Northeast Subsistence-Settlement Change: A.D. 700 –1300

to the Maritime Provinces on the Gulf of St. Lawrence
and all the way down the coast to southern New
England and Long Island, as for other areas.
Conversely, we argue that Cartier and Verrezano in the
1500s, and later, Champlain in the early 1600s, among
others, clearly documented differential degrees of
dependence on horticulture and hunter-gathering subsistence
across the region (e.g., McManamon and
Bradley 1988; Salwen 1978; Trigger and Pendergast
1978). For example, long before European influence,
Verrazano reported farming in southeastern coastal
New England as early as the 1520s, while Cartier clearly
reported it among the St. Lawrence Iroquoians during
the 1530s on the St. Lawrence River, well before
substantial European contact.
Champlain made a point to emphasize that there
were farmers directly resident on the coast at the
mouth of the Saco River in Maine during the early
1600s, where the Almouchiquois lived. Champlain
described and depicted those coastal farmers and others
farther south, such as at Plymouth and Nauset on
Cape Cod in Massachusetts. These details are germane
here and help counter hypotheses that downplay the
usage of and dependence on horticulture in coastal
New England during the Late Woodland period. In
1605-1606, Champlain reported that the Cape Cod
Natives “are not so much hunters as good fishermen
and husbandmen” (Champlain 1906:127). Champlain
further reported:
All the people here are very fond of tilling the
soil, and store Indian corn for the winter, which
they preserve in the following way: they make
trenches on the hillsides in the sand, five or six
feet, more or less, deep; put their corn and other
grains in big sacks made of grass, and throw
them into these trenches and cover them with
sand three or four feet above the surface of the
earth. They take from their store at need
(Champlain (1906:126).
Quite clearly these and other details suggest a
dependence on farming and storage pits among coastal
groups by this time, if not before, and these were not
developed strictly in response to European incursions,
trade, and settlement, since we have dated them earlier
elsewhere in the region.
Recent archaeological discovery of a maize field on
Cape Cod directly confirms that at least some coastal
people were not only using maize, but were also growing
maize directly on the coast, as documented by
Champlain, albeit in small, dispersed settlements
(“hamlets” ?). Likely dated to the 1600s, this farm field
may have also been farmed prehistorically (Mrozowski
1994). Further, in 1609, when Champlain traveled on
the interior lake that bears his name, he recorded extensive
farm fields in the lower river valleys along the
Vermont side of Lake Champlain, as he previously
reported, on hearsay, for parts of interior Maine
(Champlain 1906:207; Haviland and Power 1994).
Following McManamon and Bradley (1988), we suggest
that Champlain’s early accounts accurately reflect
indigenous patterns before substantial contact disruption
occurred, as supported by recent archaeological
evidence.
Recorded details of the Native American annual
subsistence round on the central Connecticut River in
Massachusetts substantiate the prime importance of
Native horticulture during the early-mid-1600s, and
this likely had prehistoric origins locally and regionally.
For example, at least 6 of the 12 names for annual
seasons among the Pocumtuck people include references
to horticulture. Likewise, their settlement mobility
and other recorded details support the importance
of horticulture to them and other nearby tribes
(Thomas 1976, 1979). On the basis of the deep intertwining
of horticulture in various recorded accounts
for the Pocumtuck, Sokoki, and other Native groups, it
is difficult to believe that farming became important in
New England only after the arrival of Europeans.
Instead, again we suggest that most, if not all, New
England Natives to the south and west of central
Maine were unequivocally horticultural before the
time of European contact, that is, before the 1500s and
1600s. Sizeable numbers of horticulturalists were
seemingly resident at contact in favorable settings
across much of the region. This was apparently the
case in nearly all of Vermont and New Hampshire,
and also pertained to western Maine, with a rough
boundary between horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers
present in central Maine. A dual or tri-partite system
of large, long-term settlements, or “villages,” and
smaller, sometimes short-term “hamlets” and
“camps,” likely was present in most cases, as best can
be determined using the available ethnohistoric and
archaeological evidence.
Obviously, other site types were present as well,
rather than just large and small residential settlements.
During late prehistory (and the early historic period),
settlement diversity may have been greater than ever
before during regional prehistory, in part because of
the new, large villages based on farming and related
changes. Comparison of ethnohistoric and archaeological
data from the region supports the idea that the
biggest change in settlement and subsistence over time
Chapter 14 From Hunter-Gatherer Camp to Horticultural Village: Late Prehistoric Indigenous Subsistence and Settlement 281