Although hunting and fishing provided protein, and foraged fruits and vegetables afforded dietary variety, for Plantation South Native Americans as for many others, the cultivation of food plants was central to domestic life and culture. Plantation South tribes were among the most successful native farmers because of the region’s superior resources. Tree cover was their only obstacle to farming. In response, Plantation South Native Americans and other East Coast tribes developed ingenious methods of clearing and working farmland.
Until contact with Europeans, Native Americans did not have metal tools or domesticated animals other than dogs. Working in small groups with primitive tools and no draft animals, Native Americans could not cut down hundreds of trees and pull out their stumps and roots as in standard European farming. Instead, Native Americans developed a unique farming method called swidden agriculture, in which crops are grown in small plots amid standing tree trunks. The first step in this method involves killing trees by a process called girdling, in which trees are destroyed by starving them of water and nutrients. Native American women selected a promising site for farming, typically one with access to a stream for irrigation. The men then used stone hatchets to chop away a girdle, or wide band, of bark around the trunks of all the larger trees.
Girdling exposes the trees’ tender interiors, stopping the flow of water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves. Within months after girdling, the trees were dead, standing devoid of leaves. The following spring, when the men chopped down any remaining saplings and then burned the undergrowth, the resulting ashes further enriched the soil. After loosening the soil with stone hoes, the women planted their crops in clusters spaced around the standing tree trunks. The leafless trees did not shade the ground around them, and thus plenty of sun reached the plants growing among the trunks. Swidden agriculture is still used today in parts of Africa and Latin America.
Corn, beans, and squash thrive under swidden agriculture for several reasons. Because all three plants have shallow root systems and grow well in clumps, they don’t require deep plowing in long, straight rows as do European grains. Corn, beans, and squash are ideal companion plants—in other words, they grow well when planted together. When beans and corn are planted in hills or mounds of soil, the beans’ climbing vines grow up the corn stalks and support them in windy weather. While corn uses up the nitrogen in the soil, beans return nitrogen to it. Squash plants grow well in the spaces between the hills. Their large, spreading leaves act as living mulch, keeping down weeds and holding in moisture.
The Plantation South: An Agricultural Paradise
