Indians 201: Aboriginal farming in New England

by Ojibwa for Native American Netroots

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Tuesday, Feb. 03, 2026 Tuesday, Feb. 03, 2026 at 7:15:03am PST

When the Pilgrims first arrived in New England in 1620, they viewed the area as an undeveloped wilderness. One of their first activities was to rob Indian graves, taking from them, among other things, maize (commonly known as corn). While the Pilgrims relied on the produce from Indian farms—corn, beans, and squash—for their survival, they failed to either see or understand the well-developed Indian agriculture which they encountered. In the centuries since the Pilgrims began their invasions, historians, politicians, pundits, and others have been unaware of Indian agriculture.

Aboriginal New England agriculture was based on corn, beans, gourds, pumpkins, passionflower, Jerusalem artichoke, tobacco, and squash. Beans of many different colors and textures were used in many ways and were added to many foods. Corn (maize) was a variety known as northern flint which had eight-rowed, multicolored ears. The early European explorers in New England, such as Martin Pring in 1603 and Samuel de Champlain in 1604, reported seeing numerous Indian gardens in which the people were raising a wide variety of different kinds of plants.

A wide variety of melons were raised, including watermelon which some botanists feel originated in tropical Africa. However, by the time the first English settlers began their invasion of New England, they found the Indians raising watermelons.

Another important domesticated plant was the Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), Howard Russell, in his book Indian New England Before the Mayflower, reports:

“This plant looks like the sunflower but has a small blossom and an edible root. There is no connection between the city of Jerusalem and the name of the plant. The name of the plant in Italian is Girasole Articiocco (Sunflower Artichoke) and the English mispronunciation seems to have led to the designation Jerusalem.”

Another potato-like root, Apios tuberosa, called “openauk” by the Indians of southern New England, was also cultivated.

Fields were initially cleared by slash-and-burn methods. Fires would be placed around the bases of standing trees which would burn the bark and kill the tree. Later the dead tree would be felled, often knocking down other dead trees as it fell. With regard to the location of the fields, Howard Russell reports:

“Often it was the southerly slope of a glacial hill, even the hilltop itself, that Indians chose for cultivation.”

Regarding the use of fire as a land management tool, James Mavor, Jr., and Byron Dix, in their book Manitou: The Sacred Landscape of New England’s Native Civilizations, write:

“We can visualize the cyclical burning of the land as a carefully controlled ritual process which purified the environment.”

Noting the use of ditches in New England to preserve the wetlands from burning, they go on to report:

“Enriching large areas with charcoal and ash balances the soil and purifies the water that drains over the land.”

When planting was to be done, the Mohegan felt that corn was to be planted in the full of the moon, while climbing vegetables were to be planted during a waning moon.

Once an area had been cleared, earth mounds or hills were constructed about four or five feet apart. Kernels of corn and beans would then be planted in the mounds. The corn stalks would later be used by the bean vines as a pole. In the spaces between the mounds, the people would plant squash, gourds, and tubers. In her book Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650, anthropologist Kathleen Bragdon reports:

“Squash vines trailed alongside and over the mounds, protecting the roots of the corn plants and preventing weeds from establishing themselves.”

In his book Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, historian William Cronon writes:

“It was not an agriculture that looked very orderly to a European eye accustomed to monocultural fields. Cornstalks served as beanpoles, squashes sent their tendrils everywhere, and the entire surface of the field became a dense tangle of food plants.”

Historian Michael Oberg, in his book Uncas: First of the Mohegans, reports:

“Beans, squash, pumpkins, artichokes, tobacco, cucumbers, strawberries, and watermelons grew around the corn in a fashion that to Europeans appeared most haphazard.”

In addition, the farming was done by women. Since the English assumed that only men farmed, they didn’t see the farming because it was done by the women. The European invaders assumed that men were inherently more important than women and thus valued only men’s work, or what they perceived as men’s work. In actuality, women’s farming contributed as much as three-fourths of the total calories consumed. William Cronon reports:

“A single Indian woman could raise anywhere from twenty-five to sixty bushels of corn by working an acre or two, enough to provide half or more of the annual caloric requirements for a family of five. When corn was combined with the other foods for which they were responsible, women may have contributed as much as three-fourths of a family’s total subsistence needs.”

Hoes for preparing the ground and weeding used the shells of horseshoe crabs, clams, the scapulae from deer, or turtle shells. Small huts were often constructed in and around the fields. From these huts, children would watch the fields and scare off any birds which threatened the plants. Among the Narragansetts, tamed hawks were also used to frighten the birds away.

In southern New England, planting was timed by the disappearance of the constellation Pleiades from the western horizon and harvesting began with its reappearance in the east. These astronomical observations mark the length of the frost-free season in the area.

In order to keep an accurate measure of the seasons, the people constructed observatories in the form of stone chambers, stone circles, and carefully split boulders which enabled them to view and mark solar events such as solstices. These architectural features, which have often puzzled non-Indians, may have also been used to mark lunar and stellar cycles.

Among the Narragansetts in Rhode Island, the first fields planted in the spring were often near the sea. When the corn began to sprout, they would then build stands in the middle of the fields where both adults and children would camp to scare away the birds that would come in the morning to devour the plants. At about midsummer, they would move to more distant fields.

A typical Wabanaki village with a population of 400 people would plant 330 to 580 acres. Following the planting of the fields in the spring, the people would then move to their summer gathering and hunting areas and not return to the fields until the time of harvest.

Corn was prepared in a number of ways, including making hominy of the kernels and making a stew of beans and corn called succotash. Corn meal ground in wooden mortars was boiled or baked in the shape of cakes or round balls.

While the aboriginal inhabitants of New England have often been characterized by non-Indians as nomadic hunter-gatherers, they were actually settled agriculturalists. Throughout New England, Indian villages had extensive fields. In his book Neither Wolf Nor Dog: American Indians, Environment, and Agrarian Change, David Rich Lewis writes:

“Peoples living in the Connecticut River valley of Massachusetts described six of the thirteen phases of the lunar calendar in terms of horticultural schedules, and estimates for the area show that corn alone provided 50 to 60 percent of subsistence.”

Over time, agricultural fields lose their fertility. In many areas, the declining fertility would be noticed after 8-10 years, at which time the people would increase fertilization and/or create new fields by burning the woods. After a decade or so, the fields might be abandoned, and the people would move a short distance away to establish a new village. This move would be done gradually, often over a period of several years. A few families would move initially and then the others would join them.

Since farming was an important part of the daily life of the people, it should come as no surprise to find that agriculture was also the center of their religious and ceremonial life. Of particular importance was the harvest ceremony (or, better, ceremonies) which involved several days of feasting, dancing, and the giving away of material wealth. Among Native Americans food was seen as communal and was shared freely by all who were in the village.

The Green Corn Ceremony was usually held in August when the first corn ripened. For a period of about two weeks, the community leaders would eat only at night.

The cosmology of the Indian Nations of New England included many different spiritual beings or forces. Unlike the Europeans, the Indians did not rely on one god with multiple personalities, nor did they have a hierarchy of gods and goddesses. The traditional stories tell of forest elves, river elves, fairies, dwarves, and giants. Among the Narragansett, it was an entity called Cautantouwit who sent the first kernels of corn to the people in the ear of a crow and for this reason the Narragansetts did not harm crows.