Rethinking Indigenous Agriculture in Pre-Columbian North America

Many scholars have claimed that indigenous farmers in North America were shifting cultivators who produced marginal yields and often sowed the seeds of their own downfall through their negative impacts on the environment.  I use an agronomic analysis to deconstruct this argument, focusing on agronomic characteristics that shape cropping systems. I conclude that indigenous cropping systems were mostly permanent and intensive, rather than fallow-based.  Furthermore, this agriculture, primarily maize–based was highly productive and stable, with little negative impact on the environment, because indigenous farmers had access to fertile soils and because they didn’t use plows.