Precolonial farmers thrived in one of North America's coldest places

Ancestral Menominee people in what’s now northern Michigan grew maize despite harsh conditions



A new lidar survey revealed the largest preserved area of precolonial farm fields in the eastern U.S. on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Raised garden beds once used to cultivate maize and other crops are now partly obscured by trees and ground cover.

M. McLeester

By Bruce Bower

June 5, 2025 at 2:00 pm

A laser eye-in-the-sky has uncovered vast, ancient farm fields in an unlikely place — the frosty forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Ancestors of present-day Menominee people, a federally recognized Native American tribe, grew maize and other crops in densely clustered earthen ridges from around 1,000 to 400 years ago, researchers report in the June 5 Science.

After clearing trees from large tracts of land, mobile communities accomplished this agricultural feat in the face of cold temperatures unfriendly to maize cultivation, a short growing season and poor soil conditions, say archaeologist Madeleine McLeester and colleagues.

“What is likely based on this new finding, from an area where we would not expect intensive agriculture, is that much of the eastern U.S. was once covered in Native American agricultural ridges,” says McLeester, of Dartmouth College.

A drone-mounted lidar, or light detection and ranging, device peered through trees and ground cover at Michigan’s Sixty Islands archaeological site to reveal the largest preserved system of agricultural fields in the eastern United States. Precolonial agricultural ridges covered a total of at least 2 square kilometers along a river that now separates Michigan from Wisconsin, McLeester estimates.

More:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/menominiee-farmers-north-america-maize