Indigenous people of North America and Canada have long been agriculturalists and farmers. According to Christina Gish Hill, an associate professor of anthropology at Iowa State University in the US, the first Europeans to settle in North America were amazed at the abundance of food. The key to the indigenous people's food production lies in the story of the Three Sisters.
In his book, Indian Legends of Eastern Canada, Lois Thomas tells the story of the Three Sisters, based on the oral stories of various indigenous American and Canadian people. The stories differ somewhat from community to community, but the premise remains largely the same.
According to Thomas’s account, the Three Sisters lived
