Early writers and travellers were lamentably negligent in recording many phases of Indian life which it would be desirable to know, especially those related to the economic activities of these primitive people. An undue amount of “historical divination” is required in arriving at satisfactory or even plausible conclusions concerning some of these matters. The real influence which aboriginal agriculture exercised upon the exploration, settlement, and development of the Western lands, is well worth our study. The new comer often received therefrom suggestions as to what crops would most likely flourish on the various soils and in the different rain-belts; not to mention the direct effect upon lines of supplies bought or stolen from the retreating tribes—these are interesting questions, but we must not expect much specific information concerning them. The methods of hunting and fighting; of making weapons, utensils, and implements; of dancing, singing, wooing, are all told by early chroniclers with painstaking minuteness and detail, but the products of the soil are noticed by them only in parenthetical phrases or general observations. There is hardly a line yet found, relating to the agricultural tools used, or the sort of ground chosen for fields—absolutely nothing as to yield, and next to nothing concerning the importance of these crops to the Indians themselves. For a long time the Sauk and Foxes had their principal villages near the Wisconsin River, at the east end of Sauk Prairie, just opposite the northwest corner of Dane County. These Indians were somewhat above the average of the tribes of this region in civilization; they lived in more compact and larger settlements, hence naturally depended more on their corn-fields than did their more nomadic neighbors to the west. Their corn was planted along the edge of the woods which fringe the Wisconsin, and this belt is choice corn-land to-day. Some small parts of it have been kept in grass from the time of the earlier white settlement, and in those places old Indian corn-hills may still be seen, the sod holding them in shape. The Indian cultivated the growing corn by hoeing toward the hill; and as this became the mellowest spot, the corn was planted each succeeding year in the same little mound, which grew to be a foot or more in height.