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Basalt hoe or adzes
(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Agriculture was a female responsibility in Native societies of the northeast. Women used tools like these to prepare the soil first for planting and then for hoeing. Later English observers noted that this was a communal task accomplished with skill and goodwill. Native women took primary responsibility for tending agricultural crops like the "Three Sisters:" corn, beans and squash. Burning and clearing fields for planting was a communal task. Tools like these were used for breaking up the soil and hoeing between plants. Corn has been a staple of Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples of the northeast for nearly 2,000 years.
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