Maize Productivity in the Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains of North America

Abstract

Archaeologists and ethnohistorians have long been interested in quantifying potential maize productivity for late prehistoric and early historic Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands. Maize yields obtained by Native Americans using traditional farming techniques in the nineteenth century are compared to yields obtained by nineteenth-century Native Americans using plows, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century farmers in Illinois and Missouri. The result is a notion of average resource productivity for maize that is more reasonable and modest than previous estimates. In this study, the mean yield of maize for nineteenth-century Native American groups who did not use plows was 18.9 bu/acre (stdev=4.1) (1,185.4 kg/ha [stdev=254.1]). Yields on the order of 10 bu/acre (627.2 kg/ha) probably are closer to the average prehistoric yields that were available for subsistence purposes. The mean size of gardens cultivated by nineteenth-century Native American families without plows was .59 acre (stdev=.45) (.24 ha [stdev=.18]). These newly compiled data are used to generate a model of nuclear family household economy and minimal and maximal garden sizes given different levels of maize productivity and consumption. Population estimates made on the basis of previous assessments of high rates of resource productivity will need to be reevaluated.