Mohican Hunting and Farming

In their traditional life, the Mohican men did the fishing and hunting and the women tended the gardens. In the spring great shoals of herring and shad passed up the rivers to their spawning beds. Large numbers were captured in weirs and from dugouts and bark canoes by spearing and netting. Fresh‐water mussels were gathered in the shallows of rivers and ponds. Most of the fish and mussels were dried and smoked at the hunting camps and saved for winter food. Big game and water fowl were also hunted and the meat preserved.

Vegetable gardens were laid out near the villages in the river valleys. Trees were girdled and burned and maize, squash, bens and sunflowers were planted between the stumps. The gardens were small but intensively intercropped and productive. While the crops were growing, the women and children gathered groundnuts, berries and other forest foods and snared small game such as rabbits and woodchucks near the villages. A major source of food was the huge flocks of passenger pigeons whose arrival in the spring heralded the end of winter food shortages.

In late August most of the men returned from the hunting and fishing camps to assist with the harvest and take part in the Green Corn ceremonies. With dances, songs, and feasting, they gave thanks to the three Life‐giving Sisters (corn, beans and squash). The harvest was carefully stored in pits lined with grass or bark. There were other ceremonies associated with the gifts of nature: the First Fruits ceremony (Strawberry Moon festival) celebrated the ripening of wild strawberries, the Deer Sacrifice took place after organized drives in the fall had brought in an abundance of venison and occasioned a time of feasting. There were a number of harvest ceremonies.

In November the villages were almost deserted as family groups moved out to their individual hunting territories in the low hills; apparently there was little game in the higher mountains.

Each hunter, through dreams, prayers and fasting, sought the assistance of a Guardian Spirit to advise him and bring him success in the chase.

At midwinter the families again returned to the villages for the Bear Sacrifice and other ceremonies marking the time of the solstice. They shared their resources and began to draw on the stored vegetables and cured meat that had been prepared for this time. There was socializing and courtship, but also anxiety, for the food supplies dwindled fast and the Hunger Moon was approaching. In March the hunters went out on snowshoes hoping to catch moose in the deep snow. In addition to the meat provided by these huge animals, the thick hide was prized for winter moccasins and the big bones yielded marrow for nourishing soup.

Also in March came the first breaks in the cold weather and the rising of sap in the maples. Now the families moved up to their sugar camp on the hillsides and the stem of boiling sap began to rise everywhere. As long as the supply lasted the people flavored everything they ate with syrup or sugar. With spring, the yearly round began again with the arrival of the geese and ducks and, soon after, the millions of passenger pigeons.

Scholar Lucianne Lavin disagrees with some of this essay, and expands on other aspects: But Horticulture did not occur until ca. AD 950. Prior to that time communities fished, hunted and foraged a wide variety of plants and animals. Much of the foods were plant foods collected by women, esp. tubers and nut products.

Gardens were not necessarily small, she said, as the Indians regularly traded maize to the white for many years. The maize fields had to have been large enough to support both Indians and the white trade.

McAllester deals with fishing in another essay. Lavin says: “Fishing camps for anadromous fish ended much earlier than August, more like May at the latest, and they would not have been far away. Also, families went to those camps together. There was some long‐distance hunting by men but unlikely in summer. According to the Moravian documents, not all men from the village went together, just small groups at different times. Also, according to early English chroniclers, many of the meat animals were trapped; deer round ups occurred in fall. The implication that men were away from the village long term is inaccurate.”

And, “Actually, just about everyone in the community had a spirit guardian, not just hunters, gotten through vision quests, puberty ceremonies, etc.”

SOURCES

— David P. McAllester (1916‐2006), a one‐sixty‐fourth Narragansett, was a Navaho scholar and professor of anthropology and music at Wesleyan University. Living in Monterey, Mass., he wrote Indian Notes for the monthly Monterey News from 1981 to 1994. This essay originally appeared in the newsletter January 1984.