Ontario Agriculture Week: The Before Times

     Woah, would you look at the time, it’s Ontario Agriculture Week already! I’m Stephen McLachlin from the Backus Page House Museum, and today I wanted to take this opportunity to look back in time to see what the life of a farmer in the Talbot settlement would have been like throughout history.

The Backus Page House Museum does not claim to be a voice for the Indigenous peoples mentioned in today’s post, we are only using existing archaeological evidence to construct a rough image of early agriculture.

No summary of agriculture in Ontario would be complete without first discussing the agricultural advancements of the area’s First Nation groups prior to contact. There is evidence to suggest both neutral and six nations Iroquois groups originally lived in this area of Ontario, so we will be referring to the indigenous peoples of Ontario as Iroquoian, though distinctive Iroquoian culture didn’t fully develop until roughly 1000 CE.

The first evidence of plant cultivation was in the Archaic Period, which lasted from roughly 8500 BCE to 1000 BCE. People would have assisted edible plants that were found in the wild, but this was only the first step towards basic horticulture. At this time, the Iroquois would have moved seasonally, making any permanent agriculture difficult.

By the Early and Middle Woodland Periods (1000 BCE-500 CE and 500-900 CE respectively), the Iroquois had begun to construct larger settlements, though they were still only using them seasonally. By this point, the Iroquois had begun cultivating the famous “three sisters” crops, beans, maize (which we know as corn), and squash. This early agriculture was still small scale, but crops were now being planted and grown intentionally, a major leap in progress toward modern agriculture.

In the Late Woodland Period, lasting from roughly 900 CE to 1650 CE, the Iroquois constructed massive permanent settlements complete with longhouses and defensive barriers that may have been built to keep attackers out. With the construction of permanent settlements came expansion of agriculture as well, with large fields of crops replacing the smaller scale endeavors seen in the Early and Middle Woodland Periods.

That brings us to European contact, which seems like a good spot to end today’s post, but before I go, how about an agriculture fun fact?

The corn we’re familiar with is called “green corn”, and it wouldn’t have been what the Iroquois would have harvested. Instead, they would have waited until the corn hardened into “flint corn” which could be used to make the staple food “hominy” and was much easier to store.

 

References

Anderson, Jacob M. The Lawson Site: An Early Sixteenth Century Neutral Iroquoian Fortress (London: Museum of Ontario Archaeology, 2009).