Prior to European contact, the only cultures in North America to develop agriculture were those in the American Southwest. The challenge is to have the practice spread throughout North America to the point where groups such as the Iroquois are practicing agriculture rather than horticulture.
AH Challenge: Agriculture Spreads beyond American Southwest
- Thread starter Caesar
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The Iroquois did practice agriculture, on a large scale. So did the Powhatans, it was their corn that helped the settlers at Jamestown survive. Similar with the Pilgrims. Where do you think they got the corn they grew? They certainly hadn't gone all the way across the Appalachians to get it.
It was agriculture that allowed groups such as the Huron, Iroqoius, and Powhatans to live in villages containing hundreds of people.
This is post-contact, but read about Sullivan's raids on the Iroquois during the Revolutionary War, burnt something like 160,000 bushels of corn.
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/lifeways/hg_ag/quiet_revolution.html said:
http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/dept/d10/asb/anthro2003/lifeways/hg_ag/quiet_revolution.html
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/agriculture/natagri.html
http://members.aol.com/calebj/thanksgiving.html
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/IroquoisVillage/villagethree.html
http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/EthnoAtlas/Hmar/Cult_dir/Culture.7849
Everything freodhoric said is true, and the general limits of agriculture in North America went up from Mexico to the southwest, down the Rio Grande, cut across to the Caddo in oklahoma (Although the state of agriculture in central Texas is not very well known) and then went up the Mississippi to Wisconsin, before cutting across the great lakes and up the St. Lawrence.
A thought has occurred to me, according to some of what i read, corn was introduced in AD200, but wasn't widely used until AD800, which is around when the Mississippians arose. One source, which i'm unable to find again, said that the delayed adoption of corn was because it took that long to breed a cold-resistant variety.
According to the site i quoted below, with the introduction of corn, Eastern Woodlands agriculture went from small fields to large fields, from which i'd assume that the large field agriculture could support larger towns. Also, i think it too much of a coincidence that the Mississippians arose just when corn became widespread.
So, to my point, what if a cold-resistant variety of corn is bred earlier? That could give from 100 to 600 years for cultural development (or whatever).
According to the site i quoted below, with the introduction of corn, Eastern Woodlands agriculture went from small fields to large fields, from which i'd assume that the large field agriculture could support larger towns. Also, i think it too much of a coincidence that the Mississippians arose just when corn became widespread.
So, to my point, what if a cold-resistant variety of corn is bred earlier? That could give from 100 to 600 years for cultural development (or whatever).
I probably should have explained that I was distinguishing between horticulture and agriculture. Outside of the southwest, what they were practicing is considered horticulture. The difference between horticulture and agriculture is that with agriculture you can farm the same peice of land for extremely long periods through the use of irrigation, fertilizer, and outside of the Americas, draft animals. What was practiced by the Iroquois was Horticulture because they farmed the land until it was useless and moved on. The closest thing to agriculture in North America was in the Southeast, where certain groups placed dead fish in the ground with their crops, but that is still considered horitculture.
So what I'm looking for, is how can we get other groups to make the transition from horticulture to agriculture.
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First thing, tell me where you're getting your definitions, so that we're on the same page.
Second thing, i call cultivation of large acreages to raise a crop agriculture.
Third, have you ever heard the story of Squanto teaching the Pilgrims to put dead fish in with the corn when planting? If true, that indicates at least rudimentary fertilization. I think i've seen pictures showing irigation as well, and really can be so simple that i'm sure they knew how.
Getting closer to an answer, they didn't have field rotation (they had village rotation instead). Perhaps more importantly, i don't know of any livestock that they kept. Unfortunately, i can think of no reason for them to keep livestock. They could just hunt for the meat they needed, and livestock takes a lot of care. Still, some sort of goats or something could make a big difference.
My source is the professor of my Anthropology course focusing on North American Indians. I actually specifically asked for clarification on why the use of fish as a fertilizer didn't make it agriculture, and the answer I was given was that because of the other factors I mentioned it would be considered advanced horticulture.
With the definition that I am using, they need to be able to farm the land without depleting the soil to the point that it cannot be farmed anymore.
Did that help?
Crop rotation? Nitrogen depletion? thats stuff all farmers have to deal with.
The problem is that they weren't rotating crops, when an area was depleted, they simply left. The combination of corn, beans, and squash did help with nitrogen because the ability of beans to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere helped to counteract the fact that corn depletes nitrogen from the soil.
I didn't want this to turn into a debate over defintions, I simply wanted to see if anyone could come up with a way for the widespread development of techniques to farm land in such a way that they wouldn't have to move an entire village because the soil had become impossible to grow crops in.
Well, are we entirely sure the Iroquois moved around because the land was depleted? Isn't it possible they just moved whenever they ran out of firewood and building materials within reasonable walking distance, at the same time buildings were starting to age and fall apart?
They were practicing polyculture as you say... what reason other than economies of scale would there be to switch to monoculture? Is rotating crops somehow better for the soil than mixing crops together? Surely the right ratios would result in nearly the same levels of soil replenishment.
I think the definition dispute comes from the somewhat different meanings of horticulture between anthropological use and modern use.
On the one hand you have small scale, mixed use farming being called horticulture, and on the other you have the science (or just the practice) of cultivating plants.
As long as we stick to the anthropological for this thread, I think we are OK.
the Native Americans had two major strikes against them when it came to agriculture.... corn, their only cereal crop, took millenia to first selectively breed up to a usable size, and took longer to selectively breed strains that could survive up north. The second one was a complete lack of large domestic animals to provide dung and power. It seems to me that they did the best they could with what they had to work with. Maybe a better POD instead of improving corn faster would be to have some native variety of northern cereal plant that could be domesticated.... which would change the pre-Columbian history of NA a lot...
Well, are we entirely sure the Iroquois moved around because the land was depleted? Isn't it possible they just moved whenever they ran out of firewood and building materials within reasonable walking distance, at the same time buildings were starting to age and fall apart?
They were practicing polyculture as you say... what reason other than economies of scale would there be to switch to monoculture? Is rotating crops somehow better for the soil than mixing crops together? Surely the right ratios would result in nearly the same levels of soil replenishment.
I think the definition dispute comes from the somewhat different meanings of horticulture between anthropological use and modern use.
On the one hand you have small scale, mixed use farming being called horticulture, and on the other you have the science (or just the practice) of cultivating plants.
As long as we stick to the anthropological for this thread, I think we are OK.
Thank you. For the purposes of this thread, I wanted to use the defintions that I had been given in my anthropology courses. I am also quite sure that they moved villages because of soil depletion, because that is what both my professor and the other sources I have read have told me.
Now, some ideas for how to get this to work. We already know that in the Southeast the practice of using fish as a form of simple fertilizer did exist. We also know that irrigation systems were used in the Southwest.
David Howery makes a good point that the amount of time it took to breed corn from it's wild ancestor, and then the time it took to breed strains of corn to grow in higher latitudes was likely a disadvantage. He also points out that the lack of a large draft animal as a source of dung was also a problem. I think that having a native variety of cereal plant would have helped, and we can look into that idea, but I also want to look into possible ways for this scenario to happen with what was already available in OTL.
The first issue I want to try to cover is what could be used as an easily acquired and potent fertilizer.
What the Eastern Native Americans practised was certainly agriculture... They actually developed it independently and had their own package of domesticated crops. Many of these crops, however, were severe allergens and were promptly abandoned once better options arrived from Mexico. Most of the original crops retain their domestic adaptability and are now regarded as weeds today. One Eastern crop that wasn't abandoned and even managed to spread south was the sunflower.
I've been thinking about the animal part, so i checked a North American wildlife guide out of the library. Here's a few ideas.
Caribou are exactly the same as reindeer. Muskoxen look like a good choice. I don't know if bighorn sheep have any domestication potential. Unfortunately, these are all cold weather species.
I wish i could suggest javelina, but i hear they have nasty tempers. Still, domestic pigs have nasty tempers, and who knows what could be done in a century or two of captive breeding.
Poultry would be the best choice. Turkeys are from North America, and there are goose species that could be domesticated. I've read several places that almost all domestic duck species are bred from mallards (American and European species are extant). The only exception i am aware of is Muscovies (South American). Wood ducks, pigeons, bob-whites, and quail all can be and are raised and bred in captivity.
A couple of spare thoughts on the subject, cotton-tail rabbits can be successfully kept in captivity and if poultry were to kept, some bright person would domesticate the Carolina Parakeet.
Caribou are exactly the same as reindeer. Muskoxen look like a good choice. I don't know if bighorn sheep have any domestication potential. Unfortunately, these are all cold weather species.
I wish i could suggest javelina, but i hear they have nasty tempers. Still, domestic pigs have nasty tempers, and who knows what could be done in a century or two of captive breeding.
Poultry would be the best choice. Turkeys are from North America, and there are goose species that could be domesticated. I've read several places that almost all domestic duck species are bred from mallards (American and European species are extant). The only exception i am aware of is Muscovies (South American). Wood ducks, pigeons, bob-whites, and quail all can be and are raised and bred in captivity.
A couple of spare thoughts on the subject, cotton-tail rabbits can be successfully kept in captivity and if poultry were to kept, some bright person would domesticate the Carolina Parakeet.
caribou are the same species as reindeer, but have different social patterns that prevent them from being domesticated. Musk oxen, bighorns, and javelinas are all non-domesticable... their social structures don't allow for it. I don't think the native American species of pigeons, rabbits, and ducks are the same as the European versions... basically, if any of these animals could have been domesticated, the Native Americans would have done it.... they were just really unlucky in living on a continent with no domesticable big animals (same for Africa and Australia)....
The facts state otherwise. I mentioned the wood-ducks, bob-whites, and quail because those are wild American animals that are readily raised in captivity. Check out any game bird farm. Red-tailed hawks and other American hawks can be trained for falconry, yet the American Indians never did so. Whether they're different from the European species or not, wild American mallards can be and are kept in captivity. ALL domestic turkeys are descended from American stock. And cotton-tail rabbits, as i stated, can be and are kept in captivity. They're rather nervous and prone to heart-attacks, but breed for several generations and you just might get a calmer animal. The potential is there.
Are the different social pattern the reason for caribou not being domesticated or because they haven't been domesticated?
As for the muskoxen, it seems that their wool has been used by the Inuit for centuries, and there is a farm in Palmer, Alaska that is working on domesticating them.
Yeah. All the even remotely possible ones are arctic.
What's wrong with the social structure of musk oxen? They are a social, herd animal, aren't particularly agressive (except when attacked) and are led by a dominant male. They've been raised on a farm in Alaska since the 50's... I don't know if they are "officially" domesticated or not... but they seem to be... their wool is harvested once a year, they are raised on a farm...
true, we can domesticate these animals now... but small skittish things like these are 'secondary' domesticates... basically, you have to already have an agricultural society going to get these critters under control... it's not really viable for a nomadic culture without even a bronze age civilization. That said, the farmers of the SE did domesticate the turkey, and they might have domesticated the others... given time. The NAs got a late start on agriculture (due to the problems with corn) and never really got a chance to get much further than they did.
For caribou, it's because the caribou have different social patterns that they can't be domesticated. I remember reading about this somewhere (long ago) about how it's considered rather bizarre for two separate groups of genetically identical animals to have different social patterns... but there you have it....
Musk oxen are rather like bison in that they aren't truly domesticated, but are kept enclosed and harvested, but they can't really be selectively bred, like we do to cattle. It works because both species aren't really all that aggressive, although they can be unpredictable...