Looking for information on Wampanoag & NE Native varieties

[alongshore]

Hello I just joined up this morning and added some info in the welcome section.

I'm on Cape Cod in MA and was wondering if anyone here has any information about Wampanoag and Native people's seed from New England?  Most of my research leads to Three Sisters but does not name any varieties - you see acorn squash, pole beans, sunflowers and corn, but nothing mentioned of a variety. I've also contacted the Wampanoag Tribe here and the only info they have is Native Seed Search (which I have seed from I'm planting this year but most of it is SW Native seed) and the USDA NRCS Seed conservancy which to be honest I'm not sure how to navigate to find any seed for garden use.

I'm starting a seed sharing coop here and would like to incorporate some of these seeds for interest as well as bringing them into some landrace stuff.

So far I have these seeds for this part of my seed saving project: A Succotash pole bean from Narragansett Indian tribe of Rhode Island and a Mayflower pole bean that was supposedly grown around here.

I'm growing out other varieties outside of this project for resilience but I'm really interested in growing this collection for sharing.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[alongshore]

Thanks for the information and food for thought William, this is really helpful.

[coppice]

I looked for several years for NE OP and heirloom seeds. I expect you will need to widen your search to OP-heirloom seed that are cold tolerant.

I just could not find a trail of bread crumbs to being me home.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

The only corn I know of from that region would be Seneca red stalker corn, from the Seneca tribe.

[alongshore]

Feb 20, 2019 11:27:12 GMT -5 coppice said:

I looked for several years for NE OP and heirloom seeds. I expect you will need to widen your search to OP-heirloom seed that are cold tolerant.

I just could not find a trail of bread crumbs to being me home.

Thanks for posting.

Solstice Seeds has a been a good source for me for some good New England Heirlooms as well as FEDCO. I got a bunch of seed back when Sylvia was running SS and I'm sure its in good hands now.  www.solsticeseeds.org

[alongshore]

Feb 20, 2019 11:37:23 GMT -5 keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) said:

The only corn I know of from that region would be Seneca red stalker corn, from the Seneca tribe.

King Philip Corn is supposed to be a Wampanoag variety but I just can't grow corn here b/c of critters. I've been looking at Joseph Lofthouse's Landrace corns that are resistant to critters, but will go down that path once I get my beans and squash in a good place.

www.slowfoodusa.org/ark-item/king-philip-corn

[nathanp]

You can probably find sources for Narragansett White Cap Flint, which is still grown in some parts of RI.

link

You might find some interesting things from Sandhill Preservation.
Sandhill

My understanding of Three Sisters in New England is essentially that they did not grow that way here. They grew all three crops, but not necessarily interplanted like they did further west. My great grandfather did always grow corn in hills, so some of the practices were probably similar, even if not what is normally thought of as 'Three Sisters'.

Corn grown by Native Americans in the Northeast US would have been flint types, not any other types.

[alongshore]

Thanks for the post. I like Sand Hill a lot, I’ve ordered a lot of tomatoes from them but will check out the bean and squash selections.

I’ve done the traditional three sisters but I prefer to grow stuff out in rows these days or interplanted in my forest garden.

Thanks for the tip about Long Island Seeds. Do you guys have other seed resources that have unstable heirlooms and such?

I’ve also contacted the Plymouth Plantation hoping there might be a seed nerd somewhere on staff 😀

[alongshore]

I talked to someone at Plimouth Plantation and looks like this seed company from NY is going to be stocking their store with some heirlooms for gardeners harvesting-history.com - they have alot of standard varieties and looks like they are a division of Page Seed from Upstate New York. They have a couple NE Heirloom squashes that could be interesting under pumpkins - Boston Marrow & Cushaw Striped.

Anyone grow anything from them?

[blueadzuki]

Sandhill has Seneca Blue Bear Dance Corn which is supposedly native.

This site seems to have some NE natives

link

[alongshore]

Thank you blueadzuki, there are some really interesting varieties there.

[ferdzy]

A little further north than what you are looking for, but I know Soldier beans were associated with the Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Abenaki and Penobscot groups (the Wabaniki confederacy). If you are interested in heirlooms from that group, Hope seeds in Nova Scotia has a few things.

www.hopeseed.com/home

I got a bean from oxbowfarm a few years back, Octarora Cornfield. It's a small, dry pole (corn) bean with beige and brown mottling. In spite of the small size of the beans individually I found it as productive as anything else, in terms of volume produced. If he's around maybe he could tell you more about it.

[diane]

A snippet from Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation by Gary Paul Nabhan:

As late as 1908, the Iroquois nations of upstate New York were growing no less than sixty varieties of beans, including Cornstalk, Wild Goose, Marrowfat, Hummingbird, Wampum, plus Kidneys and Cranberries of several colors. Their seasonal festivals included a Green Bean Ceremony.

Today the Green Bean Ceremony is but a memory, and most of the sixty Iroquois beans are gone. Gone too are most of the 260 other kinds of common beans found on the thousands of small farms which once dotted New York.

==================================
He also mentions John Withee who collected beans, but there is a lot of information about him online so I won't copy any here.

[alongshore]

Thanks alot for the information Diane.

I ended up finding some interesting bean varieties from greatlakesstapleseeds.com for Iroquois Natives to Abenaki Natives (Maine) which is going to be a good start to my collection.

And someone above (blueadzuki) had mentioned lenoyau.com/ which had some really cool varieties but the shipping was super expensive for me, maybe next year.

[macmex]

Here's a fascinating link on John Withee, who started out collecting beans in New England. Someone already mentioned him. I'm sure Wanigan Associates had some beans from the area you're interested in.

www.seedsavers.org/withee-exhibit-bean-man

Boston Marrow is a c. maxima. As I understand it, the c. maximas were brought into that area in the 1800s. So that's probably not going to be of interest to you. Yellow Crookneck summer squash, and the jack O'Lantern type pumpkins are original to that region. I remember hearing how the survivors of the first New England settlement ate so many of the orange type pumpkins that it took generations for them to shake off the idea that those were the best, when in fact, there were other squash of higher quality.