Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/215

 American Anthropologist

��NEW SERIES

��VOL. 22 JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1920 No. 3

INDIAN CORN-HILLS IN MASSACHUSETTS BY EDMUND B. DELABARRE AND HARRIS H. WILDER

i. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

THE fact that there are still in New England perfectly pre- served and unmistakable remains of the small mounds or hills in which the Indians planted their maize and other crops, seems not to be generally recognized. Even for other parts of the country, reports of the existence of such " Indian garden beds" are very few. I. A. Lapham 1 tells of their occurrence in Wisconsin, and it is said that Cheney 2 found them in western New York. Sir John Lubbock 3 quotes Lapham. Lapham 's description is as follows : In many places

the ground is covered with small mamillary elevations, which are known as Indian corn-hills. They are without order of arrangement, being scattered over the surface with the utmost irregularity. That these hillocks were formed in the manner indicated by their name, is inferred from the present custom of the Indians. The corn is planted in the same spot each successive year, and the soil is gradually brought up to the size of a little hill by the annual additions.

In one of his localities,

another evidence of former cultivation occurs, consisting of low, broad, parallel ridges, as if corn had been planted in drills. They average four feet in width, twenty-five of them having been counted in the space of a hundred feet; and the depth of the walk between them is about six inches. These appearances,

��1 The Antiquities of Wisconsin, 1855, pp. 19, 57; Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, vol. vn.

2 On Ancient Monuments in Western New York; Thirteenth Report of the Regents of the State of New York, 1860, p. 40. The writers have not been able to verify this citation.

3 Prehistoric Times, 1913 ed., p. 273.

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