I was watching an episode of Good Eats when I first fell in love with stories that food hold inside of them. The food that they were talking about was corn. The transition of the grass thiocyanate into the grain we know as corn, spoken of elsewhere as maize is a mixture of magic and science. The knowledge that brought prehistoric people to cultivate corn amazes me.
Corn has become deeply American. Perhaps because it is native to the Americas or the way that it transformed the Midwest. Even the canning industry transformed Maine through sweet corn.
Corn was an important part of many agricultural systems for Native Americans across what is now the United States. Many of these tribes utilized the three sisters method of planting.
THE THREE SISTERS
The three sisters system of agriculture used by many Native Americans in the Southwest and beyond. Mounds are built for each cluster of crop. A corn, bean, and squash seed would be planted in each mound. As the crops grew, the bean would climb up the stalk of the corn and the wide leaves of the squash would shade the roots of all the plants and help the soil retain moisture.
Corn
Eight Row Flint Corn
(Maiz de Ocho)
Zea mays
dried on the cob near a fire, then stored and ground
into flour
|
Bean
Anasazi Bean
(Cave Bean)
Phaseolus vulgaris
sun dried on a flat surface, stored for winter
|
Squash
Winter Hubbard Squash
(Hopi Groie)
Cucurbita maxima
cut into strips, sun dried, then stored for winter
|
This method of agriculture is also called companion planting. These three crops often had other companions. The most common in Southern Utah was beeweed. Beeweed was considered the fourth sister because it attracted bees which aided in pollination.
Other companions are amaranth and sunflowers. Not only can they provide additional shade and help with pollination, they add healthy additions to the diet.
The Iroquois Legend of the Three Sisters
Erney, Diana. 1996. Long live the Three Sisters. Organic Gardening. November. p. 37-40.
The term “Three Sisters” emerged from the Iroquois creation myth. It was said that the earth began when “Sky Woman” who lived in the upper world peered through a hole in the sky and fell through to an endless sea. The animals saw her coming, so they took the soil from the bottom of the sea and spread it onto the back of a giant turtle to provide a safe place for her to land. This “Turtle Island” is now what we call North America.
Sky woman had become pregnant before she fell. When she landed, she gave birth to a daughter. When the daughter grew into a young woman, she also became pregnant (by the West wind). She died while giving birth to twin boys. Sky Woman buried her daughter in the “new earth.” From her grave grew three sacred plants—corn, beans, and squash. These plants provided food for her sons, and later, for all of humanity. These special gifts ensured the survival of the Iroquois people.
CORN MOTHER
Some Native American folklore attribute the Corn Mother as the first mother to all of humanity. In other legends she comes to feed the people in a time when food was not plentiful.
'Fair and fine,
Fine and fair
Are the fields
Where I grow and ripen.'
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