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Most people believe that the early pioneer homesteaders, the Selkirk settlers, were Manitoba's first farmers. However, several centuries before the arrival of the Selkirk settlers, the land was already being worked by Aboriginal or First Nations peoples in various parts of Manitoba. The presentation of Manitoba's history has not generally shown Native peoples as farmers; instead, they have been portrayed as nomadic wanderers who resisted the efforts of well-intentioned Europeans who tried to induce them to take up farming and become "civilized". In Lost Harvests: Prairie Indian Reserve Farmers and Government Policy, Sarah Carter (1993) has documented in detail how representatives from Indian Affairs first introduced farming to Aboriginal groups, usually at the request of the Native peoples after they had been relocated to reserves, and then proceeded to set up a series of rules which made farming on the reserves an activity destined to fail. There is, however, well documented evidence for Postcontact maize (corn) horticulture in Manitoba prior to the movement of Aboriginal peoples to reserves. Moodie and Kaye (1969) discuss some of the early accounts of corn growing in Manitoba. They state that the first mention of Native corn horticulture north of the Middle Missouri is made by Henry Schoolcraft in 1805, when he observed the Netley Creek Natives growing corn and potatoes. Later, in 1821, these same people were reputed to have provided the Selkirk settlers with seed. Moodie and Kaye (1969) also report that the Netley Creek Odawas were well aware of the practice of maize growing but did not grow it themselves until they were given the seed in 1805. Following this, garden plots were placed in strategic provisioning locations and, by the 1850's, they had added beans and even melons to their inventory. The practice of gardening quickly caught on with other Woodland Native groups spurred by the demand for provisions by traders This example from the fur trade period is the most frequently cited example of the earliest known Native farming in Manitoba. But what of the Precontact period, the vast period of time prior to the fur trade and homestead eras? For information from this period we must turn to the archaeological record and to early historic observations on Native peoples to the south, particularly in the area around the Mississippi and Missouri rivers in what is now the Dakotas and Minnesota. Archaeologists have documented a long tradition of plant domestication and crop harvesting among the Aboriginal people of North, Central and South America. Corn, one of our own modern staples, was first domesticated in the highlands of Mexico approximately 7000 years ago. This highly adaptable plant was rapidly bred to produce a wide variety of strains which were eventually grown throughout much of Central and North America. Other domesticated crops include a variety of beans and gourds, tobacco, sunflowers, potatoes and numerous indigenous seedy plants such as chenopodium and amaranth. In fact, one of the ironies of modern farming is the effort that is currently invested in eradicating "weeds," many of which were either domesticated or heavily utilized by Precontact Aboriginal groups and are particularly well-suited to colonizing recently disturbed land. --Introduction
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