• Native Americans fashioned simple tools to grow corn and other New World crops.Don Farrall/Photodisc/Getty Images
  
  In the centuries before European settlement, Native American tribes used simple tools to farm their land. They didn't have the technology to forge metal tools, but used materials such as wood or bone. But the innovative agricultural practices and techniques they developed gave them advantages over tried-and-true European methods in raising crops. White settlers would later adopt Native American agricultural techniques as they established farms in America.
  
  

Tools

• In Native American culture, agricultural hand tools didn't need to be complex. They used wooden sticks, antlers, bone, or even fragments of pottery to dig holes for planting seeds. Hoes for cultivating crops could be made from shells, flat stones, or the shoulder blade of a bison. Native Americans would polish bones and remove unnecessary ridges before using, and would attach a wooden handle with a leather thong.
  
  

Irrigation

• In some parts of the Southwest, such as Arizona by the mouth of the Gila River, Native Americans developed a complex system of canals to channel water from the river to irrigate their crops in the arid climate.
  
  In the Tuscon Basin, on the other hand, tribes practiced floodwater farming: they planted their crops in the plains of the rivers that would become flooded after major storms.
  
  Tribes in some regions also built dams and rock terraces on hills and in washes to catch rainfall they could use to water their crops.
  
  

Fire

• Fire may not seem like an obvious agricultural tool, but it was one the Native Americans used extensively in their farming practices, particularly in wooded areas. Underbrush had to be cleared with fire to make room for crops to grow. The ashes from the fire also doubled as fertilizer for the crops. Tribes believed in "resting" the land after a period of 10 to 20 years, allowing it to return to its natural state and planting crops anew in a different area.