Colonists mistook sophisticated Three Sisters gardens for ignorance of farming

Evidence

For millennia, from Mexico to Montana, women have mounded up the earth and laid these three seeds in the ground, all in the same square foot of soil. When the colonists on the Massachusetts shore first saw indigenous gardens, they inferred that the savages did not know how to farm. To their minds, a garden meant straight rows of single species, not a three-dimensional sprawl of abundance. And yet they ate their fill and asked for more, and more again. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 452

Categorization

• XREF: Instantiation of the settler misreading-of-Indigenous-practice pattern from ch4’s land-as-gift vs land-as-property — same cognitive error applied to agriculture. — connects to: Planned handicraft-agriculture colonies failed from planning and cultural ignorance. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 602; The Three Sisters companion planting is a feat of indigenous agriculture — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 451; A Three Sisters garden physically embodies the ethic of reciprocity — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 459
• SEED: Angle: monoculture straight rows as the settler epistemology of ‘order’ — exactly the ‘trees as infrastructure’ visual/normative contrast.
• ADDENDUM: Pairs directly with the trees-as-infrastructure piece: corn monoculture vs Three Sisters polyculture as two competing worldbuilding models.

Broader Connections

• The Three Sisters companion planting is a feat of indigenous agriculture #corroborates (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 451
• Planned handicraft-agriculture colonies failed from planning and cultural ignorance. #expands (0.80) — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 602
• A Three Sisters garden physically embodies the ethic of reciprocity #expands (0.75) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 459