Ancestral Fields: Pokanoket Agriculture, the Three Sisters, and Ecological Wisdom
Discover the sophisticated and sustainable agricultural practices of the Pokanoket people, from the "Three Sisters" to their lunar calendar. Learn how their ancestral wisdom offers powerful lessons for today's climate challenges.
The Pokanoket people of southern New England practiced an intricate and sustainable form of agriculture rooted in both ecological knowledge and ceremonial tradition. At the heart of their agricultural system was the cultivation of corn, beans, and squash, revered as the “Three Sisters.” This interdependent polycultural method reflected a deep understanding of natural systems. Corn provided vertical support for climbing beans, beans replenished nitrogen in the soil, and squash served as a living mulch, conserving moisture and suppressing weeds.(1)
Beyond these staple crops, Pokanoket agriculturalists engaged in field rotation and controlled slash-and-burn techniques to maintain long-term soil fertility. Rather than permanent monocrop fields, they cultivated semi-permanent clearings within the forest, allowing fallow fields to regenerate naturally. Through low intensity burning, they cleared underbrush and returned nutrients such as calcium and potassium to the soil, stimulating the germination of native plants and preventing the buildup of pathogens.(2) These techniques, far from being destructive, reflected a regenerative relationship with their surrounding ecosystem.
The cultivation calendar was governed by a thirteen moon lunar cycle, which coordinated agricultural activities with seasonal shifts, animal migrations, and celestial patterns.(3) Each moon corresponded to a specific ecological phenomenon, guiding planting, tending, and harvesting. More than a tool of timekeeping, the calendar encoded a ceremonial structure that intertwined agriculture with governance and kinship.(4)
Pokanoket women were the principal agriculturalists, seed-keepers, and ecological stewards.(5) Their responsibilities extended beyond planting and harvesting to include the preservation of ancestral seed stock, the interpretation of lunar signs, and the transmission of ecological knowledge. As Lisa Brooks writes, Indigenous calendars were “repositories of environmental teachings,” shaping how communities engaged with the land.(6) Robin Wall Kimmerer likewise emphasizes that Indigenous agriculture “is not just about food, but about culture, ceremony, and connection.”(7)
This holistic system allowed the Pokanoket to sustain thickly populated, semi-sedentary settlements across present-day Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.(8) Contrary to colonial portrayals of “untamed” land, these landscapes were mosaics of cultivated fields, orchards, estuarine gardens, and forest-managed clearings. Slash-and-burn cycles and crop rotation protected the soil from exhaustion, while the Three Sisters embodied a model of agricultural reciprocity.
The very name Pokanoket means “The Cleared Land”, a reference to these carefully tended spaces of abundance shaped by fire, farming, and forest stewardship.(9) These practices, long dismissed by colonists as “primitive” or “inefficient,” are now recognized by ecologists and sustainability experts as models of resilient, regenerative agriculture. Contemporary scientists affirm that Indigenous techniques like polyculture, controlled burning, and field rotation enhance biodiversity, restore soil health, and reduce ecological risk.(10) In a time of climate disruption, their ancestral knowledge offers a powerful lesson. Care for the land as an extension of yourself, and it will care for you in return.
References
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 128–132.
Melissa K. Nelson, ed., Original Instructions: Indigenous Teachings for a Sustainable Future (Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2008), 185–188; William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (1992): 369–385.
Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 144–145.
Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 41–43.
Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 116–118.
Brooks, Our Beloved Kin, 42.
Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 133.
Elizabeth Chilton, “Towns They Have None: Diverse Subsistence and Settlement Strategies in Native New England,” The Archaeological Northeast, ed. Mary Ann Levine et al. (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1999), 288–292.
Frank G. Speck, The Pokanoket Tribe and the Land of Sowams (Providence: Brown University, 1915), 12; William Simmons, “Cultural Bias in the New England Puritans’ Perception of Indian Agriculture,” American Antiquity 48, no. 4 (1983): 605–607.
Rinku Roy Chowdhury and Harini Nagendra, “Sustainability and Indigenous Agricultural Knowledge,” Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 22 (2016): 77–84.
