Rice Cultivation 91out of the soil once inundated with water. Another variant,
one common in the Sudan, was the planting of two or three
seeds in a hole with holes in a row and at two- to fi ve-inch
intervals. In an address before the Carolina Plantation Soci-
ety, Th eodore D. Ravenel, who grew rice along the Cooper,
Edisto, and Combahee rivers, recommended planting rice
between March 10 and April 15.
As on the Caribbean sugar plantations, the hoe was the
tool of cultivation on the paddy. Gangs of slaves hoed the
ground at planting, aft er which the land was inundated for
two to four days to saturate the seed. Aft er this initial in-
undation, laborers drained the land to permit the seed to
germinate. Workers allowed plants to grow several weeks,
hoed a second time, then inundated the soil for the next
four to six weeks, raising the water as the plants grew. Th e
water not only nourished the plants but also formed a
barrier against the germination of weeds aft er the second
hoeing. Alternatively David Doar, owner of Harrietta Plan-
tation in South Carolina, recommended weeding soon aft er
rice germinated and 12 days thereaft er to minimize the
number of weeds prior to inundation. He recommended
inundation when rice had grown to 1-1/2 inches. If weeds
persisted, the laborers either drained the fi eld so they could
weed by hand or cut weeds just below the water surface so
the weeds suff ocated, a practice common in West Africa.
Butler urged frequent drainage and inundation of a fi eld for
fear that stagnant water spread diseases.
Slaves cleared land aft er the harvest in autumn rather
than waiting until spring, though the method of clearance
varied by its African antecedent. Th e Bamana and Marka
from the Macina were accustomed to clearing the land with
great care, turning the soil to expose all roots and rhizomes,
which they removed by hand. Other Africans from this re-
gion turned the soil to uproot weeds aft er harvest but did
not remove weeds by the root with the result that some
germinated in spring. Th e Africans from the region east of
Timbuktu cleared land in a superfi cial way, simply by scrap-
ing the soil with a hoe, a practice that allowed still more
weeds to germinate in spring. Ravenel recommended that
workers burn crop residue aft er clearing the land of it. He
cautioned against plowing under crop residue rather than
burning it for fear that insects would overwinter in it. Th e
practice of plowing under crop residue was more common
upland than in the lowlands, according to Ravenel.
In the 19th century, the onus of cultivation began to
shift from human to machine. Planters along the Mississippifi eld. To hold water on the land, they girdled it with an em-
bankment of earth, creating an artifi cial pond. By placing a
wooden gate at the point of lowest elevation along an em-
bankment, laborers could release water in increments until
they had a depth of two to eight inches, varying the depth of
water with the height of rice plants. As a rule, laborers kept
water at a depth just below the joint at the lowest panicle of
rice. At harvest laborers drained the land to permit easy ac-
cess to the crop. Rice cultivation in this manner was eff ec-
tive but limited by topography. Only land near an elevated
pond lent itself to this system.
Around 1750, South Carolina planter Makewn John-
stone harnessed the tide to expand rice culture to land that
had no topographical advantage. He understood that as
the tide rises, it pushes freshwater up the rivers that snake
through South Carolina. By enclosing a rectangle of land
along a river with an embankment on all four sides, a planter
could create a kind of freshwater reservoir. To control the
fl ow of water, workers built a gate in the side of an embank-
ment along a river such that it opened to admit water as
the tide rose and closed as it receded to trap water in the
reservoir. By abutting farms on the remaining three sides
of the embankment and putting a gate in each side, work-
ers could release water from the reservoir to land on which
they had sown rice. A variant of this system was to enclose
all land of the same elevation in a single embankment no
matter its size. Depending on the slope of the land, labor-
ers might divide a fi eld into a series of enclosed rectangles,
each of uniform elevation and each diff ering from an ad-
joining fi eld by as little as a few inches. Each enclosed rect-
angle formed a paddy. Th e eff ect was akin to terracing the
land and required much labor to level sections of ground
so each held a uniform layer of water. Canals brought water
from rivers to inland fi elds as well as connected fi elds that
were not contiguous. Th e size of a fi eld varied not only with
the contour of the land but with the number of slaves. A
planter enclosed only as much land as his slaves could hoe
and plant in a week.
In 1747, South Carolina planter William Butler calcu-
lated that 22 slaves could hoe and plant 6 acres of land per
day or roughly 40 acres per week. Of these, Butler assigned
8 to dig a trench for seed. Rather than broadcast seed,
2 sowers would plant seed in a trench at four- to fi ve-inch in-
tervals. Butler assigned the remaining 12 the task of cover-
ing a trench with earth. In a variant of this practice, a sower
encased each seed in a ball of mud to prevent it from rising