The great distribution of the raised fields on the French Guiana coast provokes some skeptics to argue that they were created by the Europeans after the Conquest. Certainly, with five hundred years of slavery and forced labor of convicts, the French had much labor with which to construct vast areas of raised fields. However, building or using raised fields is never reported in French Guiana during colonial times. Moreover, it was the general belief that “the flooded savannas do not seem suitable for cultivation” (Lescallier 1799: 51; author’s translation).
Until the end of the eighteenth century, only slash-and-burn cultivation was practiced in the highlands of French Guiana because “its first settlers, frightened by the enormous abundance of the rains and the conditions of the lowlands, always very moist and sometimes completely flooded, decided all in favor of the hills or highlands, a protection from this kind of recurrent deluge” (Lescallier 1799: 53-54; author’s translation). The low coastal plain was cultivated later under the influence of the civil engineer Samuel Guisan who taught residents how to dig polders. Essentially, they are located between Oyapock River and Cayenne Island, for very few polders were made west of Cayenne.
Between 1851 and 1945, many prisoners labored on works between Maroni River and Cayenne Island, but they mainly built the coastal road and did not promote cultivation in the area. Colonial archives show that Europeans almost never farmed the swamps of French Guiana. In the same way, polders were only constructed for agriculture by the Dutch in the coastal area of Suriname, where many raised fields are located. These data prove that the Indians made raised fields before the Conquest; raised fields were never used by the Europeans.
Some historical records describe Indian agriculture on raised fields in the seasonally flooded savannas of South America, and even in the Caribbean. For example, when the Spanish arrive at Hispaniola in the sixteenth century, the northern plains and the flooded valleys of the center of the island were intensively cultivated with drained fields (Dreyfus 1981). In 1536 Juan de Castellanos witnessed camellones (ridged fields) and calzadas (causeways) in the Venezuelan Llanos, and in 1647 Fray Jacinto de Carjaval mentions earthworks (cited by Zucchi and Denevan 1979). In the eighteenth century Juan Gumilla (1963) met Otomac Indians who cultivated on raised fields in the varzea at the confluence of the Orinoco and Apure rivers.
In the seventeenth century, the Palikur of the northern Amapa still numbered 1200 but controlled less than 150 km2 of land for shifting cultivation. This surface area was too small to provide enough food for the group so they made large raised fields in the swamp, where they cultivated for several years. Their needs fell with population decline, so the size of the raised fields declined, to become little rounded fields of 80 cm diameter and 30-40 cm high, and rectangular ridged fields of 200 x 50 cm, surrounded by a ditch for drainage. Their primary cultigen was bitter manioc and secondarily yams (Dioscorea trifida). This technique was abandoned at the end of the nineteenth century (Grenand 1981).
World History
