Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 22.djvu/223

 DELABARRE AND WILDER] INDIAN CORN-HILLS 211

Although it strikes one at first, especially one who has had little or no experience with surface indications of ancient human activities, as unlikely that the traces of ancient tillage could persist for so many centuries, yet a study of the early accounts of the methods of cultivating Indian corn as practised by the aborigines renders quite possible the persistence of such culture. 1 What is significant in these accounts as foundation for a belief in the long continued preservation of the corn-hills, even down to the present time, is the following group of facts: the same hills were used year after year; they were highly fertilized; there were annual additions to the hills, making them of considerable size. After the abandon- ment of cultivation, the fertility and previous culture of the hills would for a long time support abundant vegetation, whose decay would contribute to their size, and whose roots and leaves would bind together the soil and preserve it from erosion. The spaces between the hills, hard trodden by the laborers and never worked or fertilized, would support only the more meagre vegetation of our New England wild pastures; would furnish the channels through which water would drain ; and would form natural pathways which men and cattle passing through the fields would follow for the most part, thus treading them down, in preference to walking up and down over the hills. Under these conditions, it is not surprising that in many places the original hills should never yet have disappeared. This antecedent probability is confirmed by our observations. The photographs that we present (figure n) give conclusive evidence that we have to do with genuine remains of Indian cultivation. They are easily distinguished from any natural formations, such as merely "hummocky ground," or hillocks of bunch-grass and similar growths. Moreover, they present a wholly different appearance from that of abandoned corn fields of the whites. If white men ever used them, it could have been only for a brief period after they first began cultivation in old Indian grounds, and before they made use of the plough.

��1 For clearly discernible remains of cattle paths and a certain type of artificial pond vastly more ancient than these American Indian records, see A. J. and G. Hub- bard, Neolithic Dew Ponds and Cattle-Ways, Longmans, Green and Co., 3d edition, 1916.

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