Iroquoian, Siouan, and Caddoan

Iroquoian and Siouan, in particular, have clear histories of spread that could very likely have commenced within the Early Woodland cultures of the Eastern region of seed crop agriculture. Neither had maize terms in their protolanguages, although the less diverse and younger Caddoan most probably did (Rankin n.d.; Mithun 1984).

Ethnographically, and in late prehistoric archaeology, the Iroquoians of the northeastern states of the USA (parts of New York, southern Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) were intensive farmers of maize, beans, and squash, living in palisaded villages of long timber houses. They had a complex political structure with tribal councils, multi-tribal confederations, and matrilineal inheritance of ranked chiefly titles (Snow 1994). The assumption of most archaeologists and linguists is that the Iroquoians conquered a territorial wedge through the eastern Algonquians, commencing around AD 700 according to Fiedel (1991), although Foster (1996:99-101) prefers the reverse scenario of an Algonquian movement around an Iroquoian wedge already in place.

As with the other Eastern Woodlands families, linguistic reconstruction rules out an early economy of maize cultivation for the Iroquoians. Marianne Mithun (1984) dated Proto-Iroquoian to about 2000 BC, and regarded the separation of Cherokee in the southern Appalachians as the first identifiable phylogenetic division. Between Cherokee and the Northern Iroquoian languages there is a substantial geographical gap with no coherent linguistic information - whether the Iroquoian languages once occupied a single large territory is uncertain. Mithun states that the Proto-lroquoians did not have agriculture, but this brings up the problem mentioned above, that words for the native seed crops do not survive in modern Iroquoian and Siouan languages and so we could never expect to find linguistic witnesses for them anyway. Terms for maize, field, to plant, and pottery reconstruct back as far as Proto-Northern Iroquoian only, a subgroup that Mithun regarded as expanding after 2,000 years ago.

A number of archaeologists have attempted to trace back into prehistory the Northern Iroquoian cultural markers of maize and longhouses. This is a fairly

simple matter going back into the large palisaded longhouse settlements of the Owasco phase, dating from about AD 1300 in New York and Pennsylvania. Beyond this it becomes more difficult, and opinions tend to be based on assumptions of cultural continuity through time. Some researchers, for instance Willey (1958) and Snow (1984), were willing to consider Northern Iroquoian origins in New York and Pennsylvania amongst Early Woodland assemblages of the first millennium Bc. But in his recent papers, Dean Snow (1994, 1995, 1996) favors fairly late Northern Iroquoian expansion, deriving about AD 600 from the Clemson's Island culture of central Pennsylvania, only entering New York State about AD 1150 with the Owasco culture and its immediate antecedents. Here, it replaced an earlier Point Peninsula tradition claimed to be associated with Algonquian speakers.

In Ontario, Gary Warrick (2000) favors a similar appearance of archaeologically recognizable Iroquoians during the Princess Point Phase, after AD 500. The Princess Point lroquoians grew maize, and their Uren Phase descendants at about 1300 underwent very rapid demographic growth, leading to a late pre-European population density stated by Warrick to be akin to that postulated for the contemporary Valley of Mexico. Fifty late prehistoric Iroquoian villages have been excavated in Ontario alone in the past 20 years (Warrick 2000:420). By 1534, the Iroquoian population in the northeastern USA is estimated to have been 100,000 people.

Dean Snow's view of a relatively late northward migration of Iroquoians with maize agriculture obviously fits well with a farming dispersal hypothesis, even though many archaeologists still regard the Iroquoians as a non-migratory population whose ancestors have been indigenously in place since Early Woodland or even Archaic times (Wright 1984; Clermont 1996; Warrick 2000; Hart and Brumbach 2003). The record suggests some initial expansion with seed crop cultivation after 2000 BC, leading to a separation of the Southern and Northern subgroups, followed much later by expansion of the Northern Iroquoians consequent upon the acquisition of maize.

Turning now to Siouan, we find a situation that resembles that for Iroquoian quite closely. This family also has a disjunct distribution, with most Siouan languages occurring west of the Mississippi, apart from isolated Catawba in Carolina, and Tutelo, Ofo, and Biloxi (all extinct) in the Ohio Valley. Linguistically, the origin of the Siouan family is agreed to lie within the eastern

part of its current range, perhaps between the two main areas of distribution that survive today (Rankin n.d.; Foster 1996). Both Rankin and Foster agree on a date around 2000 BC for the break-up of Proto-Siouan, and Rankin suggests that the four major subgroups (Missouri River, Mandan, Mississippi valley, and Ohio valley) were all linguistically separate by 500 BC." He also notes that no agricultural terms can be reconstructed for Proto-Siouan. Maize terms, certainly, arrived in the Siouan vocabulary well after the Proto-Siouan stage.

In terms of the archaeological record, it looks as if the early Siouan languages, like early Iroquoian and Algonquian, arose within the general area of native Eastern Woodlands seed crop domestication. By 500 BC, some Siouan languages had already been carried across the Mississippi River into the Missouri Basin, where reported occurrences of the native Eastern Woodlands crops (chenopod, amaranth, squash, and sumpweed) date to as early as 2,000 years ago in Nebraska and Kansas (Kansas City Hopewell, Middle Woodland Phase; Adair 1988, 1994; Snow 1996:166). Maize occurs in this region as early as AD 200 in the Trowbridge site near Kansas City, together with squash and sumpweed (Iva annua), but it did not become common until the late first millennium AD. Indeed, numerous sources agree that the intensive spread of maize farming and large villages on to the eastern plains occurred only between AD 700 and 1000.

Archaeologically, it is of course impossible to decide just when Siouan populations moved west of the Mississippi - whether in 500 Bc or AD 1000. Wedel (1983) favored the later date as far as the eastern plains were concerned, but this does not rule out a much earlier presence along the Mississippi River itself. O'Brien and Wood (1998:345) suggest a date of about AD 900 for Siouan movement into Missouri, during the Oneota Phase. Such late chronologies would be supported by the ethnographic focus on maize cultivation recorded for most Siouan speakers, apart from the Crow on the western short grass plains who switched in the 19th century to bison hunting on horseback. The Mandan of Dakota in particular constructed very large palisaded villages in late prehistory, supported by farming of maize, beans, squash, sunflower, and tobacco.

But such a late chronology is not supported by the linguistic observation that the major subgroups of Siouan were already separating by 500 Bc. Admittedly, linguistic dates are very imprecise, but my inclination is to suggest that the

initial phases of Siouan expansion occurred during the Woodland Period with its focus on native seed crops (see pages 176-7), and that considerable later expansion, especially in a westerly direction, might have occurred consequent upon the adoption of maize farming by AD 1000. The first stage of Siouan expansion could thus be represented somewhere within the widespread shared iconography of the Adena and Hopewell Phases, whereas the later maizerelated spread could be reflected in the "sameness and uniformity" of material culture noted by Linda Cordell and Bruce Smith (1996:259) in the Late Woodland Phase between AD 400 and 800.

Our final language family, Caddoan, appears to be only about 2,000 years old (like Muskogean; Campbell 1997), although Foster (1996) dates Proto-Caddoan much earlier, to 1500-1300 BC. The Caddoans (who include the Arikara, Pawnee, and Wichita) are all agriculturalists, and Perttula (1996) dates the appearance of a distinctive Caddoan archaeological tradition to about AD 800, with earthen ceremonial mounds and maize cultivation. In the absence of any very informative debate on Caddoan linguistic prehistory I can only suggest that it might represent a fairly late prehistoric maize-related spread, like Muskogean.

Having run the gamut of the Eastern Woodlands language families, we can now take stock (Figure 10.13). This region does not have the clarity of evidence in support of farming dispersal that occurs in some other parts of the world, in part because of fragmentary language survival, and in part because the vocabulary relevant for the native seed crops has not been preserved. The Algonquian, Iroquoian, and Siouan families present some shadowy evidence for an initial generation and dispersal history set within the phases of population growth represented by the Adena and Hopewell Traditions of the first millennium Be, dispersals assisted perhaps by increasing reliance on indigenous forms of plant cultivation. In distributional terms, Siouan might fit such an Adena-Hopewell origin more strongly than Algonquian or Iroquoian, but this can only be surmise given the disjointed distributions of these language families. The arrival of maize agriculture then set off further expansion, especially of the Northern Iroquoians and the western Siouans, and perhaps also gave rise to the eventual expansions of the Muskogeans and Caddoans. Perhaps this is as far as we can go in establishing the merits of a farming dispersal hypothesis for the Eastern Woodlands. But I would add that the overall pattern of overlap between language family homelands and agricultural homelands

does seem to work almost as well in the Eastern Woodlands as it does in Mesoamerica, the Middle East, China, or West Africa. Whether my readership will agree is for the future to decide.