America's Wetland: An Environmental and Cultural History of Tidewater Virginia and North Carolina

5. Agricultural History

67 5 Agricultural History In early prehistory the native peoples of the Albemarle region were hunters and gatherers, living off game and edible plants that abounded in this wetland. They tended to move about seasonally in search of food, such as waterfowl in winter and migratory fish in spring. Starting about 1000 bc a fundamental change began to occur in this region that manifested itself in artifacts associated with more permanent settlement, most notably pottery (Woodland Period). Coinciding with these changes was the rise of agriculture, particularly maize, or ‘‘Indian corn.’’ Maize (Zea mays) was the first nonnative grain to be introduced into the Albemarle region. It is a type of grass that had been domesticated as a food crop in Mexico as early as ten thousand years ago. This staple crop has thrived in the exceptionally rich, moist soil of the Albemarle region for up to three thousand years, but exactly when it first came here is contentious. Maize pollen grains dating back to about 200 bc have been found in peat of the Great Dismal Swamp, ‘‘the oldest evidence for maize in the Middle Atlantic region.’’∞ Further discoveries of prehistoric maize pollen east of the Mississippi have led to the revised consensus that maize has been grown in the eastern United States from at least 1000 bc. However, data from macrobotanical remains of maize (corncobs, kernels, etc.) indicate that, as an intensive crop, it was grown in North Carolina and Virginia relatively late, after ad 800. Perhaps the earliest such record for the coastal plain of North Carolina is about ad 1000 at Camp Lejeune, Onslow County.≤ With the advent of agriculture, small, semipermanent settlements 68 W America’s Wetland grew up in the Albemarle region, and these villages had characteristics peculiar to this wetland. As a general rule they were located on ‘‘islands’’ in the swamps, accessible by dugout canoe. Early Indians learned that a creek leading into an otherwise impenetrable swamp usually leads to relatively dry land suitable for habitation. Such isolated islands in the swamp were accessible to the river by a natural process. Over millennia, surface water running off these slightly elevated ridges ever so slowly cut a channel to the river. The bigger the creek, the higher the island. At first contact with the Roanoke colonists in the 1580s these swamp islands were occupied by Algonquin-speaking Indians whose villages were located, described, and drawn in detail by Thomas Hariot and John White. Apart from having dogs, they had no domesticated livestock, no horses, cows, pigs, or chickens. Meat was normally plentiful from hunting deer, bear, smaller mammals, turkeys, and an abundance of overwintering waterfowl, as well as ubiquitous fish and terrapins. Although no livestock were cultivated, these Algonquin villages were heavily involved in agriculture prior to contact with Europeans. In addition to maize, they cultivated supplementary crops of beans/peas, native cucurbits (gourds, squashes, and pumpkins), sunflowers, and lesserknown plants, some of which simply grew up around human habitation. Two other nonnative cucurbits are noteworthy here: the cucumber and watermelon originated in India and Africa, respectively, and were known to the Romans. However, they reached the New World very early in Spanish colonization. Both were being grown in the West Indies and Florida by the mid-sixteenth century and spread rapidly to other Native Americans. Thus, they may have possibly reached the Albemarle region by the time of the Roanoke Colony, especially in view of a Spanish Jesuit mission in the Chesapeake area (Ajacan) in 1570–71. The usual practice was to plant the corn and beans/peas in the same hill, so that the corn stalks afforded support for the legumes. In this context, it is noteworthy that as late as 1839 farmers in the Albemarle region planted corn and peas together, yielding two crops before the livestock were ‘‘turned in.’’ An inescapable observation at this point is that the natives of the Albemarle tidewater, as no doubt in innumerable similar settlements up and down the eastern seaboard, had already altered their immediate environment . For generations, perhaps hundreds of years, they had been clearing wooded land adjacent to their settlements for firewood and to Agricultural History W 69 make open fields for growing maize. The parallel between maize agriculture and disturbed environments has been noted elsewhere in the southeastern United States. Evidence from shell middens indicates that, from about ad 1000, such agriculture affected water quality, resulting in...