Dr Chelsey Geralda Armstrong is an associate professor from SFU and the lead author of a paper, about the ancient forest gardens in Nuu-chah-nulth territory, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science. While individual species do grow in the wild, forest gardens and orchards exhibit a sophisticated understanding of cultivation and are found adjacent to ancient village sites. In a related study, Armstrong and her colleagues wrote that forest gardens largely disappeared around the time of the smallpox epidemic that swept through B.C’s Indigenous communities more than 150 years ago.

(In the podcast above, Armstrong mentions three generations of a family that were still transplanting hazelnuts in the 1930s and 40s.)

She said it is difficult to say how long the province’s Indigenous population were tending forest gardens. 

Some scientists believe that the Pacific Crabapple (Malus Fusca) is closely related to the Siberian crabapple, and may have been introduced to North America by the first people to cross over from Asia. 

Armstrong responded, “People have been moving back and forth for millennia.” 

She calls hazelnuts ‘the Swiss army knife of the plant world.’ It is a valuable food source that can be stored year round, a medicine, a dye, and a textile that can be woven or used in boat construction. While not native to the Tsimshian areas, it is found around ancient village sites like Kitselas. The people from that area used a Proto-Salish name for hazelnuts, which originated in southern B.C. 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. 

She and her colleagues have dug up the 400-year-old remains of hazelnuts, crabapples, Rubus species, and vaccinium species – “all the things that grow in forest gardens” – in Tsimshian territory. 

They found 600 year-old remains in Coast Salish territory.

In the podcast above she talks about using oral histories as a key. Soapberries are native to the interior, but has been found on the central coast. There is an oral tradition that Raven introduced it back in mythic times. 

“In the case of Nuu-chah-nulth territory, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, we have ethnographic records. Early settlers like Gilbert Sprout, in the 1840s, recorded that ‘natives are as careful of their crab apple orchards as we are of ours.’ And so we know that the cultivation of these things, at least predate that,” explained Armstrong.  

“Nancy Turner, Dana Lepofsky and I recently wrote a paper on transplanting. We conclude that about 15 or 16 plants growing throughout BC are, in many cases, probably the result of ancient transplanting or historical transplanting events.”

Cortes Currents asked if she has any data from the Discovery Islands, from the Klahoose, Tla’amin, Homalco or K’omox First Nations?  

“It’s funny, I’ve been asked why forest gardens show up in certain spots and not others, Like all the territories that you’ve just mentioned. Really it’s a researcher bias. It’s only where I’ve worked and where my colleagues have worked. Since the publication of our last article, I’ve gotten a lot of emails like, ‘Oh, I think that’s happening here’ and it’s  tough to get to all these places,” replied Armstrong.

While she has not specifically studied the Discovery Islands, much of what Armstrong said may be applicable here.  

She’s familiar with Judith Williams book ‘Clam Gardens: Aboriginal Mariculture on Canada’s West Coast.’ 

“Clam gardens are showing up everywhere, which of course is a type of mariculture cultivation and so it would make sense that if folks are managing the intertidal in such extensive and long lasting ways that they would be also doing the same with plants.”  

“Intertidal marsh gardens are another phenomena that have been studied and looked at. Those are a kind of Intertidal/ uppertidal systems of root cropping. Managing the landscape for things like Springbank Clover, Pacific Silverweed,  and Wild Rice Root are a lot more common where you guys are. That would be another flag.”

Armstrong added, “I want to make sure folks know that it’s not like I went out and did this research and discovered forest gardens. These places have been known by Indigenous communities, by folks who lived in the same place, for thousands of years.  A lot of the stories that I’ve been able to put down on paper around forest garden management (come from Indigenous sources). Elders have always talked about old villages being good places to hunt, or good places to harvest. There’s this understanding that these places exist.” 

“Scientists are just catching up. Our research is really filling in those scientific gaps with the public. It’s not by any means a recent discovery and added to that, this research has never done alone. There’s lots of other people that are involved, folks like Alex McCalvay. He’s a botanist at the New York Botanical Garden and he’s done a lot of work with me on this.” 

Top photo credit: Mark Worthing from Sierra Club BC (l) and Chelsey Armstrong taking crabapple core sample – Photo by Troy Moth

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