The Indigenous in the Pacific Northwest had no “3 Sisters:” corn, beans, and squash that were farmed for 1,000s of years from Mexico to the St. Lawrence. They also did not farm the potato! This is strange in that for 9,000 years the Incas had mastered this plant for starch, only to
be introduced to the Tlingits by the Russians in the early 1800s. Historical research (rare these days) suggests, the NW Indigenous relied upon the 3 Pour Clair sisters in use: Wapato, Camis, and Oak Acorns. The latter needing dry slopes with use on Whitbey (and other San Juan Islands) and the Nisqually, Chehalis River Valleys. In Northern California oak acorns were the dominant source. Lewis & Clark reported large planting of Wapato in today’s Portland area, with archaeological findings into Southern BC. Tlingit and Haida raids focused on warriors descending on Camas fields and digging until dark to take this carbohydrate North. The probable reason why Indigenous did not grow the 3 Pour Clairs (not to be confused in any way with the 2nd Franciscan nun group that’s helped the poor in so many ways and places), is the same reason the Pacific Northwest was one of the last places on Earth explored. Ocean currents prevented ocean travel along the West Coast in a northerly direction. To understand the difference between the conquering of the Northwest compared to the American Northeast, this quote from Ortez’s History (page 17) says it all: “in 1669, six square mile of cornfields surround each Iroquois Village … we destroyed more than million bushels (fort-two thousand tons of corn belonging to 4 Iroquois villages). Colonists resorted to” feed fighting” (Gremier, URL below). If you wish to starve a people, you must take away their food … or put them on an island in the middle of a river to wash away their dead (or in Puget Sound on Fox Island that used the currents and the tides).
http://www.sackett.net/An-Indigenous-Peoples-History-of-the-United-States-Ortiz.pdf
https://www.historylink.org/file/20999
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs-eegRUtBM
The most likely reasons Cascadia’s (Left Coast) Indigenous Peoples did not utilize the “3 Sisters” or the potato were:
Ocean Currents and Mountains
Their taste as compared to Wapato and Camas
Superstitions
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