312 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919, 
MIGRATION TO NEW LANDS. 
The nearest approaches to plowing by native methods in America 
were made in Peru and in Central America, but in both regions 
tillage agriculture appears to have been confined to the high plateaus, 
and is not known to have extended to the tropical lowlands. Most 
of the natives of America had not advanced beyond the milpa stage. 
Except in Peru, the agricultural Indians of America had no beasts 
of burden, and even the llama was not used as a draft animal to 
assist in the cultivation of the land. The permanent terrace agri- 
culture of the maize belt of Peru and the still more laborious turf- 
land cultivation of the high-altitude potato belt are examples of 
specialized systems that replaced milpa agriculture in limited areas. 
Tillage and the use of fertilizers were regularly practiced in Peru, 
as well as the reclamation of arid valleys by irrigation through long 
canals very difficult to construct in precipitous mountain valleys. 
Large areas of permanently productive artificial lands were made by 
terracing, filling, and covering the surface with a thick layer of 
fertile soil. The terrace system was applied both to steep slopes and 
to the bottoms of the valleys, with the stream beds straightened, nar- 
rowed, and walled in. 
Instead of improving their methods and making their agriculture 
more intensive by tillage, cultivation, guano, irrigation, and terrac- 
ing, as practiced in ancient Peru, the Indians of Central America 
used the milpa system more extensively, and this plan is still followed. 
People who have exhausted neighboring lands go farther out until 
they find good soil for milpas, sometimes 50 miles or more from their 
ancestral villages, and carry the crops home on their backs. More 
traveling is done instead of more farm labor, and the people are 
inured to the carrying of heavy loads, in which they show remarkable 
strength and endurance. To bring in the harvest from the distant 
milpa may require several trips by the whole family. Forty man 
loads of maize were considered as a normal supply for a family, 
according to Bishop Landa, whe wrote of the Mayas of Yucatan 
about 1566. The mecapal, a woven band or strip of leather across 
the forehead to support the load on the back, is a characteristic 
feature of this long-distance milpa agriculture. Even a young child 
wears his little mecapal and carries a small bag of corn. 
Although agriculture is always considered a settled existence, in 
comparison with hunting or pastoral life, milpa agriculture is in a 
sense nomadic, from the need of moving about in order to find lands 
suitable for planting. Like wandering shepherds, the same tribe 
might come back after decades or centuries to reoccupy a region that 
their forefathers had deforested and abandoned. Thus a succession 
of agricultural occupations is indicated in some districts in Central 
SS  ———S ss  - 
