The peoples of Poverty Point and the Adena and Hopewell cultures did little farming. Indian women in Kentucky and Missouri had cultivated small amounts of squash as early as 2500 b.c.e., and maize first appeared east of the Mississippi by 300 b.c.e. But agriculture did not become the primary food source for Woodlands people until between the seventh and twelfth centuries c.e. The first full-time farmers in the East lived on the floodplains of the Mississippi River and its major tributaries. Beginning around c.e. 700, they developed a new culture, called Mississippian.
