Gardening can take many forms. Today it seems that many of us approach it as a hobby, an activity with the added benefit of providing a few fresh vegetables and/or blooms to enjoy. For the pioneers it was more of a necessity, providing a significant portion of the diet for both farm families and ‘townies’
across our region. Produce fresh from the garden during the season was enjoyed but probably even more welcome in the winter months, many days in summer and fall having been spent preserving fruits and veggies either through canning or packing them for cold storage.
Until recently we thought that our ancestors brought gardening from the Old World to the New. We now know that we have more in common with the people who lived here before us than we had imagined. They too depended on their gardens and overwintering what they had grown.
The gardening process was much the same as today but the tools, or at least their construction, were a bit different.
Consider the hoe – a tool common to every gardener, not just today but also 500 years ago. The hoe is used to till soil and destroy weeds. At Antler Creek it was used to grow plots of corn (maize) and other foods like squash. “And beans were probably also cultivated,” says Dr. Mary Malainey, an anthropologist at Brandon University who is now leading excavations at the site.
But without the benefit of metal, what did those early gardeners use for a blade? Bone, as it turns out. And a very specific bone at that - the scapula of a bison.
This find is especially important in that it is not a fragment, but a complete scapula and offers more conclusive proof of the making, and thus the use of, agricultural tools.
Note the similarity with this find from the Zimmerman Site in Kaskaskia, Illinois. The hole drilled to attach the handle is more prominent than in the Olson find. The village at Kaskaskia was inhabited from 1673 to 1722.
A bison shoulder blade is wide and thin on one end and narrow and thick on the other. You need a sharp stone to shape the bone. The wide end was sharpened to cut into soil and a strong wooden handle was attached to the narrow end - using sinew. A hole was carved so another piece of sinew could be used to brace the blade to the handle.
