Cash Cropping by Lenape Foragers

West Chester University Digital Commons @ West Chester University Anthropology & Sociology College of Arts & Sciences 1999 Cash Cropping by Lenape Foragers: Preliminary Notes on Native Maize Sales to Swedish Colonists and Cultural Stability During the Early Colonial Period Marshall Joseph Becker West Chester University of Pennsylvania, mbecker@wcupa.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/anthrosoc_facpub Part of the Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Becker, M. J. (1999). Cash Cropping by Lenape Foragers: Preliminary Notes on Native Maize Sales to Swedish Colonists and Cultural Stability During the Early Colonial Period. Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey, 54, 45-68. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/anthrosoc_facpub/28 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts & Sciences at Digital Commons @ West Chester University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology & Sociology by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ West Chester University. For more information, please contact wcressler@wcupa.edu. Cash Cropping by Lenape Foragers: Models of “rapid” culture change based on supposed modes of Preliminary Notes on maize production postulate that the inception (or presence of) “agriculture” among the native populations uniformly resulted Native Maize Sales from changes in global temperatures and/or variations in social to Swedish Colonists and Cultural Stability relationships (cf. Beauregard 1986). This is quite different than During the Early Colonial Period the model that assumes continuity of native culture through time, and well into the colonial period. James A. Brown (personal com- Marshall Joseph Becker munication) notes that research in the area of the Great Lakes Department of Anthropology focused on the role that maize cultivation had in stabilizing a wild West Chester University food foraging system. Maize, as one of the “crops” intensively West Chester, Pennsylvania 19383 harvested, acted as a stabilizing element because of its ability to Abstract be stored. Prof. Brown also points out that this altered economic Interactions between the Lenape bands and Swedish colonists system did not lead to the development of chieftancies among the from ca. 1640 to 1660 reflect a new strategy for securing desired Great Lakes groups who developed such stabilized systems. European goods. Lenape history during this period is well known Various ideas about uniformity among native cultures of the from land deeds and other recorded interactions with the colo- “Eastern Woodlands” had led to archaeologists treating all native nists. These records document details of their band organization peoples as if they were alike. We now recognize that even the and their dispersed residence pattern. However, for nearly 20 New York State Iroquois were “shifting cultivators” with rela- years the two Schuylkil River bands, and perhaps others, estab- tively low population densities (Engelbrecht 1987, Snow 1995). lished their summer stations in the Passyunk region, where they Other groups north of the Chesapeake also have been found to amplified their maize gardening to produce a “crop” for sale to lack extensive use of maize, although they may have gardened the colonists. By 1660, due to the combined effects of a decline in other plants (cf. Strong 1983:34-5). None of these groups have maize prices and the greater attractiveness of fur trapping as a been found to have had the large populations which were once resource base, the Lenape bands aggregated at Passyunk returned suggested for them. to traditional summer fishing stations and abandoned large-scale maize gardening. During the entire period from ca. 1640-1660 all Detailed studies of the foraging systems of the several nations of the Lenape bands maintained normal foraging patterns. Their called “Delaware” by Europeans have had similar results. The temporary economic adjustment as a means for gaining access to cultural boundaries of the Lenape, the Munsee (Becker 1983) and trade goods lasted nearly twenty years, generating only a minimal the “Jerseys” (Becker 1987b, 1988a) are now known, and each alteration in the residence pattern of some bands, but no changes culture had a very distinct set of economic strategies.We now in social structure or political organization. know that Lenape food getting strategies were based on foraging, with the focus strongly on fishing. Lenape “villages” were no This unusual summer aggregation pattern of some of these for- more than scattered and temporary encampments (Becker 1986c, aging bands in order to grow maize as a cash crop from ca. 1640- 1988b; also Early 1985). However, Lenape economic and settle- 1660 had led several scholars to conclude that these Lenape for- ment patterns altered in several interesting ways during the agers were sedentary horticulturalists, or that contact with Euro- decades from 1640 to 1660, and these alterations gave rise to the peans stimulated a transition to agriculture. Neither of these myth of Lenape “agriculture” (cf. Ford 1985, who offers no data inferences is supported by the evidence. We can demonstrate now from the Lenape area). As James A. Brown has pointed out (per- that the Lenape bands retained their traditional culture long after sonal communication), the assumption that maize cultivation the 1730s, the decade during which the traditionalists still forag- automatically indicates the presence of socio-political complexity, ing in the Delaware Valley had relocated their foraging range to and that members of any culture “intuitively” prefer intensive the west. Lenape lifestyle, or variations on its foraging focus, food production systems to less intensive systems, is not sup- remained intact until the middle of the 19th century, or for over ported by the Lenape data. Although those aspects of Lenape cul- 100 years after their departure from the Delaware Valley. ture involved in the use of European material goods changed greatly in the early 17th century, and for a brief period they did Introduction intensify maize production, their social organization and general The enormous volume of research directed toward specific cul- lifestyle remained almost entirely unaltered for centuries. tures in the northeastern woodlands area of the United States has vastly sharpened our perceptions of many of these distinct groups Examination of the pattern of increased maize production of Native American people. A number of our “assumptions and among the Lenape demonstrates intensification of one set of myths” (Shipek 1981:293-4) regarding these peoples have been behaviors—gardening—that had nothing to do with a direct dispelled in recent years through the review of a vast amount of attempt to increase or to stabilize food resources. Rather, this previously untouched data. Among the myths and assumptions increase in maize production was a means by which resources dispelled are those relating to Native Americans as “ecologists,” could be secured in trade at the time of harvest. The alcohol as well as fantasies about the supposed large size of aboriginal received enabled these Lenape to amplify ritual behavior at their populations. annual “renewal” ceremonies (cf. Witthoft 1949; also Wallace 1956). In addition to usual food consumption, alcohol provided an A major conundrum related to the idea that many of the native added “kick” at these festivities. A secondary result of this maize cultures of the northeast appear to have become more sedentary trade was the creation by the Lenape of an indirect food storage ca. 1400-1500 CE (Christian Era), at a time when the weather was system by placing the crop in the hands of the European colonists. becoming colder! The altithermal of ca. 1100 CE was past, and These foragers then could draw on the stored crop, using the the Little Ice Age of ca. 1600 CE was placing greater restrictions social obligations created by the trade itself. on the growing season in the northeast. Yet these same chilling factors were producing stress on the entire ecological situation, The Maize Trade generating a Late Woodland period food stress that was met in Ceci (1982:7-8, 28) notes that at best maize “farming” had a two ways. First, specializations developed in resource extraction minor role in the subsistence strategies in the New York and New in localized areas. Second, the peoples (women?) in ecologically England coastal areas until after Contact. Others (Lavin 1988, precarious resource areas, such as central New York and western McBride and Dewer 1987) also recognized the role for aboriginal Pennsylvania, began maize production to provide a buffer against maize cultivation in this region (see also Bourque and Krueger recurrant food stresses resulting from fluctuating environmental 1994). Not only has Ceci (1980) provided evidence for the lack of conditions. a totally sedentary life style based on horticulture in coastal New -45- York, on the basis of the archaeological evidence, but similar demonstrate that extensive maize gardening was a Lenape findings appear to characterize the entire region (see also Dunnell response to an unusual economic opportunity rather than as part 1984:498). In fact, horticulture (not agriculture) was a Terminal of a shift from foraging to an agricultural economic system. Woodland innovation in Iroquoia, and did not exist among the Lenape interactions with Europeans during the middle of the Lenape or any of their coastal neighbors to the north (see

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