Plausibility Check: Could Native Americans in Canada and the northern USA farm wild rice?

[Bobbbcat2]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_rice

Could a succesful civilisation form around wild rice agriculture? It was (and still is) a common food source for groups like the Ojibwe and is now grown as a food source in North America.

What other plants could this civilisation grow? Bulrush?

 

[trurle]

South Canada has over 2000 GDD, enough for rice cultivation if you use transplant method (planting directly young rice plant pre-grown in greenhouse or particularly warm location). Growth directly from seeds will not work beyond Northern California.

 

[Lusitania]

Are we talking pre -European contact? Have a native tribe grow it in quantity large enough to sustain the tribe? I presume so, we would need an individual to start some sort of program that would flood an area to increase the amount of land under cultivation. As yields and acreage in creases so too would good supply and with larger food supply comes larger population and increase tribe size. Eventually we could see the knowledge spread and more tribes cultivate rice. But unless we have man made cultivation, flooding the amount of wild rice growing in lakes would not be enough to support large groups of people

 

[Bobbbcat2]

South Canada has over 2000 GDD, enough for rice cultivation if you use transplant method (planting directly young rice plant pre-grown in greenhouse or particularly warm location). Growth directly from seeds will not work beyond Northern California.

But wild rice grows in Canada? Did you read any part of this post?

 

[Lusitania]

But wild rice grows in Canada?

Yes we grow it. It’s been growing in our thousands of lakes.

 

[Bobbbcat2]

Are we talking pre -European contact?

Yep.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

Two of the bigger issues you'd run into here is, for most groups that harvest wild rice in the western Great Lakes region, the plant as rather substantial ritual and religious significance and that these groups tended to have highly defused societies (The Ojibwe, for instance, are more of a cultural group rather than having had any real unified political entity). The hydroponic projects required for large-scale rice production really are emblematic of/mostly accomplishable by highly stratified, centralized, sedentary societies, so you'd need a group in the region to adopt a way of living more common to the Mississippian or Mesoamerican city-state system (Off the top of my head, you could get something like that emerging near, say, The Twin Cities if the regional trade importance of the Falls lead to the development of some kind of larger polity)

 

[trurle]

But wild rice grows in Canada? Did you read any part of this post?

I see. Not the classical Asian rice but just related plant..
Quite possible to imagine agriculture based on wild rice, although obviously it has issues compared to classical Asian rice - i suspect slower growth, poorer grain yield and more susceptibility to insect damage due to more palatable stems. Overall, these problems may have lead to frequent and catastrophic crop failures, and recovering paddies from failure may take more time compared to Asian rice.

 

[Umbral]

Are we talking pre -European contact? Have a native tribe grow it in quantity large enough to sustain the tribe? I presume so, we would need an individual to start some sort of program that would flood an area to increase the amount of land under cultivation. As yields and acreage in creases so too would good supply and with larger food supply comes larger population and increase tribe size. Eventually we could see the knowledge spread and more tribes cultivate rice. But unless we have man made cultivation, flooding the amount of wild rice growing in lakes would not be enough to support large groups of people

I have very little knowledge on the subjects but...

Could we see some sort of mutualism with Beavers develop here? Leading to eventual domestication, maybe.

 

[foresterab]

Wild rice was central to ojibiwa and was a major focus of their treaty talks. Unfortunately it’s a somewhat limited species historically but has expanded west. Alberta now has wild rice patches on some lakes gathered by Cree but it’s still low volume


Species such as raspberry (fruit and tea) Saskatoon (fruit and medicine) blueberry (fruit) are likely candidates. Bull rush can be used but it’s my understanding that it is a short period of time when edible...however that is also early spring so critical timing. Dandelions were introduced from Europe by fur traders for much the same reason

 

[Wolttaire]

The reason why they didn't domestcate because in msot areas of teh americas it would have been harder to domesticate than stay sednetary gather

 

[Arkenfolm]

It could combine well with similar water plants like wapato or reeds, plus you could have some aquaculture with the fish which might grow in the paddies. But there's probably a big hurdle why none of those plants were domesticated OTL.

Two of the bigger issues you'd run into here is, for most groups that harvest wild rice in the western Great Lakes region, the plant as rather substantial ritual and religious significance and that these groups tended to have highly defused societies (The Ojibwe, for instance, are more of a cultural group rather than having had any real unified political entity). The hydroponic projects required for large-scale rice production really are emblematic of/mostly accomplishable by highly stratified, centralized, sedentary societies, so you'd need a group in the region to adopt a way of living more common to the Mississippian or Mesoamerican city-state system (Off the top of my head, you could get something like that emerging near, say, The Twin Cities if the regional trade importance of the Falls lead to the development of some kind of larger polity)

But if you had a major center like Cahokia (or even greater), what might happen? If even pre-agricultural people could come together and create the mounds at Poverty Point, it seems there might not be many obstacles for such a culture to arise which needs the waterworks for mass cultivation of wild rice. Perhaps an Eastern Agricultural Complex wank might do the trick, where they never end up farming Mesoamerican plants since they offer no real advantage to plants native to temperate North America.

The reason why they didn't domestcate because in msot areas of teh americas it would have been harder to domesticate than stay sednetary gather

Actually the people in the region where wild rice grew were pretty sedentary IOTL.

 

[Lusitania]

Wild Rice is grown in lakes but I wonder if the plant could of been adapted to grown in bodies of water like regular rice. Could its cultivation of moved to man made flooded areas? I ask this for Wild Rice to support a substancial larger population then it needs to be move from being cultivated in lakes.