Were the Ancient Coast Salish Farmers? A Story of Origins

Were the ancient Coast Salish farmers? Conventional anthropological wisdom asserts that the ethnographically known communities of the Northwest Coast of North America were “complex hunter-fisher-gatherers” who lacked any form of concerted plant food cultivation and production. Despite decades of extensive ethnobotanical and paleoethnobotanical study throughout the Pacific Northwest demonstrating the contrary, this “classic anomaly” is still a cornerstone of anthropological and archaeological canons. The recent discovery of a spectacularly preserved wetland wapato (Indian potato, Sagittaria latifolia) garden, built 3,800 years ago in Katzie traditional territory near Vancouver, British Columbia, has helped recast this picture, alongside evidence for other forms of resource management practiced by Northwest Coast peoples. This article examines “origins of agriculture” stories from three distinctive perspectives: Coast Salish Katzie people who cultivated wapato for millennia; settlers who colonized the Fraser River Delta historically, bringing with them their own ideas about what constitutes farming; and archaeologists, who are challenged by these data to reevaluate their own understandings of these cultural constructs. These perspectives have critical bearing on the historical appropriation of lands and waterways by settler communities in British Columbia as well as contemporary questions of sovereignty and stewardship in this region and well beyond.

Nitrogen Dynamics Following Incorporation of 3-Year Old Grassland Set-Asides in the Fraser River Delta of British Columbia

Short-term grassland set-asides (GLSA) have been incorporated into intensive annual crop rotations to improve soil quality. The legacy of the GLSA to subsequent annual crops, however, is not well understood. The objective of this study was to determine the impacts of 3-year-old GLSA on nitrogen (N) dynamics and the yield of the subsequent cash crop. A regional analysis was conducted over two years, utilizing eight production fields transitioning from GLSA, paired with fields in continuous annual crop rotation (ACR) with matching management. A controlled plot-scale experiment was also conducted on a single 3-year-old GLSA, comparing fertilizer types, rates, and timing of incorporation. In each experiment, soils were sampled every 10–14 days for ammonium (NH4+-N) and nitrate (NO3−-N), along with ion probes, installed near the rooting zone to track plant available nitrogen (PAN) throughout the season. The results from the regional analysis are confounding, in 2015 showing that GLSA supplied an additional 18 kg PAN ha−1 compared to ACR but showed no PAN benefits in 2016. The controlled plot-scale experiment highlighted the importance of fertilizer type to subsequent PAN, showing synthetic treatments consistently supplied more PAN than organic. The results from this study suggest that 3-year-old GLSAs can potentially improve PAN to subsequent crops depending on how they are managed.

Short-term effects of grassland set-asides on soil properties in the Fraser River delta of British Columbia

Grassland set-asides (GLSA) in the Fraser River delta are fields that are taken out of crop production and seeded with a mixture of grasses and legumes for 1–4 yr. During this time, the farmer is compensated with a cost-share payment to recover a portion of the financial returns that could have been earned from cash crops. The objectives of this study were to (i) evaluate the effects of GLSA on soil properties during the initial two seasons of enrollment, (ii) determine how GLSA effects differ between fields that were considered productive and unproductive, and (iii) identify soil baseline indicators and preliminary soil thresholds for predicting GLSA vegetation responses. Out of eight fields entering the program, two were considered to be unproductive and exchangeable sodium had the strongest negative relationship to GLSA aboveground biomass (r = −0.61, P = 0.0002). During the second season of GLSA establishment, the mean weight diameter of water-stable soil aggregates was consistently higher in productive GLSAs than paired annual crop rotation (ACR) fields, being 21% higher in April, 14% in July, and 19% in September after crop harvest. After two seasons of GLSA enrollment, both aeration porosity and bulk density were improved by GLSA relative to ACR fields with aeration porosity being 24% greater and bulk density 7% lower in GLSA. The results suggest that GLSA rotations in productive agricultural fields within the Fraser River delta provide an alternative to continued ACR that can improve soil structure and reduce compaction after only two seasons of establishment.