Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 179, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1917 — Now Red Man Solved Food Problem of His Day [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Now Red Man Solved Food Problem of His Day

by Robert N. Moulton

owe him a large debt for our knowledge of corn culture and are still learning from him how to increase yields of grain

OOD we must have for ourselves ahd Four alites, and that we can make this country the granary of the world is due to that magician of the globe — the aboriginal Burbank —the North American Indian, ***r?T*7 There are many who hail the red man as the greatest of agriculturists, for hls wor k on this continent in de- * veloplng and cultivating food plants has been nothing short of colossal. Not only staple products, but also numerous varieties of edible grains, vegetables and fruit, owe their present •useful forms to his skill. It is a popular fallacy that the Indian was merely a hunter, that he lived a haphazard and hand-to-mouth existence by fishing and the chase.and that his tilling the soil was only an Incident of hls communal life. It Is a late day to give the guerdon of recompense to a race which so many times kept our forefathers from ’ starvation and furnished the cornstalk bridge on which civilization came to these shores, and yet even now credit should be given where it is due. Most of the valued articles of diet of which the discoverers and explorers of the early day found the Indian in possession was not indigenous at all, and many of them came originally from tropical countries many thousands of miles distant. The Indian tribes made frequent war excursions to the lower latitudes and brought back grains and vegetables of all kinds which they used as seed. Maize, or Indian corn, in its present form represents one of the great achievements of primitive planters. It came originally, it is now generally accepted, from southern Mexico and was eaten by the Maya tribes. At first it was nothing more than a coarse grass on which were tiny ears resembling the top of the wheat stalk. Each grain had its own envelope of husk. Occasionally even now grains of corn are found which have their individual husk, thus showing how the maize of our day reverts to type. The plant was essentially tropical and even now after centuries of culture in the temperate zoneJt is sensitive to frost; The tribes of North America saw the possibilities of the grain and hastened its evolution. There has been crossbreeding since by white as a matter of fact the corn culture of the presenT' day is practically as it came from the hand of the Indian He has adapted and modified it to various sections of the country by a process of careful selection. 1 All the kinds of corn-which exist today are described In the accounts of the white settlers. Black and red corn, the white corn, the yellow corn, are all mentioned, not forgetting the soft, sweet variety, the so-called gummy corn of the tTnrtiwnsThe culture of corn was more, than farming—it was a religion. The selection of the seed for the next planting was done with such care, the various colorings were so studied and modified that there grew up a veritable maize tradition. - All the methods of raising corn were taken over 4 directly by the early settlers, and although there tin vp, come into being mechanical appliances for plowing, planting and harvesting, the methods have really not changed since they were developed by the Indian. The ground was loosened ■with hoes made either of wood or of bone or_ antler or flint with wooden handles. The wellchosen grains were put in holds made by planting. . sticks. If the planting season had been delayed iby frost the Indians soaked the grain so " that lost time might be made up in germination. Frequently a little hellebore or sonte ether powerful drug was added to the water. This did not ip. Jure the grain and either stupefied or killed any* of the crows which might dig up the seed. Often: anares were laid for the feet of the birds, and later fantastic human figures were placed in the corn ciearings, the precursors of the modern scarecrows. The weeds were hoed away from the young •plants, and as the season advanced the young corn j was hilled. The main work of cultivating corn •was done by iwomen among the Eastern tribes, while in the tribes of the West land the Southwest -the crop was looked after by the men. The planting of the corn was in reality a festival. as was the harvesting. The success which attended the development of the scraggly little tropical plant to the splendid stalk often 18 feet •tall and with ears a foot and a half long, as specimens of the. raising of the Iroquois are described, was due to the zeal and the scrupulous care of the Planters, Inspired by romance. Corn in the Indian tradition became the food which came direct from the breast of Mother Earth. The keeping of the turner seed was a matter of sentiment and of faith Mighty Mondamin, committed to the grave, yjur rfae again, and it was the duty of the tillers

ofthe soil that-hls stalk should be perfect, that ears should escape tiie insect and the blight. The harvesting of the corn is in our modern practice essentially the samp process as that of the Indians. The method of curing and storing has not changed. The corn was placed tn ventilated structures on stilts, for the corncrib every farmer uses is an Indian invention also. So much for the Indian corn as seen in the socalled com belt of the United States. Here the aborigines had developed it into the lordly plant. The Ingenuity of the Indian farmer came into play in the Southwest, where he raised excellent corn in what seemed a sandy desert. To insure moisture for the plant the Indian burled the seed a foot or moreunderground at the bottom of a. hole' bored out by his planting stick. The deep-growing corn is one of the wonders of Hop! husbandry. When deeply interred Mondamin conies to life, he sends some slender roots upward, but under the new conditions the main roots are not put forth until they are within an inch or so of the surface. The Hopis build wind screens for the farther protection of the plant. When the plant at last matures the part above ground looks like a low bush, and yet it bears fine, well-formed ears. The United States government used to try to teach the Indians of the Southwest how to farm, but now it finds it about as profitable to go to school to them. It has been accepted for many years that in the Dakotas and much of the Northwest it was impossible for the white farmers to grow corn because all of the varieties tried were killed by frost. Recently it occurred to some scientists that despite the drawback of the weather the Mandan Indians were raising com. An expedition under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History made a study of the agriculture methods of the Jdandans. It developed that for centuries the farmers of the tribe had been developing a hardy corn. The seed had been selected from year to year from stalks which showed no effect of frost The stalks of this variety are so stunted that they are more like shrubs than the plant which is common to other latitudes. Seed corn raised by the Mandans is to be sown all through that region, which, according to the official maps, is not at all fitted for raising corn, and thus the food supplies of the nation will eventually be increased by many millions of bushels every year. The secrets of the cultivation of this strangely acclimated tropical plant were found by an archaeologist and not an agriculturist, and were handed over by Buffalo Bird Woman and others of her tribe in the belief that they might help the white neighbors. This, by the way, is returning good for evil, for. in the early years of the white race on jthis continent the Indian was ill requited for all that he did for us.

The Indian discovered for himself the science of irrigation. Many of the tribes, such as the Crows and the Apaches, early made use of the river bottoms for Jhe cultivation of the staple crop—corn. When the condition of dryness came they would construct a rough temporary dam of logs with which they could divert the course of part of the stream into their lands. There were primitive ditches which distributed the water. Southwestern Indians, however, were hydraulic engineers, who played every point in the game against drought. They, and also the primitive people who had preceded them, worked out extensive ditches with channels and lateral branches. These ditches as seen in Arizona and New Mexico show how thoroughly the Indians had developed-ir-rigation on lines which we would hall in this day as scientific and efficient. There is much to be learned even by the farmer who has had the training of-the agricultural college if he will study the system or irrigation perfected by these tribes of the Southwest, who in so many respects resemble the Egyptians. They made the Gila river their Nile, and, strange as it seems now, we find the people of the Pueblos now taking up the culture of an Egyptian cotton under tutelage of the United States department of agriculture, and from seed brought from the land of the Pharaohs. In this region are also seen terraced gardens, which are watered in accordance with the demands of approved agriculture. It is one of the ironies of fate that in Oklahoma and other regions where the Indian and the Caucasian race meet in competition in agricultural arts, as, for instance, in the county fairs, that "many prizes are awarded ter our first farmers. This especially applies to corn and other cereals. The great help which the work of the Indian will be to this country will no doubt be shown later when an effort is made to utilize to the full the products which he has so much developed. The shortage of wheat, as reported, shows much could be done in the cultivation of corn, the planting of which in many parts of the country begins in June. This grain is put in this country in much the same category as the Great Chan of Literature placed oats when he declared that it was a grain used in England for horses and in Scotland for men. The people of the United States have been shipping large quantities of corn for use of other nations as human food and reserving their own supply principally as feed for horses. Modern science has given us wizards in the arts of hybridization, like Luther Burbank, and yet with all the knowledge which civilization has accumulated it has never been better served on this continent than by the real founders of our agricultural resources—the American Indians.