Story Behind 3 Sisters

[Aleshia Ducharme]

Ihave to be honest. I had no idea who the three sisters were and what their importance was. Or how it was connected to Thanksgiving until just recently when I came across it on social media. My interest was sparked and so here I am researching what this relationship is all about.

Corn, beans and squash were among the first important crops for early settlers. By the re-telling of the story and this way of planting as well as the legacy was passed down from generation to generation. This process of planting did much for the health of the crop. Corn provided a physical pole for the bean vines to cling to. The beans (as legumes) host bacteria on their roots that help increase the nitrogen levels of the soil around the plants roots and fertility of the soil would then increase. The bean vines would actually strengthen and stabilize the tall corn plants. Nearer to the ground the squash vines created natural shading and helped to hold moisture in the soil and also prevented weeds from taking over beneath the corn and beans. I am amazed to see how the early farmers knew the importance of all of the components of planting and not just the end result of a crop. They worked diligently to protect the soil so that a good crop would be maintained for years to come.

These three crops also helped provide Native Americans with a nutritionally balanced diet. The corn provided quick energy in the form of carbohydrates. The beans were rich in protein. And the squash helped supplement the diet with vitamins from the fruit and oils from the seeds.

Corn, squash and beans are all native to the Americas and have been cultivated for thousands of years. This trio helped keep soils healthy and it helped keep the Native Americans healthy. When early settlers landed and pushed west these three crops were quickly adopted into cultivation practices. The bounty of fall harvest surely included these and now, hundreds of years later, they are still served on the table as part of our Thanksgiving dinner menus.

The intercropping method of planting corn, beans, and squash together, commonly called The Three Sisters has been studied and described by scholars in anthropology, history, agriculture, and food studies for many years. While this practice is often cited in current sources as a way to improve small gardens for individual use, its historical value lay in larger-scale implementations designed to nurture and sustain entire communities.

The great majority of this research has been created by scholars who were not members of the Indigenous communities which originally developed and maintained this tradition. Thus, this short review will strive to elevate Indigenous authors and practitioners whenever possible, while acknowledging the bulk of the available publications originate from work that did not center their voices.

To the Iroquois people, corn, beans, and squash are the Three Sisters, the physical and spiritual sustainers of life. These life-supporting plants were given to the people when all three miraculously sprouted from the body of Sky Woman's daughter, granting the gift of agriculture to the Iroquois nations.

Among the Senecas, in planting corn the seeds of the squash and bean were sown in every seventh hill because it was thought that the sprits of these three plants were inseparable. They were called Diohe'ko, these sustain us. In the Green Corn Thanksgiving the leader rises and says, 'Diettino'nio dioke'ko, we give thanks to our sustainers.'

Certain woman banded themselves together in a society called the Tonwisas or Towisas Oa'no. The propitiated the spirits of the three sisters by certain ceremonies. In their ceremonial march, Wenuntonwisas, the leader holding an armful of corn and a cake of corn bread leads her band in a measured march about a kettle of corn soup about a kettle of corn soup. p. 27

The technique for planting the Three Sisters spread from Mesoamerica northward over many generations, eventually becoming widespread throughout North America. Indigenous farmers saved the best seeds for the following season, resulting in a wide variety of cultivars perfectly suited for the environments in which they were grown. Much of this diversity was sadly lost as indigenous nations were forced out of their ancestral lands by early European settlers and mainstream agricultural practices took hold.

In the area that is now considered northern New York, the Haudenosaunee made great use of companion planting and the Three Sisters were an important part of their diet. Known as the Iroquois by the French and the Six Nations by the British, the Haudenosaunee existed as a matrilineal democratic form of government in North America long before European incursion. The Haudenosaunee considered the Three Sisters to be divine gifts. Some versions of their legends involve the crops personified as three women who separate from each other only to find out that they are stronger together.

The Iroquois agricultural system was based on the hill-planting method. Iroquois women, who were responsible for farming, placed several kernels of corn in a hole. As the small seedlings began to grow, the farmers returned periodically to mound the soil around the young plants, ultimately creating a hill one foot high and two feet wide. The hills were arranged in rows about one step apart.

Iroquois women mixed their crops, using a system called "interplanting." Two or three weeks after the corn was planted, the women returned to plant bean seeds in the same hills. The beans contributed nitrogen to the soil, and the cornstalks served as bean poles. Between the rows, the farmers cultivated a low-growing crop such as squash or pumpkins, the leaves of which shaded the ground, preserving moisture and inhibiting weed growth.

Some Indigenous Peoples of the Americas planted corn, beans and squash or pumpkins together in mounds, in an intercropping complex known to some as the Three Sisters. Corn provided support for beans, beans provided nitrogen through nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria that live on the roots, and squash and pumpkins provided ground cover to suppress weeds and inhibit evaporation from the soil. While the origins of the Three Sisters complex are unknown, veneration of the Three Sisters appears in the earliest accounts of European explorers and missionaries in North America. As described by Lewandowski, from its earliest appearance in written records, the Three Sisters complex was not simply an agricultural strategy or technology, but a cultural complex, complete with stories, ceremonies, technology, customs and etiquette.

Archaeological evidence dates the adoption of the Three Sisters complex in North America to 1070 AD. The complex was adapted to local conditions over the 500 years before contact with Europeans, so much so that it was the dominant food plant association of every nation practising agriculture in the northeast USA as well as in several other parts of North America, including southern regions of Quebec and Ontario, Canada. The Indigenous Peoples practising Three Sisters agriculture in the northeastern USA and southeastern Canada included those from at least fifteen nations. p, 2

Hart, J.P. (2007). Evolving the Three Sisters: The changing histories of maize, bean, and squash in New York and the greater northeast. In Hart, J.P. (Ed.), Current northeast paleoethnobotany II. New York State Museum Bulletin Series, 512. Albany, NY: The New York State Education Department.

For centuries, many Native American tribes throughout North America have cultivated corn, beans, and squash. The term 'Three Sisters' was primarily used by the Iroquois who live in the Northeastern United States and Canada. These crops were considered to be special gifts from Great Spirit and were believed to be protected by the Three Sisters-spirits collectively called the De-o-ha-ko, meaning 'our sustainers' or 'those who support us' (Eames-Sheavly, 1993).

This ancient style of companion planting has played a key role in the survival of all people in North America. Grown together, these plants are able to thrive and provide high-yield, high-quality crops with a minimal environmental impact. Corn, beans, and squash have a unique symbiotic relationship in a Native American garden. Corn offers a structure for the beans to climb. The beans, in turn, help to replenish the soil with nutrients. And the large leaves of squash and pumpkin vines provide living mulch that conserves water and provides weed control.

Intercropping is an all-encompassing term for the practice of growing two or more crops in close proximity: in the same row or bed, or in rows or strips that are close enough for biological interaction. Mixed cropping, companion planting, relay cropping, interseeding, overseeding, underseeding, smother cropping, planting polycultures, and using living mulch are all forms of intercropping.

The milpa system is the classic example of an efficient multi/mixed-cropping system, which tends to be more productive and efficient in use of light, nutrients and water than monocrop systems, given its internal dynamics of complementarity, competition and facilitation. For example, the mechanisms of interspecific root interactions where maize root exudates promote nodulation of the faba bean, making maize-faba intercrops more efficient than their monocrops have been described.

Intercropping of legumes and cereals is an old practice in tropical agriculture that time back to ancient civilization. Snaydon and Harris (1979) found legume-cereal is the most popular intercropping system in the tropics. Systems that intercrop maize with a legume are able to reduce the amount of nutrients taken from the soil as compared to a maize monocrop, p. 139.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture published several materials at the start of the twentieth century to relevant to Indigenous agriculture and the techniques related to Three Sisters' gardening. Here is a sample of these publications.

This publication is a summary of the records of food plants used by the Indians of the United States and Canada which have appeared in ethnobotanical publications during a period of nearly 80 years. This compilation, for which all accessible literature has been searched, was drawn up as a preliminary to work by the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils on the chemical constituents and food value of native North American plants. In a compilation of this sort, in which it is impossible to authenticate most of the botanical identifications because of the unavailability of the specimens on which they were based, occasional errors are unavoidable. All the botanical names given have been reviewed in the light of our present knowledge of plant distribution, however, and it is believed that obvious errors of identification have been eliminated. The list finds its justification as a convenient summary of the extensive literature and is to be used subject to confirmation and correction. In every instance brief references are made to the original authorities for the information cited.

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