A stereograph card shows hoeing rice "the old way." Hoe culture was the predominant method of working the soil in traditional agricultural societies, and was only slowly replaced by the use of mule, horse or oxen drawn plows. Although in South Carolina it was most widely used by African-Americans, and survived in the cultivation of cotton and tobacco crops until well into the 20th century, hoe culture was also used by whites who were small plantation owners and subsistence farmers of tobacco in the colonial Chesapeake.
Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
