Prairie Smoke, a Collection of Lore of the Prairies

by Melvin R. Gilmore

ABORIGINAL AMERICAN AGRICULTURE

See [Map]. Vertical lines indicate region under agriculture by natural rainfall. Horizontal lines indicate region farmed under irrigation. Both regions were settled in permanent villages.

Most people of this country, of the now dominant European race, seldom give a thought to the aboriginal economic conditions which prevailed here before this country was Europeanised. They seldom think of the precolumbian utilisation of the natural resources of this continent by the people of the native American race. They do not consider the myriad possible uses of plants and plant products by the people of the native tribes. Most persons of our European race in arrogant self-satisfaction have not been accustomed to think of those of the American race as agriculturists at all, much less have we given thought to the contributions made by that race to the world’s agriculture. But according to the United States crop report of 1916 the value of the crops in this country alone, of plants which were first brought under cultivation by Indians, is $3,000,000,000.

No doubt the beginnings of agriculture, with our own European race and with every race, was simply the gathering and storing of supplies of wild plant products, and proceeded by the stages of intentional dissemination and cultivation, selection and improvement of stock into myriad varieties.

When European explorers first visited the Atlantic shores of America they found the native tribes to be agriculturists, living in villages of permanent houses, and with their cultivated fields stretching about the villages. And as the explorers advanced into the interior of the continent they found similar conditions to prevail as far as to and including the Missouri River valley. So it was found that in all the region from the Gulf of Mexico to the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and the region of the upper Missouri river all the various Indian nations were settled agriculturists. On the High Plains and in the western mountains the tribes could not cultivate the soil because of the unfavorable conditions.

The crops cultivated by the tribes in the region above defined consisted of corn, beans, squashes and pumpkins in many varieties, gourds, sunflower, and tobacco. According to the testimony of some of the early explorers it appears that in the southeastern part of the continent they also cultivated sweet potatoes and peanuts. It may be said that the sunflower is native to the western plains and was there brought under cultivation and improved to what we have as the cultivated sunflower and was distributed throughout the region from the Great Plains to the Atlantic coast. The other crops above named were introduced from the south many centuries ago from Mexico. Their wild ancestors grow there, which would indicate that there they were first brought into domestication by cultivation and improvement of the wild stock. All evidence from every source seems to point to the plateau of southeast Mexico as the place of origin of corn. It seems to have been originally a large, coarse wild grass with seeds which were at least large enough to furnish an article of food when gathered in quantity. The botanical evidence would indicate that it was a branched stalk and that all the branches and the terminal alike bore loose panicles of seeds, not in compact ears as we now know the corn ear. But ages of cultivation and selection by obscure and forgotten tribes of primitive farmers have produced a plant which bears its staminate flowers generally on the terminal and its pistillate flowers on side branches modified into what we know as the corn ear. Not only had the above-described modification taken place in the process of long ages of cultivation and selection, but the five great types of corn had been formed and developed into innumerable varieties of each type prior to the advent of white men on this continent. The five types to which I have referred are dent corn, flour corn, flint corn, sweet corn, and pop corn. Dent corn was obtained first by white men from the Indians of Virginia in the beginning of the seventeenth century at the first settlement of that colony by the English. The New England tribes had flint corn, flour corn, and sweet corn, and pop corn, but not dent corn. The tribes of the upper Missouri River had flint corn, flour corn and sweet corn.

The Arikara and Mandan on the upper Missouri were the great agricultural tribes of this region. Omaha legend credits the Arikara with first having corn and with having distributed to other tribes. And the common pictograph to represent the Arikara among all the surrounding tribes was a conventionalised ear of corn. In the sign language also the surrounding tribes designated the Arikara by a motion of the hands depicting the act of shelling corn, or by the motions of eating an ear of corn. Washington Matthews says: “There are some reasons for believing that the Arikara represent an older race of farmers than the Mandan; for their religious ceremonies connected with the planting are the more numerous, and they honor the corn with a species of worship.” And it is the work of these northern tribes in past centuries in acclimating corn to the short northern summer with its cool nights which has made it possible for the states of North Dakota, Montana and Minnesota now to be corn-producing states; for acclimation is a long and gradual process and was accomplished during a northward migration from Mexico which occupied many centuries of time.

In the arid region of what is now New Mexico and Arizona the work of agriculture was carried on by means of irrigation ages before the coming of white men, and the old irrigation ditches made by the primitive Indian farmers of that region may still be traced—irrigation works made without other power than human muscles and without the use of iron; the shovels used being made of bone.

The world is indebted to the aboriginal American agriculturists not only for all types of corn which we now have, but also for all kinds of beans, for pumpkins and squashes, cultivated sunflowers, sweet potatoes, peanuts, and many other crops among our present day staples.