Grinding maize, Cahokia Mounds Museum.

For the household, not only did maize give some insurance against failure of other food sources throughout the year, it could be ground and cooked in ways so that it could be eaten in quantities by both the very young and very old. Much as today's bottled baby foods reduce the frequency and intensity of nursing episodes for mothers, maize gruel and pastes may have allowed Mississippian mother's more flexibility in child care. Younger family members or the elderly who could not perform physical tasks could provide child care, including the feeding of not yet weaned infants. The ability of non-lactating household members to provide care would permit the mother to do physical economic tasks away from the infant. Perhaps also these maize gruels with their high caloric content allowed Mississippian mothers to wean their infants at an earlier age. Suppression of the mother's lactation may have increased her fertility slightly, perhaps allowing for more rapid population growth.

Thus, it is likely that maize, a food that could be stored in quantity as an insurance against hunger and which could be prepared for infants, may have contributed to a slight reduction in mortality as well as a slight increase in fertility. To be sure, more family members mean more mouths to feed, but increased family size also means more available labor -- more hands to clear forest, gather fire wood, hoe the fields, harvest crops, net fish, gather hickory nuts, hunt deer, and build temple mounds for the elite.

It is no wonder that early Mississippian farmers began clearing expanses of better-drained bottomland (on the ridges of past point and channel bars) for their fields of maize. Floodplain prairies on slightly elevated land were easily cleared by burning. However, clearing forests required substantially more labor; large trees had to be girdled and even after burning many trunks and limbs remained which had to be moved. After a few years of farming a field, soil nutrients became depleted causing maize yeilds to drop. Unproductive fields were then abandoned and allowed to fallow. Due to higher population densities, arable land immediately around Cahokia may have been farmed for much longer periods. New prairies, forests, and fallow lands (now overgrown with dense bushy secondary growth) were cleared for new maize production. This slash and burn agricultural technique is typical of simple farming practices worldwide.

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