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Evidences of a Fixed Cultivation at an Antique
Period
Prairie-Fields
What proportion of the prairies of the West
may be assigned as falling under the
inference of having been abandoned fields,
may constitute a subject of general
speculation. It appears to be clear that the
great area of the prairies proper is
independent of that cause. Fire is the
evident cause of the denudation of trees and
shrubs in a large part of the area between
the Rocky and the Alleghany mountains. Water
comes in for a share of the denudation in
valleys and moist prairies, which may be
supposed to be the result of a more recent
emergence from its former influence. But
there is a third and limited class of
prairies, or openings, in the forest
regions, which may well be examined with a
view to this question. Portions of the
western valleys are clearly referable to
this class.
We submit evidences of such former
cultivation in a paper on the antique garden
beds, as they have been called, in Indiana
and Michigan, and some remarks on the origin
and extent of the cultivation of the zea
maize, as drawn from the Indian traditions.
Remains of Antique Garden-Beds, and
Extensive Fields of Horticultural Labor,
in
the Primitive Prairies of the West.
The history of man, in his state of
dispersion over the globe, is little more
than a succession of advances and
declensions, producing altered types of
barbarism and civilization. In what
particular grade of either of these types
the Indian race were, on reaching the shores
of this continent, is unknown, or to be
judged of, chiefly, by their monuments and
remains of ancient art and industry. That
they, like most of the great Shemitic stock
who peopled Asia, had undergone great
transitions, rising and falling in the scale
of comparative civilization, as they
developed themselves in the vast, and, as to
their origin, indefinite area of land and
ocean stretching between the banks of the
Euphrates and the Mississippi, is apparent.
They were found, at the discovery of
America, as hunters.
With what actual state of knowledge they had
reached this continent, or if as nomads or
hunters, to what height of civilization any
part of them had attained after reaching it,
and before the discovery, are questions
which would hardly have been asked with
respect to tribes in the northern latitudes,
had it not been for the mounds, earth-works,
and other monumental vestiges, overgrown
with forest, which were found on the
settlement of the Mississippi Valley. Every
disclosure in our antiquities, which tends
to shed light on this subject is important;
and it is under this view that I submit the
accompanying drawings (Plates 6 and
7) of
some curious antique garden-beds, or traces
of ancient field-husbandry, which appear to
denote an ancient period of fixed
agriculture in the prairie regions of the
West. These vestiges of a state of industry
which is far beyond any that is known to
have existed among the ancestors of the
present Indian tribes, exist chiefly, so far
as is known, in the south-western parts of
Michigan, and the adjoining districts of
Indiana. They extend, so far as observed,
over the level and fertile prairie-lands for
about one hundred and fifty miles, ranging
from the source of the Wabash, and of the
west branch of the Miami of the Lakes, to
the valleys of the St. Joseph's, the
Kalamazoo, and the Grand River of Michigan.
The Indians represent them to extend from
the latter point, up the peninsula north to
the vicinity of Michillimackinac. They are
of various sizes, covering, generally, from
twenty to one hundred acres. Some of them
are reported to embrace even three hundred
acres. As a general fact, they exist in the
richest soil, as it is found in the prairies
and burr oak plains. In the latter case,
trees of the largest kind are scattered over
them, but, in the greater number of cases,
the preservation of their outlines is due to
the prairie-grass, which forms a compact sod
over them as firm and lasting as if they
were impressed in rock; indeed, it is
believed by those who have examined the
grass which has preserved the western mounds
and earth-works, that the compact prairie
sod which covers them is more permanent in
its qualities than even the firmest
sandstone and limestone of the West, the
latter of which are known to crumble and
waste, with a marked rapidity, under the
combined influence of rain, frost, and other
atmospheric phenomena of the climate. As
evidence of this, it is asserted that the
numerous mounds, embankments, and other
forms of western antiquities, are as perfect
at this day, where they have not been
disturbed by the plough or excavations, as
they were on the earliest discovery of the
country.
The annexed drawings (Plates 6 and
7) exhibit
plats and sections of these antique beds,
from the Grand River and St. Joseph Valleys,
of Michigan. They were taken from
undisturbed parts of the mixed forests and
prairie lands near those primary streams.
Those from Grand River, were taken near
Thomas Station, in 1827; those from the St.
Josephs, from a point near the village of
Three Rivers, in 1837. They certainly offer
new and unique traits in our antiquities,
denoting a species of cultivation in elder
times of an unusual kind, but which has been
abandoned for centuries. They are called
"garden beds," in common parlance, from the
difficulty of assimilating thorn to anything
else; though it would be more proper,
perhaps, to consider them as the vestiges of
ancient field labor. The areas are too large
to admit the assumption of their being
required for the purposes of ordinary
horticulture. Plats of land so extensive as
some of these were, laid out for mere
gardens or pleasure grounds, would
presuppose the existence, at the unknown
period of their cultivation, of buildings
and satrapies, or chieftaindoms of arbitrary
authority over the masses, of which there is
no other evidence. The other antiquarian
proofs of the region are, indeed, of the
simplest and least imposing kind; not
embracing large mounds, or the remains of
field fortifications unless we are to
consider these horticultural labors of the
table-prairie lands as having existed
contemporaneously with, and as appendant
settlements of, the principal ancient
defended towns and strong-holds of the Ohio
Valley.
The principal points of inquiry are, by whom
and at what period were these beds
constructed and tilled, and whether by the
ancestors of the existing race of Indians,
by their predecessors, or by a people
possessing a higher degree of fixed
civilization? In most of the other
antiquarian earth-works, or remains of human
labors of the west, we observe no greater
degree of art or skill than may be daily
attributed to hunter races, who are
infringed upon by neighboring tribes, and
combine for the purpose of defense against
hand-to-hand missiles, such as hilltops
surrounded with earthen walls and palisades.
But there is, in these enigmatical plats of
variously shaped beds, generally consisting
of rows, evidence of an amount of fixed
industry applied to agriculture, which is
entirely opposed to the theory that the
laborers were nomades, or hunters.
So far as my knowledge extends, the area of
country marked by these evidences of a
horticultural population, cover the tract
from the headwaters of the Wabash and the
Miami of the Lakes, to the eastern shores of
Lake Michigan. Similar beds are said to
extend elsewhere. The beds are of various
sizes. Nearly all the lines of each area or
sub-area of beds are rectangular and
parallel. Others admit of half-circles, and
variously curved beds with avenues, and are
differently grouped and disposed. The mode
of formation indicates two species of
culture. The first consists of convex rows,
whose arches spring from the same bases in
opposite directions, as seen in Figures 1
and 4,
Plate 6.
In the other kind, the bases of the convex
rows are separated by a path, or plain, as
shown in figures 2 and 3,
Plate 6.
Both the plain and the convex beds are
uniformly of the same width. If the space
between the beds is to be viewed as a path,
from which to weed or cultivate the convex
bed, the idea is opposed by the comparative
waste of land denoted by a perfect equality
of width in the beds and paths. Besides,
there are no such paths in the larger masses
of rows, which are wholly convex, but are
bounded by avenues or paths at considerable
distances. The principal species of culture
resembling this arrangement of beds, in
modern horticulture, consists of beans,
potatoes, and rice; that of celery requires,
not a path separating the ridges, but a
ditch. Indian corn may have been cultivated
in rows. The former and the present mode, as
far as we know, was in hills. These antique
corn-hills were usually large. They were, as
the Iroquois informed me in 1845, three or
four times the diameter of the modern hills;
a size which resulted from the want of a
plough. In consequence of this want, the
same hill was mellowed by the scapula or
substitute for a hoe, or instrument used for
planting, during a succession of years. Thus
the corn-hill became large and distinct, and
in fact a hillock. This is an explanation,
given me while viewing the ancient
cornfields, near the Oneida stone,1 which
are now overgrown with forest trees.
These ancient garden-beds of the West may
have derived their permanency from the same
want of agricultural implements and of
horses and cattle to plough the land, and
from the practice of reforming and
replanting them by hand, in the Indian
manner, year after year. In this manner, we
may account for one of their most surprising
traits, namely, their capacity to have
resisted both the action of the elements and
the disturbing force of the power of
vegetation.2
Rev. Isaac M Coy cut down, in 1827, an oak
tree, on one of the beds (figured in Plate
6, Fig. 2), which measured thirty-eight
inches in diameter, at the height of
twenty-six inches above the ground, and
which denoted three hundred and twenty-five
cortical layers. This would, agreeably to
admitted principles in the progress of
vegetation, give A. D. 1502, as the date of
the first annual circle, or cortical ring
deposited by the tree. The continent was
discovered ten years before this assumed
date. Cabot ran down the north Atlantic
coast, it is true, five years later, but did
not land. Cartier first entered the Gulf of
St. Lawrence in 1534. But he left no man in
the country, during that or the next year,
when he ascended the river; and the Indians
of whom he inquired respecting the sources
of the St. Lawrence, told him that these
sources were very remote, that the waters
expanded into several large lakes, and that
no man had been heard of, who had ever gone
to their source. Quebec was founded in 1625.3 Sir Walter Raleigh sent his first colony
to Virginia in 1584, although a colony was
not permanently settled till 1610. The
Holland States began their first exploratory
efforts under Hudson, in the present area of
New York, in 1609. Historians have fixed on
1608, as the date of the first effort of the
French to colonize Canada. The English
Pilgrim Fathers, from Holland, followed the
track of Hudson, in 1620, intending, it
appears, to enter the great river he had
discovered, but landed at Plymouth.4 From
none of these sources could an agricultural
population, whose labors appear to have
terminated in Indiana and Michigan about
1500, have probably proceeded.
The Spanish element of early American
population is equally inadequate,
chronologically, to have furnished an
off-shoot of population for labors prior to,
or near the assumed date of these industrial
monuments. Although Vespucio discovered the
coast of Paria in 1497, and the extended
shores of Brazil and Paraguay in 1503, he
landed not a soul on either coast. It was
not till 1512 that De Leon discovered
Florida. Orijaba first landed on the gulf
coasts of Mexico in 1518. Cortez followed
him in 1519. The mouth of the Mississippi
was passed, in the coast explorations of the
gulf, in 1527, late in the autumn; but it
was not till 1539 that De Soto penetrated
Florida, and reached an interior point on
the Mississippi. All this while, we are to
suppose, on the foreign hypothesis of the
origin of these beds, that the horticultural
and agricultural labors of the natives of
Indiana and south-western Michigan, the
vestiges of which are herein noticed, were
carried on by a population which, according
to one authority,5 equaled that of Indiana
at the period of the observation. Let it be
borne in mind, at the same time, that the
French from Canada did not penetrate the
area of the great Lakes till 1632, when
Sagard reached Lake Huron; nor go into upper
Louisiana till 1673, when Marquette entered
the Mississippi, at the mouth of the
Wisconsin; that La Salle did not visit
Illinois till 1678; that the settlement at
Bolixi, on the Gulf, was not made till 1699;
that Detroit was not founded till 1701, and
New Orleans not till 1717. With these data
in the mind, the idea of these antique
agricultural labors being attributable to
either of these modern elements of western
population will appear as quite untenable.
Besides, both the Spanish and French
population, when they first appeared at
remote interior points west of the
Alleghanies, did not come to undertake
agricultural labors at those unsustained
interior points, far less to plant extensive
gardens and pleasure-grounds, like those
whose vestiges we see in the valleys of the
Grand River, Kalamazoo, and Elkheart. De
Leon, Cortez, and De Soto came to seek new
elements of commerce and trade, and to find
treasures in the untilled portions of the
continent, in its gold and silver, furs and
dye-woods, medicinal plants, and other
spontaneous productions of the American
forests. Agriculture became only an incident
in these schemes for discovery and conquest;
and was merely resorted to, in the end, to
sustain life, and not as furnishing articles
of export. But what should induce foreigners
to undertake labor on the remote interior
tablelands of Indiana and Michigan? Furs and
the fur-trade were the only leading source
of easy commerce there, and this was not
introduced till the first quarter of the
sixteenth century.
We are compelled to look to an earlier
period for the origin of these agricultural
vestiges. It is more probable that they are
the results of early cultivation, in some of
the leading and more advanced indigenous
races who possessed those midland regions
between the Mississippi and the Lakes. It
was a region, which formerly abounded in
game of various sorts; and while a part of
the season was employed in
hunting, a heavy population, such as the
vestiges denote, provided breadstuff s by
the culture of corn, beans, pulse, and
various esculent roots, which are known to
flourish in these latitudes.
That this people were not advanced beyond
the state of semi-agriculturalists appears
probable, from the want of any remaining
evidences in architecture or temple-worship,
such as marked the Mexican and Peruvian
races; for, beyond the occurrence of mounds
of the minor class, or small tumuli, there
are no evidences of their attainment as
constructors or builders. The garden-beds,
and not the mounds, form, indeed, the most
prominent, and by far the most striking and
characteristic antiquarian monuments of this
district of country. There would seem to
have been some connection between these beds
and the peculiar class of low imitative
mounds, in the form of animals, which mark a
very considerable area of the opposite side
of Lake Michigan.
Lake Michigan is, indeed, remarkable for its
protrusion from north to south, for its
entire length, into the prairie regions of
Indiana and Illinois. It occupies, in truth,
a summit; and while its outlet is into Lake
Huron north, and thus by the lake chain and
the St. Lawrence into the north Atlantic,
the Illinois runs south from its immediate
head, and finds the ocean in the Gulf of
Mexico. The ancient garden-beds, and the
animal-shaped mounds, the latter of which
may be supposed to have been erected to
perpetuate the memory of great hunters, who
bore the names of the animals imitated,
occupy the same latitudes. They constitute
some of the best corn latitudes of Michigan
and Wisconsin. It is to be borne in mind
that the waters of Lake Michigan alone
separate these two classes of remains, and
that the northern tribes, who are bold and
expert canoe-men, find no difficulty in
crossing from shore to shore in the calm
summer months.
The French found the eastern and southern
shores of Lake Michigan in the possession of
the Illinese, some of whose descendants
still survive in the Peorias and the
Kaskaskias, south-west of the Mississippi.
These " Illinese " tribes were of the
generic stock of the Algonquins, and did not
exceed the others in agricultural skill.
None of the early writers speak of, or
allude to the species of cultivation of
which the horticultural beds, under
consideration, are the vestiges. The
Ottowas, who still inhabit parts of the
country, as at Gun Lake, Ottowa Colony, and
other places dependent on Grand River,
attribute these beds to a people whom they
and the united Chippewas call the
Mushcodainsug, or Little Prairie Indians.
But there is no evidence that this people
possessed a higher degree of industry than
themselves. The Ottowas did not enter Lake
Michigan till after their defeat in the St.
Lawrence Valley, along with the other
Algonquins, about the middle of the
sixteenth century. The trees growing on the
beds throughout southern Michigan and
Indiana denote clearly that, at that period,
the cultivation had been long abandoned. It
was evidently of a prior period. It has been
seen that it could not have been of European
origin, if we confine our view to known or
admitted periods of history. It is more
reasonable to attribute the labor to races
of Indians of an early period, and of a more
advanced grade of industry and manners, who
were yet, however, to a certain extent,
hunters. Are not these beds cotemporary
vestiges of the epoch of the mound builders,
if not interior positions of the people
themselves, who have so placed their
fortified camps, or hill-seated outposts, as
generally to defend their agricultural
settlements from the approaches of enemies
from the South?
The charm of mystery is so great, that men
are apt to be carried away with it, and to
seek in the development of unknown or
improbable causes for the solution of
phenomena, which are often to be found in
plainer and more obvious considerations.
That this charm has thrown its spell, to
some extent, around the topic of our western
antiquities, cannot be denied.
1. This stone, which I visited in 1845, is a
boulder of syenite one of the erratic block
group.
2. This force is far less in the temperate
latitudes than under the equinoxes, where
Mr. Stephens represents it as displacing
stones in a wall.
3. This was eleven years after the building
of Fort Orange, at the present site of
Albany, N. Y.
4. Foreign Historical Documents, State
Department, Albany, N. Y.
5. Vide letter of Mr. M Coy.
Archives Of
Aboriginal Knowledge
Archives Of Aboriginal
Knowledge, Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1860
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