Evening star., 1937-02-02

History repeats itself.
About $50 years ago large area of
the Great Plains may have been afflicted
by major drought which ruined its
farmers and forced them to abandon
their corn and bean fields to the bison.
This constituted a major crisis in
American agriculture, was turning point
in aboriginal history, and indirectly af-
fected the development of the United
States.
Such, at least, are the implications of
recent archaeological finds over the Plains
States as interpreted by DR.. Waldo
r. Wedel, Smithsonian Institution arche-
ologist. These indicate, DR.. Wedel says,
three definite stages in the aboriginal
history of the West. First, probably 1000
or 5000 years ago the plains region was
inhabited by a nomadic, hunting people
who followed the bison herds. They were
closely related to-perhaps identical with
the mysterious Folsom men who were
the first known inhabitants of North
America.
After an indefinite period they were
succeeded by sedentary, peaceful hor-
ticultural people who probably came in
from the Southeast and spread westward
through Kansas and Nebraska to the
foothills of the Rockies. They grew corn,
beans and squash. They lived in per-
manent villages on the open plains, ap-
parently with no precautions for defense
They must have been an exceptionally
peaceful people. Remains of their villages
have been uncovered by University of
Nebraska Psychologists within the past
year scattered over wide area of West
ern Kansas and Nebraska and Eastern
Colorado.
On very slender evidence, DR.. Wedel
says, it may be assumed that some of
these villages date back approximately
300 years. This assumption is based on
Pueblo objects of about that period found
in the sites, indicating that there may
have been some trade with the South
west. There are no European artifacts.
These village sites are now found GOV.
cred with from one to five feet of wind
blown material-especially sand. This,
per Sc, might be interpreted in two ways
either that the sites had been aban-
doned for very long time or that they
were deserted rather abruptly as a re-
suit of a great drought and dust storms
which made a settled agriculture i'm
possible.
Other considerations make the second
explanation the more plausible. When
the first white traders entered the region
a settled agricultural people were found
along the Missouri River and eastward,
the ancestors Of the present-day Pawnees
and Omahas. These villages can be
approximately dated. Some of their low
est levels contain glass beads and scraps
OF iron which could have been obtained
only by trade with Europeans, probably
French traders from Wisconsin. This
trade started about $50 years ago.
Tree ring records in the Southwest
decoded by DR.. A. E. Douglass of the
University of Arizona show that in that
region there were two major droughts
at least comparable to those of the last
three years. One was at the end of the
thirteenth century and one at the end
Of the sixteenth. 1t is reasonable to
assume, although it cannot be proved,
that these droughts extended over the
plains area. The last comes just be-
fore the first contacts with the French
and just about the time the easterly VII.
lagos were settled.
The "rehahilitatsd" farmers found