WHILE THE SETTLERS were developing methods for surviving in the new environments of the southern swamps, they were also devising strategies for turning production into wealth and wealth into power. It is no longer possible to reconstruct the strategies of the earliest settlers, but it seems reasonable to assume that at first they followed practices common in their former homelands. The frontier situation in the southern swamps, however, gave them freedom to experiment and to innovate. They developed new strategies, and over time the most successful strategies became institutionalized, forming a new framework of action.

MOBILIZING LABOR

A major problem for the earliest settlers was to mobilize labor to construct ponds and dams. Nunu say that it takes about 20 workers to dig a small pond with any efficiency because a smaller number of people working during the dry season can make only a shallow pond that will become partially filled with silt during the coming flood. In a similar way, dams have to be made large enough during the dry season so that the floodwaters do not wash them away. Because of these requirements, it was difficult for an individual or his immediate family to construct a dam or a pond a little at a time over a period of years. The more labor one had, the easier to dig a pond or construct a dam.