The Agriculture of the American Indian

The Agriculture of the American Indian By Vernal Willie [This article deals with the agriculture of the American Indians, at the time America was discovered, and is the result of considerable research work by the author, on this subject. For most people, Indians are not usually associated with agriculture, and it is, therefore, a subject that one might well be interested in knowing more about, particularly since the culture of the white man has replaced that of the Indian; and, in many cases, the new culture has not been as good as the old. We believe this comparatively new subject will prove very interesting to many people. The author is a Senior student in the Agricultural College of Utah, and graduates this spring — Editors.] The food supply of a nation is one of the first things to consider in the study of the people of that nation when we realize that the commonest and strongest of human traits are those having to do with food. It is a common tendency among the several groups of man- kind to specialize in some one kind of food, which becomes the stable, or main, support, to be supplemented by other foods when opportunity permits. Even the very complex cultures of today have not fully overcome this disposition, as shown by the great demand for beef, bread, and rice. This specialization is uniformly distributed over a considerable area. It is because of this that we are able to divide the new world into separate, distinct food areas, at the time the first Europeans came to this country. Beginning with North America we have a large extent of territory in northern Canada, which is the natural range of the caribou, or American reindeer, whose flesh was the main sup- port of the aboriginal populations. Sea mammals were also extensively used, but the caribou was absolutely indispensable to their existence, not so much for food as for winter clothing. The failure of the caribou in any one locality for even one season would spell disaster. In southern Canada the moose and other deer were also available; and in the far north, the musk-ox; wood bison were also found in a few localities, and hares and other small animals were eaten when needed. Their lakes and rivers were also well stocked with fish and in season by water fowl. The method of hunting the caribou, by both the Eskimo and the Indians was to drive or stampede them into artificial

700 IMPROVEMENT ERA or natural lanes or defiles where the hunters are concealed. Another form was to run them into deep water, where they were at the mercy of the swift canoe-men. Snaring was also highly developed, even the largest game heing caught in this way. They used the harpoon, hooks, line and net in their fishing. The cache was an important invention of this area. The name is usually applied to an elevated or subterranean enclosure for storing dried or frozen meat. The hunters followed the great herds of caribou over the plains, and the kill of each day was dressed as quickly as possible and then cached, after which the pursuit was again taken up. Extending from central Canada on the North to New Mexico on the South, covering the eastern part of Utah, and extending to Nebraska on the East, was an inland area, not as large, however, as the caribou area, in which bison or buf- falo were the principal food. Elk were abundant and also mountain sheep, and out on the plains antelope were to be met, but these were obscured by the seething masses of bison, encountered everywhere, summer or winter. The methods of hunting bison were similar to those used in hunting caribou. Before horses were introduced, small herds were enticed or stampeded into enclosures where they were shot down at will; at other times they were rounded up by sys- tematic grass firing. In favorable times, the surplus meat was dried and packed in bags. It would be well here to note the manufacture of pemmican, a process which was characteristic of this area. To make pemmican, the dried meat of the buffalo was pounded fine with stone hammers and packed in bags which were then sealed with melted fat. A special variety of pemmican was prepared by pulverizing wild cherries, pits and all, and mix- ing with the pounded meat. When properly protected, pem- mican will keep for many months, and being compact and easily transported forms an exceedingly valuable food. Colonel Theodore Roosevelt in his sketches of Hunting The Grizzly, has the following story to tell about the buffalo: "My friend, Gen. W. H. Walker, of Virginia, had an experience in the early '50's with buffaloes on the upper Arkansas river, which gives some idea of their enormous numbers at that time. He was camped with a scouting party on the banks of the river, and had gone out to try to shoot some meat. There were many buffaloes in sight, scattered, accord- ing to their custom, in large bands. When he was a mile or two away from the river a dull roaring sound in the distance attracted his attention, and he saw that a herd of buffalo far to the south, away from the river, had been stampeded and was running his way. He knew that if he was caught in the open by the stampeded herd his chance for life would be

AGRICULTURE OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 701 small, and at once ran for the river. By desperate efforts he reached the breaks in the sheer banks just as the buffaloes reached them, and got into a position of safety on the pinnacle of a little bluff. From this point of vantage he could see the entire plain. To the very verge of the horizon the brown masses of the buffalo bands showed through the dust clouds, coming on with a thunderous roar like that of surf. Camp was a mile away, and the stampede luckily passed to one side of it. Watching his chance he finally dodged back to the tent, and all that afternoon watched the immense masses of buffalo, as band after band tore to the brink of the bluffs on one side, raced down them, rushed through the water, up the bluffs on the other side, and again off over the plain, churning the sandy, shallow stream into a ceaseless tumult. When darkness fell there was no apparent decrease in the numbers that were passing, and all through that night the continuous roar showed that the herds were still threshing across the river. Towards dawn the suund at last ceased, and General Walker arose somewhat irritated, as he had reckoned on killing an ample supply of meat, and he supposed that there would be now no bison left south of the river. To his astonishment, when he strolled up on the bluffs and looked over the plain, it was still covered far and wide with groups of buffalo, grazing quietly. Apparently there were as many on that side as ever, in spite of the many scores of thousands that must have crossed over the river during the stampede of the afternoon and night. The barren-ground caribou is the only American animal which is now ever seen in such enormous herds." The next great hunting area is in South America. From the interior of Argentina to the Horn we have an open country. The fauna was not so rich but the guanaco were abundant. An- other animal of economic importance was the rhea, or American ostrich. The early accounts suggest that the original human inhabitants of this area were a nomadic, hunting people, pri- marily dependent upon the guanaco, which they pursued with the bola and the lasso. Although in these three great hunting areas the main food was flesh, many vegetable products were used. Even in the Arctic the Eskimo gathered berries and edible roots in sum- mer. Cherry, plum, strawberry, and in arid portions the prickly pear was abundant. Of roots there were several species, but particularly the prairie turnip was used. All the streams between San Francisco Bay, and Bering Strait are visited by salmon. They ascend from the sea to spawn, and are available to all the tribes, even those far inland. The run occurs but once a year, and at this time they are taken out in great numbers, to be dried and smoked. In the Colombia Basin, the dried fish were afterwards pounded fine in mortars, thus being reduced to a state not unlike pemmican. This pul- verized food is carefully stored in baskets as the one chief re- serve food supply of the year. Dried fish and berries were their staples. Where available, a kind of clover was eaten green, and the inner bark of the hemlock was worked up into a kind of bread-like food.

702 IMPROVEMENT ERA In southern California and eastward over to the Great Basin was an area in which game animals were rare, and wild seeds and acorns were chiefly used for food. The raw acorns are not palatable for they contain a large amount of tannic acid; however, this objection is eliminated by pounding the kernels into flour and then leeching with hot water. In this area fruits and berries were very rare. The term "digger" was generally applied to the nations of this area because of their persistent gathering of roots and plants. Notwithstanding the popular idea of modern California as an ideal habitat for us modern Americans, it must be re- garded as rather unfavorable to the development of primitive tribes, for while enough food could be found, it had to be gathered in little bits. Many of these Indians ate rodents, snakes, or insects. When the Utah Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley the ground was covered with millions of black crickets which the Indians were harvesting for their winter food. The Indians made a corral twelve or fifteen feet square, fenced about with sage brush and greasewood, and with branches of the same drove them into the enclosure. They then set fire to the brush fence, and going amongst them drove them into the fire. Afterward they took them up by the thousands, rubbed off their wings and legs, and after two or three days separated the meat, which was usually half an ounce to an ounce of fat to each cricket. In the eastern half of the United States including a very small section of Canada we have a distinct agricultural area. The chief crop was maize which ranks high in excellence among the world foods, and after the epoch-making discovery of Columbus was quickly spread to other parts of the world. In General Anthony Wayne's report to the Secretary of War on his first trip into Ohio, in 1794, he says that he had never beheld such immense fields of corn in any other part of America. It is reported that more than four thousand acres of standing corn was destroyed by Wayne's army between Fort Defiance and the mouth of the Miami of the Lakes. After the defeat of the Indians at Fallen Timbers, several days were spent in destroying their crops. In 1790, twenty thousand bushels of corn was seized and burned at the headwaters of the Miami River. No careful study of aboriginal varieties of maize has been made, but the data at hand suggest that about all the distinct kinds we are growing today on our farms were in existence by 1492, and that they existed side by side in the same fields. The Indians dug up the ground with pointed and spade- like tools. The hoe was universal in the eastern maize area..

AGRICULTURE OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 703 The agricultural pattern was to hoe up hills around the plants. Maize, squashes, and beans were often put in the same hill. Tobacco was planted in hills, and so were the sweet potatoes of the South. Millet, gourds, and melons were also grown in the same way. The first Atlantic colonists adopted the hoe pat- tern of the natives, especially in the South, where to some extent it still survives. The maize was planted with a forked stick and cultivated with a bone hoe, the blade being made from the shoulder bone of any large animal. Artificial fertilization was practiced from Nova Scotia to Chile. One method widely distributed was the placing of fish in the maize hill. Of foods and dishes made with maize there is a long list which is in the main the same as we ourselves use. Of manufactured foods other than those made of maize, maple sugar takes first place. Practically every essential detail of the process now in use was developed by the Indians of this area before 1492. Another food deserving mention i* oil derived from hickory and walnuts. This oil was characteristic of the South, and the natives did a good business in supplying it to the colonists. Wild fruits were abundant and many species were used. Some of them planted and cared for extensive orchards of both apples and peaches. Wayne in one of his early expeditions into northern Ohio cut down several thousands of the peach and apple trees belonging to the Indians. One important characteristic of agriculture in this area is that it was woman's work, the man being a hunter. We now come to an area, extending from California on the North to Chile on the South, including Mexico, Central America, part of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in which agri- culture was intensively practiced. Here work in the fields was not regarded as woman's work exclusively, and here hunting ceases to be an occupation. As may be anticipated, it is the home of the most advanced Indian cultures. Beginning with the North, we have the Pueblo-Dwelling peoples of southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Besides maize, beans, melons, squashes, and sunflower seed were the chief crops. In historic times, at least, onions and chile peppers were favorite garden plants; and the following wild plants were largely used: Pinon nut, mesquite, and suguaro. Tobacco and cotton were cultivated. Game was rather scarce, rabbits being the most numerous. Turkeys were domesticated. Of prepared foods, the most unique is the piki maize bread, made in thin, paper-like sheets. In Central America, there were many fruits, many of which are now cultivated by Europeans, as the mammae apple, the alii-

704 IMPROVEMENT ERA gator pear, the cashew nut, together with the fleshy stalk of its tree, also the tomato and pineapple. In the Andean region of South America it is possible almost at any point to shift from high to low valleys, thus quickly passing through several varieties of climate, and by lateral shifting to encounter deserts and the most well watered stretches in succession. They raised maize, potatoes, sweet potatoes, manioc, beans, tobacco, coca, and cotton. Salt was manu- factured in favorable localities and formed an important article of trade. The beautiful valley, surrounding the holy city of the Inca (Cuzco), was so supplied with a carefully worked-out and well- distributed irrigation system, that even Pizarro's rude band of destroyers were awed and astonished when they first beheld it. Prescott thus describes, in an impressive way, the civiliza- tion that Pizarro so rudely swept away: "By a judicious system of canals and subterraneous aqueducts, the waste places on the coast were refreshed by copious streams, clothing them in fertility and beauty. Terraces were raised upon the steep sides of the Cordillera, and, as the different elevations had the effect of a difference of latitude, they exhibited in regular gradation, every variety of vegetable form, from the stimulated growth of the tropics to the temperate products of a northern clime. An industrious population settled upon the lofty regions of the plateaus and towns and hamlets, clustering amidst orchards and wide-spreading gardens, seemed suspended in the air far above the ordinary elevation of the clouds. Intercourse was main- tained between these numerous settlements by means of the great roads which traversed the mountain passes, and opened an easy communication between the capital and the remotest extremities of the Empire. The soil, though rarely watered by the rains of heaven, was naturally rich, and wherever it was refreshed with moisture, as on the margins of the streams, it was enameled with the brightest verdure. The indus ry of the inhabitants, moreover, had turned these streams to the best account, and canals and aqueducts were crossing the lowlands in all directions, and spreading over the country, like a vast network diffusing fertility and beauty around them. The air was scented with the sweet odors of flowers, and everywhere the eye was refreshed by the sight of orchards laden with unknown fruits, and of fields waving with yellow grain, and rich in luscious vegetables of every description that teem in the sunny clime of the Equator. The Spaniards were among a people who had carried the refinements of husbandry to a greater extent than any yet found on the American continent. As far as the eye could see, the level tract exhibited the show of a diligent and thrifty husbandry." The art of irrigation was known from Arizona to Chile, and in Peru was carried out on a scale scarcely equalled by modern nations. The remains of acqueduct systems in the Andes show such genius and organization that our respect for the native American rises to a high point. In the eastern regions of America crops grew without water- ing, but in the West and Southwest the soil was arid, and irri- gation was necessary; hence, there are found remnants of ex-

AGRICULTURE OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 705 tensive irrigation canals built to bring rivers out on the dry land. There are indications of them along the fertile bottoms of the Colorado river in Glen canyon; in the Verde river region of Arizona some very large canals have been observed, and on the upper Gila river in Arizona, Fewkes discovered traces of reservoirs and irrigation canals. Several of these old canal beds in Arizona are being used by modern ditch builders. In the Salt River Valley alone, these prehistoric farmers are be- lieved to have irrigated successfully 200,000 to 250,000 acres of crop land. Many historians have said that if the inhabitants of America could have had isolation, and a good beast of burden, they would have reached a much higher stage of civilization than they did reach. The most common domesticated animals were the dog, the llama, and the related alpaca. There were no others. It is true that we have on record instances of in- dividual animals of other species being tamed but in no case were they propagated. The dogs served several purposes: transportation, hunting, guarding, and companionship, or food, according to locality. They varied greatly in size and form from the hairless variety of the tropics, to the great hairy beasts reared in some parts of the Arctic. In Peru we have the llama, a small camel-like animal which has little more carrying power than a large dog, but is particu- larly well adapted to mountain travel. These were domesticated in large herds, sometimes reaching the thousands. In addition to their use in transportation, they were slaughtered for their flesh and sheared for their wool. Before the time of Columbus, no tribe had an animal able to carry a man. The dog packers walked in front of their trains, and even the Eskimo walked more than he rode. The. coming of the Spaniards made quick changes. The mule and the donkey were soon in general use. Wild cattle soon overran Texas and southern California. The use of the horse spread much faster than exploration, so that in many cases our first actual view of a tribe is a horse user. Turkeys were raised for their feathers and eggs by the Pueblo and Mexican peoples. As to the tribes of the lower Mississippi, we cannot be certain, for some of them got chickens so early that the first French settlers in Louisiana found them raised everywhere. The natives of Cuba, however, are credited with having domestic fowls, and with stocking fish ponds when first discovered. The domestication of the bee for its honey was common in some districts. Logan, Utah