native american farming in ohio

By Chris Cumo

Native Americans invented agriculture in the New World, and the accomplishments of these first farmers continue to influence agriculture in Ohio. Consider the homely potato. An accoutrement of the Happy Meal and a signature item of the office snack machine, the spud is so common that most people don’t give it a second thought. But this was not always the case. The potato was once just a minor player in the ensemble of life, a single plant among the foliage that covered the Andes Mountains. Then, about 8,000 years ago, the ancient Peruvians began to cultivate the tuber for food. The potato became so important that it nourished the Incan Empire. The Peruvians grew 5,000 varieties of potatoes, said Rex Ferguson, an organic garlic farmer in Stark County.

These were the days before Luther Burbank grew a uniform type of potato the way Henry Ford manufactured the Model T: You could have any color you wanted so long as it was black. Every Model T looked the same just as all Burbank potatoes were mirror images of one another. Not so with the Peruvian potato. It came in all shapes, colors, textures and tastes. The Peruvians grew long, thin purple potatoes alongside squat round yellow ones in a virtuoso display of crop diversity. From the rugged terrain of the Andes Mountains , the journey to Ohio was arduous. The distance between the Andes Mountains and Ohio is 3,600 miles had the potato taken a direct route. But it did not. Instead the potato took on the role of world traveler. The Spanish discovered the potato when they conquered the Inca in the 16 th century. The Spanish took a handful of potatoes 6,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean back to Spain . From there the potato spread throughout Europe and the English brought it back across the Atlantic on one of their innumerable voyages to North America in the 18 th century, said James O’Donnell, professor of history at Marietta College. From the eastern seaboard the pioneers took the potato west and into Ohio when they spilled across the western border of Pennsylvania after the Revolutionary War. All told the potato traveled not 3,600 miles but 11,000 miles as it crisscrossed the Atlantic as a stowaway aboard ship on its circuitous route to Ohio.

Today Todd Michael grows four varieties of potato— Superior, Yukon Gold, Ruba and Landglade—on 500 acres in Champaign County . Michael is the largest potato farmer in Ohio and his operation is state of the art. The potato’s spartan days in the Andes Mountains are long gone. Every stage in its cultivation today from planting to harvest is mechanized. Michael’s soil yields as many as 30 tons per acre with an average yield between 20 and 25 tons per acre. His potatoes don’t go to the processor to become chips or fries. Michael grows potatoes for grocers statewide. “Our potatoes feed millions of people,” he said. Michael appreciates that he is part of a rich history that began in Peru . The potato has come a long way since these early days, notes Michael, to become the world’s favorite vegetable.

Other crops
Modern mechanized agriculture contrasts with the way Ferguson farms. This fall he will harvest 6,000 cloves of garlic the way he planted them, by hand. He will not harvest by machine for fear of bruising the garlic. Ferguson reaches into the earth to pick a clove the size of an apricot. He slices it with a knife, spreading a film of oil across the blade and thickening the air with the aroma of garlic. Ferguson does not grow elephant garlic because it is too dry, preferring instead the oil rich varieties that he sells at organic food markets in Massillon, Canton and Akron. In addition to garlic, he grows 17 tomato varieties including one the Cherokee grew in eastern Tennessee and another the Maya raised thousands of years ago in what is today Guatemala. His soil bursts with 27 pepper varieties, pumpkin, beans, gourds, spinach, cantaloupe, eggplant and 40 varieties of trees for residential landscaping. “My father taught me everything I know about farming,” says Ferguson as he leans on the handle of a spade. This knowledge goes beyond the workaday chores of planting and harvesting to include singing to plants.

Native Americans grew tobacco as part of their religious traditions, Ferguson said. They believed that by inhaling the smoke from tobacco they took it into their soul. Once exhaled the smoke carried their prayers up to the gods. The growing of tobacco underscores that Native American agriculture was about more than crops. It was a belief system. Although devoid of a religious context, farmers grew tobacco in southern Ohio well into the 20th century.

Corn originated in southern Mexico about 8,000 years ago. Because it was a warm weather crop, Native Americans had trouble inching it north to cooler climates. In trial and error fashion they selected seed from plants that were better able than other corn plants to tolerate cool temperatures. This process took thousands of years. Only during the last 1,000 years did Native Americans grow corn as far north as Ohio . So successful were they that Indian corn resisted frost better than do modern hybrids, believes Marietta College ’s O’Donnell. Indian corn also differs from the modern hybrid in producing a small ear and hard, multicolor kernels.

Centuries before there was a science of nutrition, Native Americans understood that corn is not enough to nourish people, O’Donnell said. For this reason they also grew beans as a protein packed addition to their diet. Around 1,000 years ago, Native Americans in Ohio began to grow “the three sisters”: corn, squash and beans, O’Donnell said. These crops created what University of Cincinnati Professor Geoffrey Plank calls an “agricultural revolution,” by allowing Native Americans to establish large towns and temples, the products of a complex culture, long before the pioneers set foot in Ohio. The Europeans who settled Ohio may not have appreciated Native American culture but they did embrace their crops. Sixty percent of crops grown worldwide today are Native American, estimated Ferguson, who cites corn, tomatoes, beans, blueberries and raspberries as examples. “All these foods and many more are major contributions to world cuisine,” he said. Ferguson believes in keeping close to the soil, in touching and tasting the bounty of crops just as his Native American forebears did for millennia.

Chris Cumo is a freelance writer from Stark County.

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