ROCKY MOUNTAIN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 53 
and in their manner of constructing movable wigwams 
or comparatively permanent villages of family lodges, 
communal houses, and in their modes of life as con- 
trasted with the purely nomadic habits of hunting and 
fishing tribes."^ 
and part of the hips were naked. The young warrior, instead of 
being abashed by this nudity, was proud of his Indian-like dress. In 
some few instances I have seen them go into places of public worship 
in this dress." 
^ It is a fact deserving of remembrance that the world is indebted 
to Americi for two of its most important articles of food, maize or 
Indian corn, and the potato, now commonly called the Irish potato. 
Corn, beans, peas, melons and many roots were cultivated by the 
Indians in North America when first visited by Europeans. That 
now staple article of commerce and luxury of the world, tobacco, was 
a'so planted and extensively used by the Indians of North America. 
Du Pratz, an accurate observer and a resident of the Lower Missis- 
sippi for fifteen years, in his history of Louisiana, gives an account of 
the great quantities of corn grown by the Natchez Indians. He was 
living among them in 1720, and at one time received from them 
twenty barrels of maize of one hundred and fifty pounds each." He 
also describes the fruitfulness of the soil, the fine crops of potatoes, 
(possibly the sweet potato), beans, melons, and other vegetables and 
grains cultivated by the Indians. Agriculture was also carried on in 
Virginia and North Carolina to a very considerable extent. 
Smith, in his History of Virginia, vol. I, p. 131, says : " Their houses 
are in the midst of their fields or gardens, which are small plots or 
ground, some twenty acies, some forty, some one hundred, some two 
hundred, some more and some less. In some places from two to fifty 
of their houses are together, or but little separated by groups oftrees." 
On page 191 in the same volume he tells us that in September, 1608, 
he received from the Nansamond Indians at one time four hundred 
baskets full of corn. And when the infant colony was suffering 
from want of provisions, the Chickahominy Indians furnished him 
with one hundred bushels. Great heaps of corn, he says, were to 
be seen in the villages of the Kekoughtan and other tribes. The early 
colonists had from time to time received corn and other provisions 
from Powhatan and his subjects along the James River. 
