I’m writing this column three days before Thanksgiving, so here’s background on the holiday, I believe, is relevant, in appreciating the Native Americans who helped make the celebration a reality. In researching such events, we learn about the farming practices that empowered these indigenous people to help English newcomers survive in their new homeland.
Although the term “biodiversity” wasn’t originally used to describe established cropping methodology in the New World, the practice called “the Three Sisters” clearly earns that title. The Native American culture of the Three Sisters greeted the earliest arriving European immigrants.
In a technique known as companion planting, corn (maize), beans and squash were planted close together. The maize and climbing beans were often planted together in mounds formed by hilling soil around the base of the plants each spring; then squash was planted between the mounds. In the Northeast, this practice increased soil temperature in the mound and improved drainage, both of which benefited maize planted in spring.
Each mound was about 12 inches high and 20 inches in diameter. Several maize seeds were planted close together in the center of each mound; in parts of the Atlantic Northeast, rotten fish or eels were buried in the mound with maize seeds, providing additional fertilizer benefit for poor soils.
In Iroquois (and Great Lakes) farming, the fields were not tilled, enhancing soil fertility and the sustainability of the cropping system by limiting soil erosion and oxidation of soil organic matter.
Grown together, the three crops benefited each other. This successful cropping method would be called symbiosis by modern agronomists. Cornstalks served as a trellises for beans to climb, the beans fixed nitrogen in soil and their twining vines stabilized corn in high winds. Squash plants’ wide leaves shaded the ground, keeping soil moist, helping prevent weed establishments. Prickly hairs of some squash varieties deterred pests, like deer and raccoons.
European records from the 17th century described highly productive indigenous agriculture based on cultivation of the Three Sisters throughout what is now the Eastern U.S. and Canada. One colonial historian described the Three Sisters as “a symbiotic plant complex of North and Central America without an equal elsewhere.”
Agronomists and horticulturalists generally agree that the Three Sisters mound system “enhances the soil’s physical and biochemical environment, minimizes soil erosion, improves soil tilth, manages plant population and spacing, provides for plant nutrients in appropriate quantities and at the time needed … and controls weeds.”
Human nutrition-wise, the combination of corn, beans and squash contains all nine essential amino acids, plus complex carbohydrates and essential fatty acids. The somewhat lower protein from corn grain is enhanced by protein contributions from beans and pumpkin seeds. With the Three Sisters, farmers harvest about the same amount of energy as from a corn monoculture but get more protein yield from the interplanted bean and pumpkin.
This symbiosis largely explains the value of Three Sisters over monoculture. Symbiosis yields large amounts of energy and increased harvestable protein. This polyculture system – growing three or more crops – yielded more food and supported more people per acre compared to monocultures of individual crops or mixtures of monocultures.
Four centuries after the first Thanksgiving, people still ask, “What was on the menu at that famous banquet, generations ago?” No exact records exist to answer that, but one historian recorded that the colony’s governor, William Bradford, sent four men on a “fowling” mission, preparing for the three-day festivity. Wild turkey was plentiful locally, a common food source for both English immigrants and Native Americans. Very likely the fowling party returned with other birds, like ducks, geese and swans.
Instead of bread-based stuffing, herbs, onions or nuts were likely added to the birds for extra flavor. Whether or not turkey was served at the first Thanksgiving is debatable, but attendees got their fill of meat for sure.
Wampanoag tribe members also arrived with an offering of five deer. Culinary historians speculate that the deer were roasted on a spit over a smoldering fire and that the colonists probably used some of the venison in a hearty stew.
About half of the Pilgrims arriving on the Mayflower survived their first winter in Plymouth Colony. This meant that roughly 50 out of the original 102 passengers made it through the harsh conditions, living to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in 1621. That celebration marked the Pilgrims’ first autumn harvest, so it’s likely that the colonists feasted on the bounty they had reaped with the help of their Native American neighbors.
Local vegetables likely appearing on the table included onions, beans, lettuce, spinach, cabbage, carrots and perhaps peas. Corn, plentiful at the first harvest, was likely also served, but not in the way most people enjoy it now. In those days, the corn would have been removed from the cob and turned into cornmeal, which was then boiled and pounded into a thick mush or porridge, occasionally sweetened with molasses.
As part of the first Thanksgiving, I have mentioned two of the Three Sisters, corn and climbing beans. Now for the last sister – the Cucurbita genus, which includes squashes and pumpkins. Both the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag ate pumpkins and other squashes indigenous to New England – possibly even during the harvest festival – but the fledgling colony lacked the butter and wheat flour necessary for pie crust. The English folk also lacked ovens for baking. According to some accounts, early North America immigrants improvised by hollowing out pumpkins, filling the shells with milk, honey and spices to make a custard, then roasted the gourds whole in hot ashes.
Over the centuries, American agriculture has drifted away from the soil-building Three Sisters toward monoculture – and the accompanying sickened soils. Degraded soil health is believed to have intensified the all-too-common drought-based destruction in the Mississippi Basin.
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