How Did the Gardens Look?
This is their common plantation, and the whole town plant in one vast field together, but yet the part of share of every individual family or habitation, is separated from the next adjoining, by a narrow strip, or verge of grass, or any other natural or artificial boundary. [William Bartram, describing gardens of southeastern Indians in the 1770s] (Harper 1958:325)
Few archaeological clues tell us how the gardens looked, but we have rich historical accounts. One example of ancient tillage practices was making artificial ridges and hills, sometimes used in combination. The use of ridges may be older than the use of hills, but evidence of both remained visible into the twentieth century. Most of the remnants of ridged field systems have been found in the upper midwest, where it is hypothesized that in addition to tillage, their function was to drain frost and raise the temperature of the ridge, thus slightly extending the growing season in marginal maize-growing areas. These field systems are found in both uplands and floodplains. However, an ancient ridged field has been discovered at the A.D. 1000 Ocmulgee site in Macon, Georgia, where the length of the growing season was more than adequate for growing maize.
On the east banks of the Oakmulge, this trading road runs nearly two miles through ancient Indian fields, which are called the Oakmulge fields: they are the rich low lands of the river. On the heights of these low grounds are yet visible monuments, or traces, of an ancient town, such as artificial mounts or terraces, squares and banks, encircling considerable areas. Their old fields and planting land extend up and down the river, fifteen or twenty miles from this site. [William Bartram, summer of 1776, at what is now Ocmulgee National Monument, Macon, Georgia] (Harper 1958:34)
Archaeologist Julia Hammett has written about the different perceptions of the landscape by Native Americans as opposed to Europeans at contact. Native Americans developed a model of informal landscaping in which crop fields were within sight of the houses, and these were surrounded by a mosaic of cleared and wooded areas. The house and garden clearings generally were circular in shape, with rings of lesser intensity and control as one moved further from the center. The English, in contrast, imposed a landscape design based on enclosure of gridded squares, reflecting their concern with private ownership. These areas of control were more homogenous and less varied biologically than were those of the Indians.
Then at dawn, the Spaniards marched on through some great fields of corn, beans, squash and other vegetables which had been sown on both sides of the road, and were spread out as far as the eye could see across two leagues of the plain. Among these fields there were sprinklings of settlements with houses set apart from each other and not arranged in the order of a town. [Garcilaso de la Vega, writing about Hernando de Soto’s journey through Florida and the Carolinas in 1538-1543] (Varner and Varner 1988:182)
Historic accounts from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries describe Indian gardening practices.
Then their fetting or fowing is after this maner. Firft for their corne, beginning in one corner of the plot, with a pecker they make a hole, wherein they put foure graines with that care they tough not one another, (about an inch afunder) and couer them with the moulde again: and fo through out the whole plot making fuch holes and vfing them after fuch maner: but with this regard that they bee made in rankes, euery rake differing from other halfe a fadome or a yarde, and the holes alfo in euery ranke, as much. By this meanes there is a yarde fpare ground betwene euery hole: where according to difscretion here and there, they fet as many Beanes and Peaze: in diuers places alfo among the feedes of Macocqwer [squashes and pumpkins], Melden [possibly chenopod] and Planta Solis [sunflower]. [Thomas Hariot in North Carolina in 1585] (de Bry 1966:15)
Few archaeological clues tell us how the gardens looked, but we have rich historical accounts. One example of ancient tillage practices was making artificial ridges and hills, sometimes used in combination. The use of ridges may be older than the use of hills, but evidence of both remained visible into the twentieth century. Most of the remnants of ridged field systems have been found in the upper midwest, where it is hypothesized that in addition to tillage, their function was to drain frost and raise the temperature of the ridge, thus slightly extending the growing season in marginal maize-growing areas. These field systems are found in both uplands and floodplains. However, an ancient ridged field has been discovered at the A.D. 1000 Ocmulgee site in Macon, Georgia, where the length of the growing season was more than adequate for growing maize.
On the east banks of the Oakmulge, this trading road runs nearly two miles through ancient Indian fields, which are called the Oakmulge fields: they are the rich low lands of the river. On the heights of these low grounds are yet visible monuments, or traces, of an ancient town, such as artificial mounts or terraces, squares and banks, encircling considerable areas. Their old fields and planting land extend up and down the river, fifteen or twenty miles from this site. [William Bartram, summer of 1776, at what is now Ocmulgee National Monument, Macon, Georgia] (Harper 1958:34)
Archaeologist Julia Hammett has written about the different perceptions of the landscape by Native Americans as opposed to Europeans at contact. Native Americans developed a model of informal landscaping in which crop fields were within sight of the houses, and these were surrounded by a mosaic of cleared and wooded areas. The house and garden clearings generally were circular in shape, with rings of lesser intensity and control as one moved further from the center. The English, in contrast, imposed a landscape design based on enclosure of gridded squares, reflecting their concern with private ownership. These areas of control were more homogenous and less varied biologically than were those of the Indians.
Then at dawn, the Spaniards marched on through some great fields of corn, beans, squash and other vegetables which had been sown on both sides of the road, and were spread out as far as the eye could see across two leagues of the plain. Among these fields there were sprinklings of settlements with houses set apart from each other and not arranged in the order of a town. [Garcilaso de la Vega, writing about Hernando de Soto’s journey through Florida and the Carolinas in 1538-1543] (Varner and Varner 1988:182)
Historic accounts from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries describe Indian gardening practices.
Then their fetting or fowing is after this maner. Firft for their corne, beginning in one corner of the plot, with a pecker they make a hole, wherein they put foure graines with that care they tough not one another, (about an inch afunder) and couer them with the moulde again: and fo through out the whole plot making fuch holes and vfing them after fuch maner: but with this regard that they bee made in rankes, euery rake differing from other halfe a fadome or a yarde, and the holes alfo in euery ranke, as much. By this meanes there is a yarde fpare ground betwene euery hole: where according to difscretion here and there, they fet as many Beanes and Peaze: in diuers places alfo among the feedes of Macocqwer [squashes and pumpkins], Melden [possibly chenopod] and Planta Solis [sunflower]. [Thomas Hariot in North Carolina in 1585] (de Bry 1966:15)
© Gail E. Wagner, 2014. The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of the page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of South Carolina. Page last updated 13 Sept. 2014.