54 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



visitors had little use for those of stone here, as they came for hunting 

 and fishing, and not to till the soil. The Iroquois, who were an 

 agricultural people, used stone as little as possible, and made their 

 hoes and digging tools of wood or bone; mostly the former. In 

 Bruyas' Mohawk lexicon, about two centuries old, onarate is the 

 wooden hoe, but there is no word for spade, which they would only 

 use in digging post-holes, or pits for caches, where the hoe would be 

 quite as serviceable. In the early book called New England prospect, 

 it is said that part of the women's work was ' their planting of corne, 

 wherein they exceede our English husband-men, keeping it so clear 

 with their clamme shell-hooes, as if it were a garden rather than a 

 corne-field.' Loskiel said of the cultivation of corn ' They used 

 formerly the shoulder blade of a deer, or a tortoise-shell, sharpened 

 upon a stone, and fastened to a thick stick, instead of a hoe.' In 

 Van der Donck's New Netherlands' are interesting notes on points 

 connected with indian agriculture, although their implements are not 

 described. ' They say that their corn and beans were received from 

 the southern indians, who received their seed from a people who 

 resided still further south, which may well be true. . . The 

 maize may have been among the indians in the warm climate long 

 ago; however, our indians say that they did eat roots and the bark 

 of trees instead of bread, before the introduction of indian corn, or 

 maize/ They had beans before the whites came, and ' have a peculiar 

 way of planting them, which our people have learned to practise: 

 when the Turkish wheat, or as it is called, maize, is half a foot above 

 the ground, they plant the beans around it, and let them grow to- 

 gether. The coarse stalk serves as a bean prop, and the beans run 

 upon it.' The Onondagas have a pretty story about this. 



In the fall they burned over the places which they wished to plant 

 the next spring. There are many accounts of the large caches in 

 which they kept their corn, and these are yet found in many places, 

 while the corn itself is often plowed up. One piece of woodland in 

 Montgomery county is full of the open pits, but the Iroquois also 

 stored corn in boxes made of bark, and sometimes had vast amounts 

 of this. The cache method, however, was very common, and in the 

 pits both corn and beans were stored. In his early account of the 



