exhibit of just-planted Native American corn field, at Henricus Historical Park
Then knotweed, maygrass, and "little barley" were added to the list, but the food crops for the natives remained a limited source of protein, carbohydrates, and lipids. Adoption of agriculture was not an overnight process in Virginia; hunting and gathering remained productive uses of time, though the population remained thin because food supply was unreliable. Perhaps life in Virginia 3,000 years ago was not "nasty, brutish, and short" - but no one could order out for pizza....
A different variety of squash (early pumpkins, rather than the earlier varieties of modern acorn/summer squash) and corn cultivation were introduced from the Southwest and Mexico, followed by beans. Thus, agriculture in Eastern North America was the result of independent domestication of wild plants, followed by the diffusion of agriculture from Mesoamerica. 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.
The variety of corn adapted to the short growing season in Virginia (as opposed to corn's native habitat in Mexico) 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 town would be moved and the site not reoccupied for a period of time. Such migrations, rather than living in permanent settlements with concentrations of human and animal waste, reduced the risks of disease.
By the arrival of John Smith, the original Virginians had evolved through several separate cultures and there were perhaps 50,000 people in the state in 1607. 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 Southwest, in particular, adopted ceramics much later than the coastal Virginians.
As mentioned earlier, cultivation of beans occurred after Mexican squash and corn agriculture had been adopted earlier. Based on what the Europeans saw in the 16th and 17th Century, the earliest Virginia farmers planted the three crops together. Those of you with gardens know 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.
1. 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 September 23, 2007)