For thousands of years prior to the European invasion American Indians were farming and had developed very efficient forms of agriculture long before the Europeans arrived. Agriculture began in the Americas about 10,000 years ago.
Throughout the world, including North America, agriculture increased carrying capacity, which meant that populations could now be larger. Agriculture also allowed people to live in relatively permanent villages, to develop more elaborate ceremonies, to construct monumental features such as pyramids and earthworks, and to allow some economic specialization.
At the beginning of the European invasion, most Indian people got the majority of the food they ate from the crops they raised. In his 1930 book The Mound-Builders, archaeologist Henry Clyde Shetrone reports:
“Contrary to widespread popular belief, most of the historic tribes of native American Indians were agricultural in varying degrees, and to corresponding degrees sedentary in their manner of life.”
While American Indian farmers grew many different kinds of plants for food and fiber, by 1525 there were three major agricultural crops: maize (corn), beans, and squash.
In many cases, perhaps most, agriculture resulted in food and fiber surpluses which could be traded to other peoples. By 1525, aboriginal trade routes spread across the Americas and many villages became trading centers. Briefly described below are two 1525 events relating to agriculture and trade.
New Mexico
Five hundred years ago what is now New Mexico was inhabited by village agriculturalists collectively known as Pueblos. While the Pueblos are usually lumped together in both the anthropological and historical writings as though they are a single cultural group, they are linguistically and culturally divergent. They do, however, share some common traits: they are agriculturalists who grow corn, beans, and squash; they have permanent villages with a central plaza; and most have kivas (underground ceremonial centers).
When the Spanish first entered New Mexico, they found the Indian people living in settled villages made of stone. The Spanish called these communities “pueblos”, their word for town or village, and the name was later applied to the people living in these villages.
The masonry for the houses is laid, finished, and plastered by the woman of the house and her female relatives. The stone is sandstone which can be easily worked, even with stone tools, into smooth blocks.
Prior to the European invasion, the Pueblos were important trading centers. Goods came from the Pacific Coast, the Sea of Cortez, western Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Trade with Indian nations in Mexico was common and Pueblo turquoise was frequently traded to these southern nations.
Taos Pueblo functioned as a trading center for many of the Plains tribes, such as the Comanche, Ute, and Lipan Apache. The Plains tribes traded buffalo robes, buckskin products, and meat for corn, blankets, and other products. In 1525, Taos established trading relations with the Apaches.
In addition to trading at Taos, the Apaches also began trading at Picuris and Pecos. In the summer, the Apaches would arrive at the Pueblos with their dogs hauling hides, meat, tallow, and salt which were then exchanged for cotton blankets, pottery, corn, and turquoise.
The Apaches and Navajos are Athabascan-speaking peoples who migrated into the Southwest from Canada. Their aboriginal homeland was in what is now the province of Alberta.
The establishment of trading relationships with the Pueblos in 1525 may mark the entrance of the Athabaskan-speaking groups – Apache and Navajo – into the Southwest. According to archaeologist James Gunnerson, in his chapter in the Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 13, Part 1: Plains:
“Although the older idea that Apacheans might have arrived in the Southwest as early as 1200 has not been rejected by all authors, most evidence supports an arrival date in the Southwest of about 1525, a time when the Plains were recovering from the severe droughts of the 1400s.”
North Dakota
Five hundred years ago, the upper Missouri River Valley was the home to farming peoples (known today as Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara, who raised corn (maize), beans, sunflowers, tobacco, pumpkins, and squash. These village tribes planted between nine and eleven different varieties of corn.
These farming peoples had permanent villages in which they constructed large earthlodges. The earthlodges were circular structures built partially underground. They had a log framework which was covered with willow mats and then overlaid with a thin coating of earth and sod. At the top of the dome-shaped lodge there was an opening—often two or three feet across—which allowed smoke to escape.
The floor of the lodge was often excavated a foot or more below ground level. Beneath the smoke hole, there would be a shallow depression, five or six feet across, curbed with stone for the fire. The size of the earthlodges ranged from 20 to 50 feet in diameter. A typical earthlodge would have 15-25 people living in it.
Unlike the Mandan and Arikara villages, Hidatsa villages had neither a central plaza nor a ceremonial structure.
In 1525 the Awaxita Hidatsas established a village on the Knife River. This village would eventually grow to about 50 earth lodges with a population of about 500-600 people.
More American Indian histories
Indians 101: American Indians and Spanish explorers 500 years ago, 1525
Indians 101: American Indians 450 years ago, 1575
Indians 101: The Spanish and the Southeastern Indian nations 500 years ago, 1521
Indians 101: Powhatan Indians and the Spanish mission at Cheasapeake Bay
Indians 101: The Calusa Indians and Spanish missionaries in 1549
Indians 301: Canadian First Nations and Jacques Cartier, 1534-1542
Indians 201: Plains Indians and the Spanish in the sixteenth century
Indians 201: Southwestern Indians and Fray Marcos de Niza
