What 800-Year-Old Seeds and a Hopi Dryland Farmer Teach Us About Adaptation & Hope

When Hopi farmer Michael Kotutwa Johnson speaks of seeds, he refers to them as “children.” So when a colleague brought him corn seeds that had been preserved for 800 years – hidden in a cave near historical Hopi villages around Glen Canyon – it was like welcoming children home.

Dr. Johnson describes himself as a 250th-generation traditional Hopi dryland farmer. Since he was a boy, he has been growing corn, beans, squash and melons without irrigation on the Little Colorado Plateau in northeastern Arizona where the average annual rainfall is only 6-10 inches. Seeds play an intimate role in Hopi farming and culture.

“Seeds for Hopi people, and other Indigenous societies, are at the heart of who we are,” explains Dr. Johnson. “You see, for us, seeds are the very essence of life. Our society depends on corn and seeds. They are not just material objects; seeds are a life force.”

For two years, Dr. Johnson experimented with planting the gifted seeds at different depths and growing conditions to coax the corn to grow in an environment that had changed over 80 decades, a parallel he draws to his own culture.

“The seeds are like us,” Dr. Johnson says, “they need to be able to adapt to an ever-increasingly changing environment. Their continued adaptation in the places they were originally grown is vital to our culture and the health of the communities to ensure our survival and cultural identity.”

Dr. Johnson was eager to see if, after so long, these seeds would produce corn. 

In the summer of 2023, Dr. Johnson received corn seeds from a colleague who came by them through a friend that had discovered them while exploring a cave during a kayaking trip through the Glen Canyon area back in the 1960s, as the area was being flooded to form modern-day Lake Powell. The man kayaked extensively as the waters rose, which offered a brief window of time that allowed him to access a cave on the canyon wall. Inside, he found whole cobs of corn buried in the red sand.

Burying whole cobs is a traditional Hopi technique for preserving corn. The area where the seeds were found holds a rich history, with over 2,000 archaeological sites dating back to the Basketmaker era (A.D. 1-500) and the Pueblo II and Pueblo III expansion (A.D. 900-1300). The seeds are estimated to be over 800 years old.

“I welcomed this gift because these maize-corn seeds returned home to one of the 21 Pueblos and in this case Hopi, after 800 years of hiding in a cave,” says Dr. Johnson. “Upon receiving these seeds, I wanted to see how these children would adapt at Hopi after being absent from their home.”

The textbook practice for growing corn is to plant seeds 2 inches deep, where the soil won’t dry quickly. Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, plants his Hopi corn seeds at 6 to 16 inches into the ground and does not water them during the summer. He relies on monsoon rains and the environment to provide the conditions to help them sprout and grow into food crops. 

Last summer, Dr. Johnson planted the gifted seeds using traditional Hopi practices, but the sprouts did not manage to break through the soil surface. 

Before replanting, he considered the prior conditions that these seeds would have adapted to – a time when the Colorado River was running through the area – and so he replanted them again, at a much shallower depth of one to two inches. Miraculously, the seeds germinated and began to sprout, but it was too late in the growing season for them to mature. 

Despite the setback, Dr. Johnson told himself: “I will try again next year as these seeds also bring hope and with that faith for the next generation of Pueblo farmers.”

On his third trial this past summer, Dr. Johnson planted 8-10 corn kernels per hole at a few different locations at a depth of one to two inches deep. Of the seeds planted, 2 or 3 germinated and sprouted at each location. Then, with much nurturing – placing a can around them for protection, installing mesh wiring to keep rabbits out, and visiting them often – he saw the tasselling of the plant and small corn ears beginning to form. He allowed for the ears to fully mature. While some were consumed by insects, he was able to harvest four cobs off of three mature plants. One, in particular, was very special.

“One cob came up perfect, with strawberry-red corn kernels all the way up the ear, something that is very hard to grow in our climate without worms attacking them,” Dr. Johnson explains, who was happily surprised by the picture-perfect cob.  

Corn like this is very special to the Hopi. “We call this the Corn Mother, and we use them in baby naming ceremonies, to symbolize a spiritual connection to the Earth and Hopi corn.”
 

Dr. Johnson kept the perfect corn cob as a reminder of what he helped nurture. Although curious about their taste, he didn’t eat any of the remaining corn and, instead, dried and shucked the three other ears to save the precious kernels. The new, but very old, corn seeds would be planted again next year to learn even more about what memories and adaptations they hold.

For a full article, visit Indigenous Resilience Center website.