Squatting near the large prepared garden plot, Shawnee Farmer Ryan Conway is instructing a volunteer.
“After you put her (the corn kernel) in the ground, then you take the stick again, and you just lean it like this. You find your next spot.”
A short thick stick is used to both punch the hole in the ground for the seed, and measure the distance to the next kernel.
Conway and his wife Andrea are demonstrating a traditional corn-planting technique that happened at this spot 600 years ago.
This was by the Mississippian native people between 1100 and 1425 CE.
The type of agriculture was identified with ground-penetrating radar and precision excavation by a team of archaeologists from Indiana University (IU), led by Dr. Ed Herrmann.
“The agricultural system Here at Angel mounds was a ridge and furrow based system,” said Conway. He’s an indigenous studies research associate at the IU Institute for Indigenous Knowledge.
“So it wasn't like a mounded Hill for corns, beans and squash. It was a system of high ridges and low furrows,” Conway said, adding that the furrows help prevent erosion, and catch water to feed the crops.
The plot is about 30 by 40 feet, and planned based on the IU research.
“… and so part of what we're doing here today is working up a living demonstration of that most cutting edge research, so that folks that come here to visit Angel mounds can see with more detail what kind of agriculture was being practiced here on site.”
They fill and haul buckets with dark wet compost to the front of the hand-dug rows for planting.
Andrea said because this spot used to be a farm, the soil is now mostly clay, devoid of nutrients, so the compost is very important.
“So that will add nutrition to the soil, but also it helps with the organic matter,” she said, spreading the compost with her bare hands. “It helps retain any nutrients that are in the soil. So we're just adding a little layer of compost, and then we're putting the seed into it right below it.”
Joaquin Rangel of the Navaho is volunteering. He feels that anyone — native or non-native — can learn from such demonstrations about the people who lived here centuries ago.
“They lived the way they did, they ate the way they did, because they were more part of their environment and saw themselves kind of connected in it all. And I think that's something that anyone can learn from and return to,” Rangeo said. “I think it's important to get that connection back when we see ourselves so separated from nature and our food sources even like what we had before.”
Conway feels it’s something people call all get back to. “It's something that's very much a part of all of us, like our food ways are what sustain us, and practicing agriculture in this way is a way that also clearly brings people together.”
In the muddy compost, they planted more than 1,000 corn kernels, which will be popping up in a couple weeks and could be harvested in September.
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