The Agrarian Village World of the Ohio Valley Indians

2018 ◽  
pp. 13-66
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Cropping System ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Food Sources ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Vegetable Gardens ◽  
Continuous Cropping System ◽  
High Yields ◽  
Fruit Orchards ◽  
Trading Network

Explores Indian women’s involvement in environmentally shaping the agrarian landscape of the almost-thousand-mile-long Ohio River valley. Women planted their crops in riverway bottomlands and produced a surplus food supply that encouraged trade with nearby and distant villages. An extensive trading network preceded European arrival. Extensive cornfields, bountiful vegetable gardens, and fruit orchards characterized Indian villages along the Ohio’s tributary rivers. Indigenous women developed a stable, continuous cropping system that maintained the organic matter in the soils by not plowing, and this provided long-range village stability. Environmental abundance in the Ohio River valley sustained high population levels. Rivers and streams teemed with more than a hundred varieties of fish; lakes abounded with wildlife and 250 species of mussels. Villages were strategically located within landscape niches that ensured sedentism and increased village size. These niches, or openings, provided access to adjacent, fertile fields, rich wetlands with nutritional plants, and forests that supplied meat and furs. Numerous bison, elk, and deer herds populated the region. Wetlands food sources were breadbaskets, and even small wetland patches produced high yields of food resources.

The Evolution of the Indian Fur Trade

2018 ◽  
pp. 67-104
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Green Bay ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Western Great Lakes ◽  
Trading Network

Green Bay was an early center of a precontact Indian trading network that stretched throughout the western Great Lakes. In the mid-seventeenth century, large numbers of Indian households were drawn to Green Bay from the Ohio River valley to trade with recently arrived French traders. Many Ohio Indians, especially the Miami, sent households to Green Bay to secure access to the manufactured trade goods available from the French. Movement was often voluntary, and not all Indians were driven west to seek refuge from the Iroquois. A brisk beaver trade led to an oversupply of furs in French warehouses, and Versailles reacted by closing the western trade. Without access to European goods, Indians returned to the Ohio River valley, where they began trading with the English and rapidly assumed control of the fur trade. For more than twenty years, the French trade remained closed, and the numerous Frenchmen who remained took up residence in Indian households, often marrying Indian women “in the manner of the country.” The fur trade ban encouraged Indian resettlement in the Ohio River valley, where Indians had access to highly desirable furs in the Black Swamp, The ban on the western trade refocused the fur trade to a region little explored by the French and controlled by Indians.

scholarly journals Stewart's Wilt Reactions of an International Collection of Zea mays Germ Plasm Inoculated with Erwinia stewartii

Plant Disease ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 84 (8) ◽  
pp. 901-906 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerald K. Pataky ◽  
Lindsey J. du Toit ◽  
Noah D. Freeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Germ Plasm ◽  
Sweet Corn ◽  
The United States ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Stewart's Wilt

Maize accessions were evaluated in 1997, 1998, and 1999 to identify additional sources of Stewart's wilt resistance and to determine if reactions differed among accessions collected from various regions of the United States and throughout the world. The distributions of Stewart's wilt reactions rated from 1 (no appreciable spread of symptoms) to 9 (dead plants) were relatively similar among groups of accessions from all regions of the world except for those from the Mid-Atlantic/Ohio River Valley region of the United States, the southern United States, and the northeastern United States. The mean and median Stewart's wilt rating for 1,991 accessions evaluated in 1997 was 4. The mean Stewart's wilt rating for 245 accessions collected from the Mid-Atlantic/Ohio River Valley region was 3.1, which was significantly lower than that for accessions from all other regions. The mean rating for accessions from the southern United States was 3.7, which also was lower than mean ratings for accessions from all other regions. Ratings from trials in 1997 and 1998 were highly correlated (r = 0.87) for 292 accessions and 15 sweet corn hybrid checks evaluated in both years. Of 20 accessions rated below 2 in 1997 and 1998, seven were from Virginia, seven were from the Ohio River Valley or central Corn Belt of the United States, four were from the northern or western Corn Belt of the United States, and two were from Spain. Ratings for these accessions ranged from 1.7 to 3.1 in 1999. Ratings ranged from 2.6 to 3.7 for F1 hybrids of these accessions crossed with one of two susceptible sweet corn inbreds, CrseW30 or Crse16, which were rated 5.7 and 5.4, respectively. Based on the reactions of this collection of germ plasm, it appears that high levels of Stewart's wilt resistance are prevalent only among accessions collected from areas where the disease has been endemic for several years, whereas moderate levels of resistance can be found in accessions collected from nearly everywhere in the world.

scholarly journals The Hopewell airburst event, 1699-1567 years ago (252-383 CE)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Barnett Tankersley ◽  
Stephen D. Meyers ◽  
Stephanie A. Meyers ◽  
James A. Jordan ◽  
Louis Herzner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Late Holocene ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Catastrophic Event ◽  
Melt Glass

Abstract Meteorites, silicious vesicular melt glass, Fe and Si-rich magnetic spherules, positive Ir and Pt 25 anomalies, and burned charcoal-rich Hopewell habitation surfaces demonstrate that a cosmic airburst event occurred over the Ohio River valley during the late Holocene. A comet-shaped earthwork was constructed near the airburst epicenter. Twenty-nine radiocarbon ages demonstrate that the event occurred between 252 and 383 CE, a time when 69 near-Earth comets were documented. While Hopewell people survived the catastrophic event, it likely contributed to their cultural decline. The Hopewell comet airburst expands our understanding of the frequency and impact of cataclysmic cosmic events on complex human societies.

scholarly journals First Records of Freckled Madtom (Noturus nocturnus) in Ohio, USA

2021 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-55
Author(s):  
Matthew A. Sarver ◽  
Chris O. Yoder
Keyword(s):  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Historical Records ◽  
Eastern Kentucky ◽  
Scioto River ◽  
River Drainages

Two new Ohio localities for the Freckled Madtom (Noturus nocturnus Jordan and Gilbert, 1886) were recently discovered. These are the first, and currently only, Freckled Madtom collected in Ohio waters. A single individual was collected in the Scioto River in Scioto County by the Midwest Biodiversity Institute (MBI) and a previously misidentified specimen was collected in the Ohio River at the Hannibal Locks and Dam by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO). The closest historical records are from the Little Sandy River and Big Sandy River drainages in eastern Kentucky. Other Ohio River collections have been made near the border of Kentucky and Indiana. The origins of the recent Ohio specimens are unknown; whether they emanate from other known populations or have been overlooked altogether is unclear.

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