Corn, beans, and squash, known as the Three Sisters in Native American legend, were important in the development of the early colonies because they grow and thrive together. According to folklore, Squanto, a Native American man from the Patuxet Band of Wampanoag people in modern-day Massachusetts, acted as an interpreter and cultural advisor to the Pilgrims and shared how these three crop plants grew better together than by themselves, improving food production and spreading to other colonists. Corn provides a tall stalk for bean vines to climb, beans add nitrogen to the soil to help corn gain nutrients, and squash covers the soil like living mulch, suppresses weeds, discourages pests with its spiny stems and leaves, and shelters helpful predators. Because each plant is susceptible to different diseases and pests, growing them together makes the polyculture stronger than a monoculture. The Three Sisters quickly became an important part of the Pilgrim diet, with corn providing carbohydrates, beans providing protein, and squash being rich in vitamins, and after the First Thanksgiving they became seventy percent of the Pilgrim diet. They remained widely grown together across North America until the early twentieth century, when industrial farming replaced small farms, though Three Sisters gardens still work as effectively today as they did more than four hundred years ago.