At the start of growing season, we planted sunflowers on the edges of our corn quadrants as part of our plot. They weren’t just any sunflowers, but Havasupai sunflowers. Havasupai sunflowers have an interesting place in the recent, as well as past history of sunflowers.
The Havasupai have an interesting tradition of combining agriculture with hunting. Traditionally, the Havasupai would live half the year on the Cataract Canyon (or Havasu Canyon) floor where the climate and flowing water allowed them to grow crops. The following vintage description (dated but enjoyably flowery) is from The North American Indians by Edward Curtis:
As winter approached, the Havasupai would climb out of the canyon before the seasonal cold and dampness, build four post structures, and spend the nexts months hunting game on the surrounding mesas. Unfortunately, when the U.S. government delineated the Havasupai to their reservation in 1880, it restricted the Havasupai to a mere 500+ acres on the canyon floor alone. (They previously inhabited an area the size of Delaware.) Not only did this completely change the way their entire way of life, it made the Havasupai much more susceptible to disease from having to spend cold winters down in the canyon. In three years from 1903 to 1906, the Havasupai lost a third of their population to disease. Between the Santa Fe railroad and the inception of the Grand Canyon national park, things got worse for the Havasupai from there. Finally, in 1975, the Havasupai were able to get over 180,000 acres of their land back. Three years later, a man named Gary Nabhan came to the Havasupai collecting seeds for the USDA seed bank. As it turns out, the sunflower seeds we are growing came from this trip. Here is the the USDA description for the sample we recieved:
Garden. Achenes brown, gray or black striped. Used for nut butter. Accession was collected. 20-Aug-1978. Arizona, United States. Locality: Supai Village, Grand Canyon, Havasupai Indian Reservation, Coconino County. Collected by Nabhan, G., Department of Plant Sciences.
The Havasupai willingness to share some of their sunflower seeds would turn out to be instrumental in sunflower agriculture across the world. How so?
From the archives of the NY Times:
Since the Helianthus annuus was cultivated by various people starting 2,000 – 3,000 B.C.E., Havasupai sunflower was in fact the only sunflower in the world that was resistant to Sclerotinia wilt, a rust disease that was wiping out the world’s sunflower crops from here to Australia. From the 1992 Seedhead News, Havasupai Sunflower: Unique Resistance to Major Crop Disease:
After 1978, a series of floods completely devastated the Havasupai farmland in the canyon. Along with other, Gary Nabhan would go on to form Native Seeds/SEARCH “dedicated to conserving and nurturing the traditional agricultural heritage of the Greater Southwest” and was able to return seeds to the Havasupai so they could rebuild and preserve their agricultural traditions.
Colorado Plateau Gardening & Horticulture 