526 DWELLINGS. AGRICULTURE. 



In a word, their houses are as filthy as hog-sties : everything 

 in and about them stinking of fish, train-oil, and smoke." 



The Wallawalla Indians* of Columbia dig a circular hole 

 in the ground about ten. or twelve feet deep, and from forty 

 to fifty feet in circumference, and cover it over with drift- 

 wood and mud. A hole is left on one side for a door, and a 

 notched pole serves as a ladder (see fig. 141, p. 137). Here 

 twelve or fifteen persons burrow through the winter, requiring 

 very little fire, as they generally eat their salmon raw, and 

 the place is warm from the numbers collected together, and 

 the absence of ventilation. In summer they use lodges made 

 of rushes or mats spread on poles. This tribe lives principally 

 on salmon, preferring it putrid. 



South of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and west of the Eocky 

 Mountains almost all the tribes seem to have grown more or 

 less maize. In the Carolinas and Virginia the Indians raised 

 large quantities, and "all relied on it as one of their fixed 

 means of subsistence/' -f The Delawares had extensive maize 

 fields at the time of the discovery of America. In 1527, 

 De Vaca saw it in small quantities in Florida, and De Soto, 

 twelve years later, found it abundant among the Muscogees, 

 Choctaws, Chickasaws, and Cherokees. On one occasion his 

 army marched through fields of it for a distance of two 

 leagues. It is known to have been cultivated by the Iroquois 

 in 1610, and, though only in small quantities, "by the hunter 

 communities of the Ohio, the Wabagh, the Miami, and the 

 Illinois," as well as by the natives along both banks of the 

 Mississippi. The evidences of ancient agriculture have been 

 already alluded to in the chapter on North American Archae- 

 ology; the maize appears to have been the only plant actually 

 under cultivation ; but some of the tribes depended for their 



* Kane's North American In- t Schoolcraft, 1. c. vol. i. p. 6. 

 <lians, p. 272 ; United States Ex- See also Richardson's Arctic Expe- 

 ploring Expedition, vol. iv. p. 452. dition, vol. ii. p. 51. 



