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20
THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE
done by the women and children with hoes made from clam shells and the shoulder blades of the bear and moose, we are forced to realize that they were a remarkably industrious people, and that, had they known the use of metals, they would have compared most favorably in productive ability with the Europeans who came to supplant them.
The cultured methods of the Indians have been but little changed by modern agriculture, and one tool of their invention, the "husking peg," is still in use wherever corn is harvested by "armstrong" methods, a fact that the boys of the A. W. O. are likely to appreciate.
An eminent writer on agriculture gives the following agricultural achievements of the Indians:
- They reproduced wild plants under control.
- They propagated cultivated varieties of wild plants.
- They practiced plant breeding by seed selection.
- They planted seeds in hills, to give light, soil space and room for cultivation.
- They used crop fertilizers, such as fish buried in the hill with the seeds.
- They practiced good tillage.
- They practiced clean cultivation.
- They practiced multiple cropping (corn, beans, sunflowers, etc., in the same field.)
- They made clearings by girdling and burning.
- They invented the corn crib.
- They discovered the narcotic effect of tobacco.
- They cured tobacco by artificial heat.
- They made syrup and sugar by evaporating sap.
