Briefly describe the culture: Iroquois (Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee) 1. Between 200 and 500 million people still cultivate using horticultural methods (The Encyclopedia of Earth, 2006). In this chapter, we discuss 2. the following food-producing cultures: Iroquois, Yanomamö, Btsisi’, and Enga. 3. Among the Iroquois (Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee) of upstate New York, men cleared and burned 4. the forest while women planted, weeded, and harvested the crops, primarily “The Three 5. Sisters”—corn, beans, and squash. 6. Children learn at an early age to help— by weeding, scaring away pests from the crops, and even assisting in the harvesting. 7. the land is not alienated from the larger group. 8. women were the key food producers and land was held jointly by women, descent went through the female line. Such lineages are called matrilineages (or matrilineal descent groups). 9. Iroquois maize farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced three to five times more grain per acre than wheat farmers in Europe. The higher productivity of Iroquois agriculture can be attributed to two factors. First, the absence of plows in the western hemisphere allowed Iroquois farmers to maintain high levels of soil organic matter, critical for grain yields. Second, maize has a higher yield potential than wheat because of its C4 photosynthetic pathway and lower protein content. However, tillage alone accounted for a significant portion of the yield advantage of the Iroquois farmers. When the Iroquois were removed from their territories at the end of the eighteenth century, US farmers occupied and plowed these lands. Within fifty years, maize yields in five counties of western New York dropped to less than thirty bushels per acre. They rebounded when US farmers adopted practices that
Briefly describe the culture: Iroquois (Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee) 1. Between 200 and 500 million people still cultivate using horticultural methods (The Encyclopedia of Earth, 2006). In this chapter, we discuss 2. the following food-producing cultures: Iroquois, Yanomamö, Btsisi’, and Enga. 3. Among the Iroquois (Ho-De-No-Sau-Nee) of upstate New York, men cleared and burned 4. the forest while women planted, weeded, and harvested the crops, primarily “The Three 5. Sisters”—corn, beans, and squash. 6. Children learn at an early age to help— by weeding, scaring away pests from the crops, and even assisting in the harvesting. 7. the land is not alienated from the larger group. 8. women were the key food producers and land was held jointly by women, descent went through the female line. Such lineages are called matrilineages (or matrilineal descent groups). 9. Iroquois maize farmers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced three to five times more grain per acre than wheat farmers in Europe. The higher productivity of Iroquois agriculture can be attributed to two factors. First, the absence of plows in the western hemisphere allowed Iroquois farmers to maintain high levels of soil organic matter, critical for grain yields. Second, maize has a higher yield potential than wheat because of its C4 photosynthetic pathway and lower protein content. However, tillage alone accounted for a significant portion of the yield advantage of the Iroquois farmers. When the Iroquois were removed from their territories at the end of the eighteenth century, US farmers occupied and plowed these lands. Within fifty years, maize yields in five counties of western New York dropped to less than thirty bushels per acre. They rebounded when US farmers adopted practices that