58 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



corn moist, but they supply materials for the celebrated Indian dish 

 called "mu-si-quatush," which has been changed into sucatush. At 

 the northwest wild rice was gathered and kept for winter use; and 

 Barlowe, who visited North Carolina in 1584, asserted that he saw 

 there "both wheat and oats." It is not improbable that oats were 

 found growing wild there, as they are known to grow wild on other 

 portions of the continent; but doubts may be entertained as to the 

 wheat. Possibly he saw some variety of the triticum, and, without 

 critical examination, pronounced it wheat. The sunflower was also 

 cultivated for its seeds, of which bread was made. 



"Mish-i-min," in the Algonquin tongue, signifies apple, although 

 it is the opinion of some learned writers that this fruit was unknown 

 among them before the arrival of the Europeans. Several old printed 

 compilations of early voyages, however, reckon apples among the 

 early native fruits; and Mr. Walcott, a distinguished Connecticut 

 magistrate, wrote in 1635 (certainly not more than five years after his 

 colony was first planted), "I made five hundred hogsheads of cider 

 out of my own orchard in one year." This would have been almost 

 impossible had he been obliged to raise his orchard from the seed, or 

 had he planted trees of such a size as could have been transported 

 through the trackless wilderness. Certainly the Indians had orchards 

 of cherries and of plums, large stores of which were dried for winter 

 use. Tobacco was everywhere cultivated, huge grapevines entwined 

 many a forest tree, and there was an abundance of berries in the woods. 

 Gourds were raised in great numbers. From the sap of the maple was 

 made a coarse-grained sugar. 



Such was the primitive agricultural life of the Indians. On many 

 a sunny slope now smiling with cultivation were their cheerless wig- 

 wams, their crabbed orchards, their ill-tilled corn patches. 



The English Puritans who settled in New England "left their 

 pleasant and beautiful homes in England to plant their poor cottages 

 in the wilderness," that they might worship God as revelation and 

 conscience might teach, and found a free agricultural state equal to 

 Palestine in its palmiest days, when Israel's kings had "herds of 

 cattle, both in the low country and on the plains, granaries for their 

 abundant crops, husbandmen .also, and vine-dressers in the moun- 

 tains." 



In England, agriculture has long been regarded as the most favor- 

 able occupation for the development of Christianity, and had, prior 

 to the Reformation, received the special attention of the clergy. 



