One of them things that might be primarily of interest only to me.
One of the best-documented accounts of 18th Century Indian Country can be found in the journals of those who participated in the Clinton-Sullivan Expedition of 1779. Due to their Loyalist alliances and proximity to Canada the Iroquois were a threat that couldn't be ignored. So much so that a combined force of 6,000 men was mustered for the purpose, enormous by the standards of the time and by far the largest expedition ever launched against Indians.
What was revealed was that, despite their fearsome reputation, Iroquois demographics had been hollowed out by disease and other causes. Joseph Brant was only able to muster 900 men to oppose the American force, ordinarily a formidable number but by 1779 simply not enough.
Western New York, then the homeland of the Senecas, the most numerous of the remaining Iroquois, was terra incognita to most Whites for the simple reason that it was general Seneca policy to restrict access.
Fortunately its also one of the best-documented actions through several diaries and journals, all of which marvelled at the size and productivity of the Iroquois fields.
http://www.sullivanclinton.com/A snapshot of a larger Seneca townsite....
...after marching six miles we reached the castle, which consisted of 128 houses, mostly very large and elegant. The town was beautifully situated, almost encircled with a clear flat which extends for a number of miles, where the most extensive fields of corn were, and every kind of vegetable that can be conceived...Not everyone lived like this of course, and interestingly enough, the warriors who came from these communities were as painted and as stripped naked as they had ever been.
With respect to the productivity of traditional Indian agriculture, first, as noted, native crops were quickly adopted by the European settlers in North America, the other way around; not so much. Regular folks voting with their bellies.
Jane Mount Pleasant, Associate Professor of Horticulture and Head of the Native American Studies Program at Cornell University is hardly a disinterested witness, but appears to have done more experimental work along these lines than anyone else.
She found....
http://whyfiles.org/2012/farming-native-american-style/in 1779, a soldier sent by General George Washington reported that his unit had destroyed at least 200 acres of Iroquois corn and beans that was �the best I ever saw.�....
...In experiments replicating agriculture from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, Iroquois corn out-produced of European wheat....
�This was not backyard gardening, not primitive farming,� Mt. Pleasant says. �They were dynamic, producing farmers on really good soils.�
In modern tests of corn varieties believed to resemble those grown by the Senecas, one of the Iroquois tribes, Mt. Pleasant got yields of 2,500 to 3,000 pounds per acre (45 to 54 bushels per acre or 2,800 to 3,400 kilograms per hectare).
This was far above the 500 kilograms per hectare of contemporay wheat varieties grown in Europe.Birdwatcher
