Important 
News 
about the 
Value o€ Fertility 
Hh? 
Authorities have estimated that from V3 to V2 of all 
our barnyard manure is absolutely wasted, the annual 
loss totaling about $800,000,000. This loss is not 
alone on poorly managed farms but it includes many 
that in other respects are operated efficiently. 
A Nebraska farmer reports this result of an experi¬ 
ment in manure spreading over a 3-year period— 
Six acres, manure spread by hand from a wagon box, 
average number of bushels of corn raised per year: 336. 
Six acres, manure spread evenly by a manure spreader, 
average number of bushels of corn raised per year: 420. 
Three-year gain in bushels of corn, by the use of a 
good manure spreader, on the 6-acre area: 252. 
3 McCormick-Deering manure spreaders put fertility 
# into the soil as it should be done. They are light 
in draft, strong and simple, yet with the right 
adjustments so that you can spread all kinds of 
manure, as heavy or light as you need it. 
Note these features: 
1. Auto Steer. 2. Front Wheels Track with Rear. 3. Two 
All-Steel Beaters. 4. Wide-Spread Spiral. 5. Narrow 
Tread. 6. Self-Aligning Bearings. 7. Steel Main Frame. 
8. Six Feed Speeds. 9* Positive Apron Drive. 
Built in two sizes to fit small or large farms. See the spreader and 
its practical features at the store of your McCormick-Deering dealer. 
International Harvester Company 
606 So. Michigan Ave. uJXwS) 
Chicago, Ill. 
McCormick-Deering 
Manure Spreaders 
Lays Them Out Clean 
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Babcock - Pugh before you order your 
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roller type, guides 
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COWING DIETRICH CO.. Inc. 
207 W Water St. Syracuse, N. Y. 
American Agriculturist, June 14, 1924 
Mississippi Beginnings 
The White and Indian Folks of Cattaraugus 
SUPPOSE I ought BY JARED VAN 
to confess that the 
above' title while literally and absolutely true is 
nevertheless very misleading. I wonder how 
many of us remember our “little red school- 
house” geography lessons well enough to know 
that there is a little corner of southwestern 
New York—a part of three counties—in 
which lie the headwaters of the Allegheny 
River, which in turn joins with the Mononga- 
hela to form the Ohio, which in due course 
mingles with the Father of Waters that 
finally, below far-off New Orleans, loses itself 
in the sea. So I watch the Allegheny, muddy 
and swollen with the melting snows swirling 
under the wide bridge that carries the Main 
Street of Salamanca, and I know that some of 
our New York State soil is drifting away to help 
build the mudbars and the delta of the Missis¬ 
sippi and I feel that our State may literally 
claim kinship with the Corn Belt. Even here 
at Salamanca the Allegheny is a very re¬ 
spectable river—as large, perhaps, as the Mo¬ 
hawk at Little Falls or Herkimer. So I like 
to please my fancy with the dream of how it 
would be possible to drop a canoe into the 
stream at this point and go drifting away past 
willow-grown gravel bars and mudbanks, 
under the shadows of rough mountains, by 
pastures where the cattle come down to drink 
from it, past busy Pittsburgh and Cincinnati 
down through the Corn Belt and by fields of 
cotton and cane until some day one would 
drift across the bar and rock to the blue rollers 
of the Gulf. What a trip it would make because 
it would be one of the longest river journeys in 
all the world. The very thought of it stirs up 
all our old primitive, dormant instincts of 
wanderlust and makes even a sober, busy, 
middle-aged farmer like myself wish that he 
might go adventuring. 
* * * 
Cattaraugus is one of the half-dozen biggest 
counties of the State. Of course St. Lawrence 
is in a class all by itself so far as acreage is 
concerned and then comes a group of four or 
five others of very nearly the same size. 
Geologically there is one respect in which it is 
absolutely unique among the counties of the 
State, because it contains the only bit of land 
in the State that is unglaciated. There are a 
few square miles in the southern part along the 
Pennsylvania line mainly in the townships of 
South Valley and Red House which were never 
covered by the glacial ice sheet, or at least this 
is what is told us by the wise men who can 
read the story written in the stony pages of the 
rocks. This particular region, by the way, is 
almost without agricultural value or possibili¬ 
ties. In the popular phrase it is useful merely 
for the purpose of holding the rest of the world 
together. There are only two counties of the 
State which produce petroleum — Allegany and 
Cattaraugus. It is an old field developed many 
years ago and its boom days are past but the 
old wells are still pumped and continue to 
yield moderate quantities of crude oil which is 
the world standard for high quality. 
Most of Cattaraugus County is typical of the 
Southern Tier country. It is high up in the 
air — some of it 2,000 feet or more—which means 
pretty snug winters and a summer where the 
short season varieties of corn do best. In this 
respect it is not as fortunate as the more 
easterly Southern Tier counties. On the 
whole, however, it is very much less rough and 
broken than the Catskill country and except 
in the south is quite free from large stone. A 
good deal of it might be called fair tractor land. 
The northern towns seem to me to have some¬ 
thing of the roll and look of western New 
York, but like the rest of that part of the 
State, the most outstanding agricultural 
trouble is deficiency of lime. I have not found 
WAGENEN, JR. any place where men 
could tell me that 
alfalfa was really at Home naturally. 
It is probably true that Cattaraugus County 
is rather nearer to the pioneer period than any 
other section of our State unless it be thel 
Adirondacks. The first settler came to Olean 
in 1807, at which date our old Hudson River 
and Mohawk Valley counties were pretty 
well occupied. These early settlers in Cat¬ 
taraugus County found magnificent forests of 
pine and hemlock but the soft wood is all gone. 
I can remember when the hills around Port- 
ville were thickly sprinkled with the pine 
stumps. In talking with the oldest men in a 
community one is impressed by the fact that 
their memory seems to go back somewhere 
toward the beginning of things—something 
that is surely not true in old eastern New 
York. 
In 1851 the Erie Railroad came to the county 
and pushed on across it to its western terminus 
at Dunkirk on Lake Erie. It was then the 
longest and most famous railroad in the world. 
Having completely cleaned up all the pine 
and hemlock the county is now busily engaged 
in cutting off the sugar-bushes of which there 
are a large number. Rather recently maple 
has come to be eagerly sought after for veneer, 
shoe last-blocks and mangle-rolls. The best 
maple is now bringing $35 per thousand feet 
measured “in the round” and when you 
remember that the farmer has no saw-mil! bill 
to pay there is real clean money in a grove of 
several hundred trees. Of course this means 
the finish forever of the most delicious sw T eet 
that man has ever discovered and at first 
thought it seems too bad, but the hard logic of 
the situation is that a good maple tree may be 
cut and sold and the annual interest on the 
money it will bring will be more than the gross 
amount that can be secured by tapping it. 
By the way, here is a remarkable fact. 
Almost any of our old eastern counties have 
left more really good timber than can be found 
in Cattaraugus. I think the reason is that we 
began to realize the value of a tree and thus 
became conservationists before the days of the 
portable saw-mill. Our own Hillside Farm was 
cleared about to its present extent before the 
white man ever sounded the axe in southwestern 
New York, but after all these years it still re¬ 
tains a fairly good assortment of timber of all 
native kinds. The newer counties were settled 
after lumber became of value and the lumber¬ 
man preceded the farmer and skinned the 
forests and made too thorough a job of it. 
* * * 
Doubtless the most interesting feature of the 
country is the Allegany Indian Reservation. 
This ancient grant is a tract something more 
than a mile wide and it follows the windings 
of the Allegheny River, lying on both sides of 
the stream for about thirty-five miles. The 
reason for its peculiar shape is that the Indians 
chose the land along the river in order that 
they might enjoy the fishing and hunting rights. 
Doubtless at that time the river abounded in 
fish but now much of the time it carries an 
iridescent scum of petroleum and it is said to 
be practically destitute of fish life, a story 
that is true of very many beautiful water 
courses. 
Perhaps there are more Indians remaining 
in the State than is generally realized. There 
are at least eight different “reservations” 
scattered from eastern Long Island to Lake 
Erie and to the extreme north on the Canadian 
line. These reservations aggregate more than 
eighty-seven thousand acres, of which about 
one-third is reported as being under cultivation. 
Their total population is slightly less than 
5,000, a pitiful remnant of the people who are 
('Continued on page 557) 
*• . . . and go drifting away past willow-grown gravel bars, . . by pastures where the cattle 
come down to drink . . . down through the corn belt and by fields of cotton and cane until some 
day one would drift across the bar and rock to the blue rollers of the gulf.” 
1 
