406 DEPOSIT OF AGRICULTURAL FLINT IMPLEMENTS. 



lleturning to my former suLject, I will observe tliat tlie occurrence of Indian 

 flint tools wliicli served for agricultural purposes is not more surprising than 

 that ofother stone implements indicating less peaceable pursuits; for it is known 

 that many of the aboriginal tribes of North America raised maize and other nutri- 

 tious plants before this continent was settled by Europeans.* The production 

 of maize, indeed, must have been considerable. Mr. Gallatin has taken some pains 

 to ascertain the area, east of the Rocky Mountains, and north of Mexico, over* 

 which cultivation extended. It was bounded on the east by the Atlantic; 

 on the simth l)y the Gulf of Mexico ; on the west by the Mississippi, or, 

 more properly, by the prairies. Towards the north the limits varied accord- 

 ing to the climate ; but near the Atlantic the northern boundar}^ of agriculture 

 lav in the region of the rivers Kennebec and Penobscot. North of the Great 

 Lakes agriculture was only found among the Hurons and some kindred tribes. 

 The Ojibways, on the south of Lake Superior, and their neighbors, the Meno- 

 monies, it appears, depended for vegetable food principally on the wild rice or 

 wild oats, called /b?/c avoine by the French. t The Iruqucjis tribes raised large 

 quantities of Indian corn. In the year 1687, a corps under the command of the 

 IVIarquis de Nonville made an invasion into the country of the Senecas, during 

 which all their supplies of maize Avere either burned or otherwise spoiled, and 

 the quantity thus destroyed is said to have amounted to 400,000 minots, or 

 1,200,000 bushels.f Though this estimate may be somewdiat exaggerated, it 

 nevertheless shows that these tribes paid much attention to the cultivation of 

 maize. 



The nations who inhabited the large territories fonnerly called Florida and 

 Louisiana, probably obtained their food mostl}' from the vegetable kingdom. 

 They cultivated chiefly maize, beans, peas, pumpkins, melons, and sweet pota- 

 toes. Maize, however, was their principal produce. In the accounts of De 

 Soto's expedition, not only frequent allusion is made to the extensive maize fields 

 of the natives, but it may also be gathered from these relations that the army of 

 De Soto would have starved without the supplies of Indian corn obtained from 

 the inhabitants. These people laid up stores of that useful cereal, and among 

 other facts it is mentioned that one of De Soto's officers found in one house 

 alone, five hundred measures of maize ground to meal, besides a large quantity 

 in grain. § But those southern tribes met by De Soto and his followers in tho 

 sixteenth century were the most advanced among the North American aborig- 

 ines. No longer in the pure hunter state, but attached to the soil, they lived iw 

 large villages, consisting of dwellings more commodious than those of the ruder 

 tribes, and paid generally more attention to the comforts of life than the latter. 

 Adair, who spent during the last century many years as a trader in the dis- 

 trict under notice, mentions that the French of West Florida and the English 

 colonists obtained from the Indians ditferent sorts of beans and peas, with which 

 they were before entirely unacquainted. They raised also a small kind of tobacco, 

 diflering from that in use among the French and English settlers. The women, 

 be says, planted pumpkins and difierent species of melons in separate fields, at 

 a considerable distance from the towns. || It is even probable that the former 

 inhabitants cultivated fruit trees. Bartram, at least, found in Georgia and Ala- 

 bama, on the sites of ancient Indian settlements, various kinds of trees, such as 



* Some of the facts mentioned iu the following remarks were alrea''y given in my previous 

 article, published in the Smithsonian report fur lh'(53; I repeat them here, for tlie sake of 

 greater completeness, in connection with some additional details bearing upon the same 

 subject. For descriptions of the remarkable "garden-beds " of Michigan, Wisconsin, and 

 Indiana, which indicate an ancient cultivation, I must refer to Schoolcraft, Lapham, and 

 others. 



t Gallatin, Archseologia Americana, Vol. II, p. 149. 



t Documentary History of New York, Vol. I, p. 23S. 



§ Garcilasso de la Vega, Couquete de la Floride. Leyden, 1731, Vol. I, p. 250. 



II Adair, History of the American Indiaus. London, 1775, p. 408. 



