Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-09-03
AGRICULTURAL.
NATTER PREPARED SPECIALLY FOR
THE RECORD UNION"
Build Mounds-swill Milk-cream Of Tar
tar-AdVance in Prices Of
Farm Produc s-Etc.

The Digger Indians understood the value
of mounds on the banks of the larger rivers
of this State as places of safety in times of
high water. Nearly all the rivers had mounds
at most favorable points on both banks.
These mounds were of different dimensions
and hight, ranging from few rods across to
half an acre in area. They were generally
from three to six feet high above the natural
banks. The composition Of these mounds
was such as to show that the indians had &C.
cupied them for hundreds of years, and that
they had been built by adding a little each
year for a long period. They were not only
used as places of abode in times of high
water by the living, but they were also used
as burying places for the dead. These mounds
are unmistakable evidences that high waters
and floods have been the incidents of the sea-
sons in the valleys of California for
ages and centuries in the past, and
that high waters then as now
covered the whole country, and rem
dered life and property unsafe except
some artificial elevations were made for the
inhabitants to fee to in food times The ex-
perience Of cur own times has demonstrated
Che same thing and we at least should be as
prudent and wise in our day and generation
as were the Digger Indians. The Indians
had very little 20 protect or keep from the
waters, except themselves and their scant
winter stores, yet they put the labor of years
on these mounds and deied the highest OF
waters and the most disastrous of Hoods We
have tried to substitute levees for the Indian
mounds, not for the purpose of escaping to
the levees in high water, but to keep the
waters in the rivers and prevent them from
running over the land and destroying our
fields barns houses and stock and other
property. The experience OF the last thirty
years with levees has fully demonstrated
that our system has been a fail
ure. We have not kept the waters
in the rivers, nor have we saved our
property and stock from destruction. We
should never have abandoned the old Indian
mound. OF this everybody now is pretty
well satisfied Even though we build levees
ever SO strong and high they are liable to
give way and food and destroy all our i'm
proyements and property, and to sacrifice
human life. Let US maintain the leVee sys-
TEN, but at the same time renew the old In
dian mound system of providing for safety,
not only for ourselves but our stock Every
fhFIllGT Ou tu6 DdCIdu6Dbu, anu OtHcI AaISC
rivers liable to overflow, should build mound
large enough to keep his stock on in extreme
high water. It would be well to make these
mounds large and high enough to contain the
buildings-the house, barn and other neces-
sary buildings of the farm. Like the Indians,
we may begin them on a small scale
and add to them each year. As
a rule the levees are from three
to four rods back from the natural banks of
~. ~ bo, Iaa
taken ont next the river, leaving a strip of
the immediate bank standing. By making
openings in through this strip the waters will
flow in and fill up the excavations at every
high water, and thus bring with them the
necessary soil TO keep up the levees, and also
to make the annual additions to the mounds.
It may seem to some that this advice to
build mounds carries with it an admission
that the river bottoms are not good places to
build homes and make life settlements.
Q1ite the contrary These river bottoms
contain the richest and N )st productive soils
in the world. One acre OF this bottom land
will produce as much in year as three or
four of the plain lands and it will never
wear out. The floods do not come every
season, and when they do come, remain
over the soil but snort time, and then are
gone for the balance of the year. They
bring with them a Lew supply of fertility
each year and soak the land, so that any arti-
fetal irrigation is unnecessary. Could the
farmers on the plains secure these benefits it
would double the value of their farms. Let
the river farmers build mounds. and fence
their farms with wire fences, and they will
lose nothing by floods, but will, on the con-
trary, learn to look upon the annual high
waters as helping rather than an injury
But let US have 10 mining slickens with the
floods-only the natural wa hes of the water
sheds above US, and with river farms and
mounds we may well be satisfied.