripe, dispersing seeds quickly and throughout the season. However, some individual plants have a genetic quirk, and their seeds do not scatter immediately. Each visit, Native Americans would have collected seeds from the plants with that genetic quirk, pulling seeds from plants where food was just waiting to be plucked rather than trying to collect the tiny seeds already scattered on the ground. The Native Americans concentrated in their hands, year after year, seeds with a certain genetic pattern (hanging onto the plant after ripening).
Some seeds would have been eaten on the spot along the riverbanks. Other seeds were carried back to the human camps, for sharing with others or eating later. In the course of preparing/eating the food, some of those seeds would have been accidentally scattered. The habitat at the human camps would have resembled the open river bottoms and the edges of swamps, with heaps ("middens") of disposed bones/shells/inedible plant materials, disturbed soil, and plenty of light. Discarded organic material and even human waste would have fertilized the soil around the camp, providing a rich opportunity for some seeds to grow at those locations during the next season.
Over several thousand years, selective collection and seed deposition on middens by sedentary foragers would have had the same impact as selective breeding done by scientists today: genetic modification of the plant community. In patches of disturbed soil at the Archaic Period campsites, the seeds deposited by humans would not have been from "average" plants. Those plants would have had larger-than-average seeds, more-than-the-average-quantity of seeds on each plant, more-than-average percentage of seeds that would ripen at the same time, and more-than-average percentage of seeds that would cling to the plant after ripening.
Humans independently established agriculture in nine separate places,2 including the Middle East, Ethiopia, and China. In the Western Hemisphere, plants were domesticated in Eastern North America separately from the development of agriculture in Central and in South America. Domestication of three species occurred in the Mississippi Valley - and perhaps in Virginia as well, though the archeological evidence is documented primarily from sites in the Ohio/Tennessee/Mississippi River valleys.
| three of the first native plants to be domesticated for food in North America: | ||
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About 4,000 years ago, Native Americans in the Mississippi River Valley first domesticated a species of squash, Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera. At the time, the gourds - the fruits of the squash plants - may have served more as carrying vessels rather than as food. Later, modern forms of crookneck, acorn and scallop squash developed from Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera. (Pumpkins come from a different form of Cucurbita, introduced later from Mexico.)
After domesticating squash, Native Americans transformed two other wild species - marsh elder or sumpweed (Iva annua) and goosefoot or "lambsquarters" (Chenopodium berlandieri).3 A relative of Chenopodium berlandieri was domesticated in South America, and is still sold today as quinoa.
These three species of floodplain weeds grew wild in river valleys, where floods regularly exposed bare soil and removed competing vegetation. The end of the Ice Age 10-15,000 years ago created new river and swamp habitats, as the ice sheets melted.
 modern "weedy floodplain" on North River (Port Republic, Rockingham County) |
 modern gravel bar on South River (Port Republic, Rockingham County) |
Regularly-occupied human camps in the new riparian areas created unplanned experimental plots for genetic modification of plants. By selectively collecting the larger marsh elder/sumpweed seeds, and choosing more of the goosefoot or "lambsquarters" with thinner seed coats, humans altered the physical characteristics of the plant species as domestication progressed. At some point, humans became purposeful in their management of the modified plants, by collecting seeds in the fall and replanting them at the start of the next growing season.
Sunflower (Helianthus annuus) may have a slightly different history. The sunflowers may have been an upland plant species that was originally domesticated to the west of the Mississippi River, and then introduced to tribes in the east.4
In addition, wild crops of knotweed (Polygonum erectum), maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana), and "little barley" (Hordeum pusillum) were harvested... but those species may not have been fully transformed into domesticated versions before Eupropeans arrived. Archeologists and botanists can tell the difference between wild and domesticated plants because the domesticated variety has extra-large seeds, thinner-than-average seed coats, and increased requirements for human assistance in order to spread the seeds.
Those food crops for the natives provided a limited source of protein, carbohydrates, and lipids. About 1,500 years after the initial start of the development of the Eastern Agricultural Complex... corn arrived. Corn is a relative late-comer to the garden in Eastern North America. The first agricultural fields in the Mississippi Valley, Ohio River Valley, and Tennessee River Valley did not include corn. It took 500+ years for corn to go from a marginal new food source and become the dominant food crop in the Mississippi River Valley.
Agriculture in Eastern North America was the result of initial domestication of wild plants in the eastern half of North America, followed by the diffusion of additional crops from Mexico.6 The English colonists saw Algonquians tribes in the Chesapeake Bay planting corns, beans, and squash, but all three were probably imported into Virginia after 1,000 A.D. It is reasonable to assume that the Native Americans in Virginia were exposed to corn, beans, and a different variety of squash AFTER the occupants of the Mississippi River watershed incorporated those new plants into their agricultural practices. The Appalachian Mountains may have been a barrier to cultural diffusion from the west, just as they slowed European settlement from moving from the Piedmont to the Ohio River valley.
Corn cultivation was introduced into Virginia from what today we call the Midwestern United States. Seeds may have been provided by trade, or new cultivation techniques may have come through intermarriage with residents in the Ohio or Tennessee river valleys. There is no evidence to suggest any quick introduction of corn cultivation into Virginia through direct migration of corn-growing people coming all he way from Mexico. The seeds and the expertise migrated from Central America to Virginia, but not the corn-growing Mexican farmers.
The corn that was grown in Virginia when John Smith arrived in 1607 was different from the original domesticated variety. The primary grain of the Virginia natives - corn - had been domesticated for several thousand years before a variety was developed that was productive in Virginia's climate. Corn was *not* domesticated originally in eastern North America, especially not in Virginia. Converting a wild species of grass into corn occurred in southwestern Mexico, when the wild grass teosinte was domesticated perhaps 9,000 years ago (at roughly the same time wheat and barley were domesticated from other wild grasses in what is now Irag).
Wild teosinte is dramatically different from modern corn, which requires human intervention to release modern corn kernels from the husk (so modern corn is clearly the result of human. Scientists continue to argue about what species/subspecies was the original source. Genetic evidence7 suggests the debate may be coming to a close, with the ancestor of modern corn coming from a form of teosinte that was domesticated in the Balsas River drainage north of Alcapulco, Mexico.8
The corn grown originally in Mexico was adapted to the climate there. Seeds carried directly from Mexico to Virginia 9,000 years ago would not have thrived in a northern latitude where daylight was longer in the summer, and the growing season between frosts was shorter. The long delay between the arrival of domesticated corn in the Mississippi River Valley, until corn became the dominant food crop centuries later, may reflect the time required for genetic variation to occur.
Fortunately for the early farmers, the corn genome has a high percentage of transposable elements (transposons, or "jumping genes") that permit rapid genetic change. Ultimately, Native American farmers and natural selection created a form of corn that was adapted to the shorter growing season in higher latitudes. Linguistic evidence also suggests that many centuries of farming were required before a strain of corn emerged that was adapted to the climate, and farming corn became common in what is now the American Mid-West and Eastern United States.9
The variety of corn adapted Virginia stimulated a population explosion in the Mississippi Valley about 1,100 years ago (900 A.D.). Even after adopting the Mexican food crops, however, many Virginian tribes still lived as semi-nomadic bands rather than settled full-time into towns. Hunting and fishing in the summer and winter, but returning in the fall to harvest bottomlands planted in the spring, was an effective lifestyle for several thousand years.
In Tidewater, where the available protein from the Chesapeake Bay estuary was particularly accessible, a town site might be occupied for several seasons while the natives harvested nearby beds of oysters, caught crabs and fish, and hunted deer. Once the easy pickings were gone, however, the structures that identified a site as a town might be moved, and the site not reoccupied for a period of time. Intermittent migrations, rather than living in permanent settlements with concentrations of human and animal waste, also reduced the risks of disease.
By the arrival of John Smith, the original Virginians had evolved through several separate cultures. There were perhaps 50,000 Native Americans in the state, when the Europeans arrived.10 The societies reflected increasing social complexity, with religious and political rulers able to affect larger numbers of tribes, but different sections of Virginia evolved at different rates. The Southwestern part of Virginia, in particular, adopted ceramics much later than the coastal Virginians, suggesting migration and trade through the seafood-rich Tidewater may have introduced new ideas into Virginia via the Coastal Plain initially.11
Cultivation of beans occurred after Mexican squash and corn agriculture had been adopted. Based on what the Europeans saw in the 16th and 17th Century, the earliest Virginia farmers planted the three crops together. The squash covers the ground, shading out weeds. The corn grows high, and the beans grow up the cornstalk. One benefit of the beans is their ability to add nitrogen to the soil. Clearing patches of woods was not a simple task for a society with just stone points and bone tools, though fire was also available to the natives as well.
Adoption of agriculture was not an overnight process, with a complete commitment to farmed food. When the English colonists arrived in 1607, hunting and gathering remained essential to the Powhatan tribes as well as farming. The Native Americans that greeted the English were thin in part because food supply was still unreliable. Perhaps life in Virginia 400 years ago was not as "nasty, brutish, and short" as in the Paleoindian period - but famine was a real possibility.
William Strachey, an early colonist, commented on how the Native Americans fed themselves - and how their bodies responded to the annual food supply, by growing thin when food was scarce:12
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About their howses they have commonly square plotts of cleered grownd, which serve them for gardens, some one hundred, some two hundred foote square, wherein they sowe their tobacco, pumpons [pumpkins], and a fruit like unto a musk million, but less and worse, which they call macock gourds, and such like, which fruets increase exceedingly, and ripen in the beginning of July, and contynue until September; they plant also the field apple, the maracock, a wyld fruit like a kind of pomegranette, which increaseth infinitelye, and ripens in August, contynuing untill the end of October, when all the other fruicts be gathered, but they sowe nether herb, flower, nor any other kynd of fruit.
They neither ympale for deare, nor breed cattlle, nor bring up tame poultry, albeit they have great stoore of turkies, nor keepe birds, squirrells, nor tame patridges, swan, duck, nor goose. In March and April they live much upon their weeres [traps used to catch fish] and feed on fish, turkies, and squirrells; and then, as also sometymes in May, they plant their fields annd sett their corn, and live after those months most of acrons [acorns], walnutts, chesnutts, chechinquarnins [a form of wild grain], and fish; but, to mend their dyett, some disperse themselves in small companeys, and live upon such beasts as they can kyll with their bows and arrows, upon crabbs, oysters, land-tortoyses, strawberryes, mulberries, and such like. In June, July, and August they feed upon the roots of tockohow [tuckahoe, or the arrow arum plant that grows in wetlands], berries, grownd nutts, fish, and greene wheate [corn], and sometyme uppon a greene serpent, or greene snake, of which our people likewise use to eate. It is strange to see how their bodies alter with their dyett; even as the deare and wild beasts they seem fatt and leane, strong and weake. |
1. Smith, Bruce D., Rivers of Change: Esays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America, p.3, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992
2. Diamond, Jared, "Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication," Nature, Volume 418 (August 8, 2002), p. 703
3. Selig, Ruth, "A Quiet Revolution: Origins of Agriculture in Eastern North America," National Museum of Natural History Bulletin for Teachers, Vol. 15, No. 2 1993, www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/lifeways/hg_ag/quiet_revolution.html (last checked June 18, 2010)
4. Smith, Bruce D., Rivers of Change: Esays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America, p.28
5. Native Americans First Tamed Turkeys 2,000 Years Ago," Discovery News, http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/native-americans-turkeys-domestication.html (last checked June 18, 2010)
6. Bruce D. Smitha, and Richard A. Yarnell, "Initial formation of an indigenous crop complex in eastern North America at 3800 B.P.," Proceedings of the National academy of Sciences, http://www.pnas.org/content/106/16/6561, February 21, 2009 (last checked June 12, 2010)
7. Yoshihiro Matsuoka, Yves Vigouroux, Major M. Goodman, Jesus Sanchez G., Edward Buckler, and John Doebley, "A single domestication for maize shown by multilocus microsatellite genotyping," Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, April 30, 2002, Vol.99 No.9, pages 6080-6084, http://www.pnas.org/content/99/9/6080.long (last checked May 26, 2010)
8. "Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9,000 Years," New York Times, May 24, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html (last checked May 26, 2010)
9. William L. Merrill, Robert J. Hard, Jonathan B. Mabry, Gayle J. Fritz, Karen R. Adams, John R. Roney and A. C. MacWilliams, "The diffusion of maize to the southwestern United States and its impact," Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, December 15, 2009, Vol. 106 No. 50, pages 21019-21026, http://www.pnas.org/content/106/50/21019.abstract (last checked May 26, 2010)
10. Karenne Wood (ed.), "The Virginia Indian Heritage Trail," Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2008, http://www.virginiafoundation.org/VIHP/docs/Heritage%20Trail_2ed.pdf (last checked October 30, 2011)
11. Encyclopedia Virginia, "Virginia Indian Ceramics," http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Ceramics_Virginia_Indian (last checked October 30, 2011)
12. William Strachey, Richard Henry Major The Historie of Travaile Into Virginia Britannia: Expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, Together With the Manners and Customes of the People, 1849, Hakluyt Society (London), pp.72-73, http://www.archive.org/stream/historietravail00majogoog#page/n134/mode/1up (last checked June 12, 2010)
