three sisters

plural noun

variants or less commonly Three Sisters

: corn, beans, and squash grown together

—usually used with the

The three sisters are crops native to North America and traditionally grown together by various indigenous peoples, including the Iroquois. … The three sisters are corn, squash, and beans.

—Marie Bozer

For thousands of years, Native Americans have placed three different plants together in a mound—corn, beans and squash. They call these plants the three sisters. The corn grows the fastest and is shallowly rooted. The bean uses the corn stalk to wrap around and climb upward. Beans also produce nitrates for the soil to feed the corn. The squash spreads out across the ground with broad leaves. These leaves shade the soil and keep it moist.

—The Billings (Montana) Gazette

Overall, I'm pleased with our first-year results, although these Three Sisters don't look anything like the pictures in the book.

—Becky Asleson

Word History

Etymology

Note: Use of the collocation dates from Lewis Henry Morgan's League of the Ho-dé-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois (Rochester, 1851), p 161. The sisters are part of the Iroquois Thanksgiving Speech, recorded from the Seneca and Cayuga. (See Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast [Washington, 1978], p. 456.)

First Known Use

1851, in the meaning defined above