232 Indian Corn and the Indian. [March, 
Peach stones were among the articles ordered by the Governor 
and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England in 
1629. In 1683 Wm. Penn speaks of the Indian orchards of 
peaches about Philadelphia as bearing great abundance of fruit 
“ not inferior to any peach you have in England, except the true 
Newington.” Hilton, in 1664, speaks of peaches abounding in 
Florida, and Du Pratz, in his history of Louisiana, 1758, says the 
natives had doubtless got their peach trees from the English col- 
ony of Carolina before the French established themselves in 
Louisiana, and says that they were of the clingstone variety. In 
the destruction of the Indian settlement at Geneva, N. Y., by 
Gen. Sullivan in 1779, peaches are enumerated in Major Beatty's 
account of a near town called Kershong. Among the Indian 
products destroyed in this invasion, apple, pear and plum trees 
are also distinctly mentioned, and so remarkable was the town of 
Kendaia for its orchards, that it was called Apple-town. Wm. 
Bartram, in his travels in the South about 1773, speaks of the 
carefully formed orange groves of the Indians, and in one place 
of a cultivated plantation of shellbark hickory. The settlers of 
Michigan, in 1805, found here and there about the State orchards 
of seedling apple trees planted by the Indians, and which, though 
of great age, were healthy and productive. We thus see that the 
Indians were willing to exercise a forethought in growing plants 
which would produce only a long time after being planted. 
The cultivation of the potato was first introduced into New 
England in 1719, and its growing as a field crop is first men- 
tioned at Salem, Mass., in 1762. In 1779, on the authority of 
Moses Fellows, sergeant of the 3d N. H. regiment, under Gen. 
Sullivan, the soldiers destroyed, on Sept. 9, at the present Gen- 
eva, N. Y., the crops of the Indians, which included “ corn, beans, 
peas, squashes, potatoes, onions, turnips, cabbages, cucumbers, 
watermelons, carrots and parsnips.” 
Our citations are sufficient to call attention to the agricultural 
tendencies of the Indian population of North America, and jus- 
in their analyses our first remark, that where the circum- 
stances of climate and soil were favorable, and where the tribal 
strength was sufficient to protect the crops, the Indians were 
apparently a people who might properly be termed agricultural. 
It is this agricultural feature of the Indian character which 
oe tended to develop the many varieties and agricultural species of 
