preview

Native American Farming Research Paper

Decent Essays

Farming, it’s what keeps the Earth’s inhabitants fed. This industry is definitely something that has changed over time. It is no question that farmers are now more efficient than ever before. This is due in part to better machinery and techniques. Many people are not familiar with the history of farming. It is truly what it is today because of where it began in the past. The main things that have changed over time consist of crop differences, farmers and land, and the tools used to cultivate and harvest the land. The Native Americans and early Americans made many improvements to farming and its technology, which is why farming is what it is today. America’s first farming era originated with the Native Americans. Scholars believe that Native …show more content…

These women were able to adapt their crops based on the different climates (4). Native Americans farmers were very friendly. They had community fields that benefited everyone. These fields differed in size depending on how much food was needed. Fields would be abandoned when they were no longer fertile (11). As for the tools Native Americans used, they could be considered rustic. They used hoes, digging sticks, and other objects made of bone to plant their crops (4). For harvesting, a wooden peg was used to beat corn off of the cob. Similarly, rice plants were beat with a rice hoop to clean the rice grains off the plants (5-7). The Native American way of farming was very rustic, but as the years went on their ways became …show more content…

It was the transition period between Native Americans and farming today as we know it. These farmers started with relatively small fields of just over three acres. About half of this land was for vegetables, while the other half was for corn (Schlebecker 30). Later, it was easier to get larger fields. Many people could acquire up to 100 acres and plant twenty-five at a time using the same technique as the Native Americans, where they rotated their fields when the ground became less fertile (Hurt 35). However, as more people came to the colonies, the government was not able to give all of them with land. As settlers traveled to the Northeast, farm sizes dropped. Many farmers in Massachusetts did not even have enough land to generate enough food for their families (Kulikoff 129,130). It was the older farmers that had the land because they settled first. They were able to own around fifty acres (130). However, more land was available in the South. Thirty-five farmers in South Carolina were responsible for cultivating a large amount of land. This expanse of land was 2,850 acres to be exact (132). Field size was able to grow once farmers started to use dikes to capture rising river water. Because of this extra water, farmers could now farm twenty miles inland (Hurt 46). Eventually, tractors came along and field sizes grew. Crop size is one thing, but what was planted during this transitional time is

Get Access