Notes on the Iroquois: or, Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-YorkSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
Notes on the Iroquois: or, Contributions to the Statistics, Aboriginal History, Antiquities and General Ethnology of Western New-York
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America -- New York (State); Iroquois Indians
Horticulture, to some extent, and in a limited sense, was always an
incident to the hunter state among these tribes, so far, at least,
as we are acquainted with their history. They brought the zea maize
with them, we must concede, on their early migration to the banks of
the Mohawk, and the Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca basins; for
this grain is conceded, on all hands, to be a tropical, or at least
a southern plant, and if so, it reveals the general course of their
migration. It is of indigenous origin, and was not known to Europe
before the discovery. We learned the mode of cultivation from them,
and not they from us. This grain became the basis of their fixity of
population, in the 14th or 15th centuries, and capacity to undertake
military enterprises. It was certainly cultivated in large fields,
in their chief locations, and gave them a title to agriculturists;
but it is equally certain that they had a kind of bean, perhaps the
same called _frijoles_ by the early Spaniards, and some species of
_cucurbita_. These were cultivated in gardens.
The tables will show a general and considerable advance, or any
probable assumed basis, of the cultivation of corn. We cannot consider
this species of cultivation, however, as any characteristic evidence
of advance in agriculture, while the more general introduction of it,
and the harvesting of large fields of it, by separate families, is
undoubtedly to be considered so. Taking the item of corn as the test,
another and an important result will be perceived. In proportion as the
cereales are cultivated, the average quantity of corn is diminished;
and these are the very cases where, at the same time, the degree of
civilization is most apparent in other things.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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