IROQUOIS USES OF MAIZE 21 



III IROQUOIS CUSTOMS OF CORN CULTIVATION 



I Land clearing and the division of labor. Land for corn-i 

 fields was cleared by girdling the trees in the spring, and allowing 

 them to die. The next spring the underbrush was burned off. By 

 burning off tracts in the forests large clearings were made suitable 

 for fields and towns. Early travelers in western New York called 

 these clearings " oak openings." ^ Certain tracts, however, seem 

 always to have been open lands and it is a mistake to believe that 

 the country was entirely wooded. 



Van der Donck v/as much impressed by the " bush burnings " of 

 the Indians of New Netherlands and records that they present a 

 '' grand and subhme appearance." ^ Unless the tr^es were girdled 

 or dead they were not ordinarily injured by the '' bush burning." 



The work of girdling the trees ^ and of burning the underbrush 

 v/as that of the men.* With the tall trees girdled and the under- 

 brush burned off it was an easy matter to scrape up the soft loam 

 and plant the corn but the field was not considered in fit form until 

 the small shrubbery and weeds had been subdued. Fields with 

 standing dead trees were not regarded as safe after the first year 



^See Ketchum. Buffalo and the Senecas, 1:17-19, Cf. Dwight. Travels 

 in New England and New York 



2 Van der Donck. New Netherlands. Amsterdam 1656. 



3 La Potherie. Paris 1722, 3 :i8. 



4 Sagard in his Voyages des Hurons has left us a good description of 

 this work among the Hurons. The translation which follows is taken from 

 Carr's Mounds of the Mississippi Valley. 



" The Indians belt (coupent) the trees about two or three feet from the 

 ground, then they trim off all the branches and burn them at the foot of the 

 tree in order to kill it and afterwards they take away the roots. This being 

 done, the women carefully clean up the ground between the trees and at every 

 step they dig a round hole, in which they sow 9 or 10 grains of maize which 

 they have first carefully soaked for some days in water." 



Peter Kalm, whose observations of Indian usages were accurate and 

 detailed, records: 



" The chief use of their [stone] hatchets was according to the unani- 

 mous accounts of all the Swedes to make good fields for maize-plantations ; 

 for if the ground VN^here they intended to make a maize-field was covered 

 with trees they cut off the bark all round the trees with their hatchets, 

 especially at the time when they lost their sap. By that means the tree be- 

 comes dry and could not take any more norishment and the leaves could 

 no longer obstruct the rays of the sun from passing. The smaller trees 

 v/ere pulled out by main force, and the ground was turned up with crooked 

 or sharp branches." Kalm, 515, Pinkerton's Voyages 



