The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1905-09-13

impression is very far from true. The
| 1ndian-Hke man everywhere except in
| the Arctic regions-is an omnivorOus
creature, and while he may subslst
chiefly on flesh, he also greatly relishcs
| vegetable food. AS a matter of fact
the great majority of the aboriginal
tribes of North America were cultiva-
tors of the ground. The popular idea
| that the Indian was nOmad wander
ing from place to place and never
| camping twice in the same spot arises
| from an entire misconception of facts.
| We have been told for years by the
| newspapers and other equally Him
| formed authorities that the Indians
were wanderers, and we have come
| to believe that this was true. 1t was
| not. The Indians lived in very large
measure in permanent villages, near
| which they had their cultivated fields,
| and which they occupied for the great
er part of each year. At certain sea-
| sons special absences-more or less
| protracted-were necessary for the pur-
| pose of hunting some particular game
or of gathering some special sort of
| wild roots or fruits.
This permanency of habitation was
| true even of some of the tribes inhab-
itlrg the semi-arid plains who depend
ed for support on the buffalo, and to-
day, one who visits one of the plains
tribes and asks the old men how their
fathers used to live will everywhere
receive the same answer. They will
say that they used to grow corn, beans,
squashes or pumpkins, and tobacco
and besides this they gathered an
abundance of wild crops which gave
them a certain amount of vegetable
food all through the year.
OF the Iroquois we are told that the
crops they harvested were so large that
they frequently had in their store
houses two or three years supply of
corn, beans and squashes The Paw
nees, occupying the arid West, like the
Delawares of the moist sea coast,
stored their crops in great pits dug in
the ground, which they lined with
mats, and in which their corn was per-
fectly preserved all through the win
ter, or until the supply was exhausted.
Very different was the situation of the
Cocopahs inhabitng the desert away
to the Southwest. They scraped aside
the rocks that covered the dry noun
tainside and, uncovCring a little soil,
planted there o few hills of corn and
squashes, carrying on their backs from
the distant spring the water which
should mOsten the ground to cause the
seeds to sprout and TO refresh the
plants until the crop matured. and
when it was gathered they at once con.
sumed it.
Within the memory of living men,
and while there were vet buffalo in
abundance, the Western Indians of
many tribes continued their primitive
culture of the stubborn soil The Paw
nee women used to hoe their corn with
hoes made from the shOulderblade of
the buffalo lashed to a wooden handle,
and about the same time the warlike
Cheyennes were planting their little
cornfields on the Little Missouri River.
We know that in early days, when
wooded Minnesota was much farther
from the centre of things than Alaska
is to-day, the Indians of that territory
planted little crops of corn, loosening
the soil, either with hoes purchased
from the traders or with the hardened
sharpened branch of a tree. Their
fields We're small, from a quarter of
an acre TO an acre in extent, and pro-
duced q small corn the ears of which
were from three to eight inches long,
and which was chiefly consumed green
as roasting ears. A part of the crop
however, was boiled on the ear while
green. cut from the cob and dried in
the sun to be kept for winter use
Boiled with meat it made a nourishing
and palatble dish. There was no food
more delicious. and none better to work
on than dried corn and buffalo meat.
Over the whole of North America,
wherever the climate permitted it to
ripen, corn was cultivated by the In
dams and constituted IN important
part of their subsistence. Loskiel, who
in the eighteenth century wrote inter
estingly and at great length of the
Indians among whom the United
Brethren worked, enumerates no less
than twelve methods employed by the
Indians in preparing their corn for
food. A concentrated form of nourlsh-
ment much employed when travelling
on the warpath, or where it was ne2es-
sary to 20 swiftly or with light loads,
was citamon, an interesting analogue
of the pemmican used in old prairie
travel. Pemmican consisted of pull
veriZed dried meat mixed with melted
fat, but. as those will remember who
have read the old works of travel in
the Northwest. or even those Trails of
the Pathfnders," which have recently
appeared in Forest and Stream, there
was another sort of pemmican made
of the pulverized flesh of fish also
mixed with fat. Citamon, on the other
hand, was finely pounded cornmeal
mixed with powdered maple sugar, and
then packed in a sack so tightly that
the air could not enter it. While penn
micnn was nurely n flesh food. citamOn