Early writers and travellers were lamentably negligent in recording many
phases of Indian life which it would be desirable to know, especially
those related to the economic activities of these primitive people. An
undue amount of “historical divination” is required in arriving at
satisfactory or even plausible conclusions concerning some of these
matters. The real influence which aboriginal agriculture exercised upon
the exploration, settlement, and development of the Western lands, is
well worth our study. The new comer often received therefrom suggestions
as to what crops would most likely flourish on the various soils and in
the different rain-belts; not to mention the direct effect upon lines of
supplies bought or stolen from the retreating tribes—these are
interesting questions, but we must not expect much specific information
concerning them. The methods of hunting and fighting; of making weapons,
utensils, and implements; of dancing, singing, wooing, are all told by
early chroniclers with painstaking minuteness and detail, but the
products of the soil are noticed by them only in parenthetical phrases
or general observations. There is hardly a line yet found, relating to
the agricultural tools used, or the sort of ground chosen for
fields—absolutely nothing as to yield, and next to nothing concerning
the importance of these crops to the Indians themselves.
For a long time the Sauk and Foxes had their principal villages near the
Wisconsin River, at the east end of Sauk Prairie, just opposite the
northwest corner of Dane County. These Indians were somewhat above the
average of the tribes of this region in civilization; they lived in more
compact and larger settlements, hence naturally depended more on their
corn-fields than did their more nomadic neighbors to the west. Their
corn was planted along the edge of the woods which fringe the Wisconsin,
and this belt is choice corn-land to-day. Some small parts of it have
been kept in grass from the time of the earlier white settlement, and in
those places old Indian corn-hills may still be seen, the sod holding
them in shape. The Indian cultivated the growing corn by hoeing toward
the hill; and as this became the mellowest spot, the corn was planted
each succeeding year in the same little mound, which grew to be a foot
or more in height.
“There was a large settlement of Sauk at the lower end of Sauk Prairie.
I have often examined the remains of their tillage there, and should
suppose they raised corn in one lot of at least four hundred acres * * *
the four hundred acres is covered with well formed, regular
corn-hills.”[4] Just what this writer means by “regular” is not quite
clear—probably that the hills were of uniform size, and approximately
the same distance apart, for it does not appear that the Indians often
planted corn in rows, there being, with their mode of culture, very
little occasion for such methods.[5] The Indians of northern Michigan at
the present day generally care for their corn much as did their
ancestors of a century ago; and the few who attempt its cultivation with
a horse cultivator do not take the precaution to plant the corn in rows,
but run here and there wherever there happens to be sufficient room
between the hills.
Whether or not the Wisconsin Indians, like those of Ohio or New England,
girdled trees so as to rid the land of them, and leave it in a suitable
condition for cultivation by their rude and ineffective tools, is not
stated; but the probability is that little of such work was
necessary.[6] The field at Sauk Prairie just mentioned, lay along the
border of the woodland; and as the prairie was burned off nearly every
year, it is reasonable to suppose that the fire crept into the woods for
a greater or less distance, killing the trees and leaving a considerable
belt neither distinctively prairie nor woods. Naturally this would
become overgrown with weeds and saplings, which could be much more
easily eradicated than the heavy growth of trees or grass. The prairie
sod was altogether too tough to be subdued by the Indians, and nowhere
do we find them tilling any considerable area of genuine prairie soil.
There are one or two direct references to Indian fields within Dane
County. While stationed at Fort Crawford, Jefferson Davis visited this
section and left in his journal some remarks pertinent to our subject:
“While on detached service in the summer of 1829, I think I encamped one
night about the site of Madison. The nearest Indian village was on the
opposite side of the lake. * * * The Indians subsisted largely on Indian
corn and wild rice.”[7] Probably he referred to the place now known as
Winnequah, on the eastern shore of Lake Monona, where a few Indian
corn-hills are still discernable. The nature of the land here at the
time of the Indian occupancy, cannot now be estimated with the same
accuracy as in the case of the Sauk district. It is not on the edge of a
prairie; but from the condition of the present woods about Winnequah,
and the sandy nature of the soil, it is altogether likely that there
were sufficient open spots for all the corn-fields which the small
villages of Indians would be likely to cultivate.
Capt. Jonathan Carver, who made a trip through the northwest in 1766, in
speaking of the Winnebago Indians remarks: “The land adjacent to the
lake [Winnebago] is very fertile, abounding with grapes, plums, and
other fruits, which grow spontaneously. The Winnebagoes raise on it a
great quantity of Indian corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, and
watermelons, with some tobacco.”[8] Carver also gives an interesting
description of the kind of corn grown by the Indians. We should infer
from what little he says that it is very similar, although not
identical, with the corn raised by the New England Indians in the
seventeenth century: “One spike generally consists of about six hundred
grains which are placed closely together in rows to the number of eight
or ten, and sometimes twelve.”[9] He does not tell us whether or not it
is dented; but since he finds it maturing as far north as Lake
Winnebago, and especially as the ears are long and slender, it is safe
to infer that it was the hard flint variety known as “Yankee corn.” In
case the four hundred acres near Sauk Prairie produced such remarkably
large ears—averaging, we should judge, at least a foot in length, the
aggregate yield must have been very great. Reasoning from this, it is
easy to believe the various reports of discoveries of fifty thousand
bushels of corn in _cache_ by armies in the Ohio Valley, and to the
southward. However, the element of uncertainty is by no means a
negligible quantity, and the reader must draw his own conclusions as to
the probable amount of farm produce raised by the Wisconsin Indian.
For the most part, the practices and methods of these Indians resembled
those of the tribes farther east. The Sauk and Foxes were scattered up
and down the Wisconsin and Fox rivers; wherever found, they depended for
a living, in part, on the cultivated product of the soil.[10] In raising
a crop of corn, or other field products, the Indians had many
difficulties with which to contend, even more perplexing than those
connected with subduing the native soil. Perhaps the depredations of
blackbirds and crows were the worst; for as soon as other food began to
fail them in the fall, they pounced upon the corn, usually when it was
about in the milk or “roasting ear,” and wrought sad havoc. The Indians
were always inordinately fond of the tender, green corn, and this fact,
together with the danger of loss by birds or frost from leaving it out
until maturity, induced them to gather it early. They were familiar with
the fact that corn may be cured while yet in the green state, and still
be desirable food; this fact, as well as the method of storing, appears
in the following quotation:[11] “I observed several women with bags on
their heads and shoulders, appearing heavily laden, bent down and not
raising their faces from the path they were upon. I never saw
individuals contend more with a load that almost mastered them, than did
some of these females. Following them a short distance to a place where
they stopped, I found they were making a _cache_ of the ripe maize of
the season. A sort of cave had been hollowed out in the side of the
hill, about eight feet in diameter at the bottom, and not more than two
or three at the top. To this _cache_ the women were bringing the corn, a
distance of about three miles, and some very young girls were in the
cave storing it away. * * * The ears of maize are gathered and cured
whilst the corn is in the milk, and the bags when filled with it are
laid in the cave upon layers of dry grass, one layer above another. When
the cave is full, straw is put in and covered over with dry earth. They
cure the corn in the milk, because the blackbirds are numerous enough to
devour it all if it were left to ripen in the field.[12] From this it is
seen that the agricultural methods of Wisconsin Indians were not
different from those farther east and south—the women do the work; the
corn is gathered before fully ripe, and put in _caches_ for safe
keeping.
It would be hazardous to attempt any estimate of the quantity of corn
raised, even by any one tribe. The Sauk and Foxes appear to have
depended more on products of the soil than did their neighbors. The four
hundred acres raised near where Sauk City now stands, is good evidence
of a total product of no slight proportions, for these Indians had many
other villages scattered along the line of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers.
Speaking of these tribes as a whole, Worden remarks: “The Sacs and Foxes
raise corn, beans and melons, and derive a great part of their
subsistence from agriculture and gardening.”[13]
Indian improvidence is usually spoken of as though the red man had no
regard whatever for the morrow; but Pike credits the Osage with the
virtue of rigid economy in saving their corn and beans for seasons when
the chase is likely to fail in supplying the larder.[14] The same author
mentions the drying of pumpkins, for winter use, by the Indians of the
plains. In the same strain Father Allouez, who visited the Western
Indians in the early part of 1670, says of the Outagami: “These
savages * * * are settled in an excellent country,—the soil, which is
black there, yielding them Indian corn in abundance. They live by
hunting during the winter returning to their cabins towards its close,
and living there on Indian corn that they had hidden away the previous
Autumn; they season it with fish.”[15] Again, in speaking of the
Oumamis, [Miami], he mentions the fact that on the first of May they
still had corn which they offered him to eat; and of the Potawatomi,
that their land is “very good for Indian corn, of which they plant
fields, and to which they very willingly retire to avoid the famines
that are too common in these quarters.” These famines were usually the
result of drouth which, by drying up the forage plants, drove the big
game away to other sections,[16] leaving the poor Indians dependent on
fish and the grain in stock—the latter being, unhappily, seldom or never
found in quantities sufficient to tide over a famine of any
consequence.[17]
A traveller in 1669 makes this record on his visit to Green Bay: “I
found here only one village of different nations—Ousaki, Pouteouatami,
Outagami, Orenibigoutz (i. e. Ouinipegouk)—about six hundred
souls. * * * All these Nations have their fields of Indian corn,
squashes, beans, and tobacco.”[18]
In 1793, Robert Dickson wrote of the Indians near Portage: “At the Falls
of the Fox River there is a portage of three-quarters of a mile. The
Indians here raise Indian corn, squash, potatoes, melons, and cucumbers
in great abundance, and good tobacco. On the low lands by the river
great quantities of wild oats [rice] grow.”[19]
As a rule the Indian depended on corn and beans to support him during
his long excursions, whether in peace or war. In the account of the
capture of the Hall girls, which occurred about May, 1832, there is a
good side-light on the Indian commissariat: “When we halted, the Indians
having scalded some beans, and roasted some acorns, desired we should
eat. * * * On our arrival several squaws came to our assistance * * *
prepared a place for us to sit down, and presented us some parched corn,
some meal, and maple sugar, mixed, and desired us to eat. * * * In the
evening we were presented with a supper consisting of coffee, fried
cakes, boiled corn, and fried venison, with fried leeks. * * * When our
flour was exhausted we had coffee, meat, and pounded corn made into
soup.”[20] Later, it is mentioned that the Indians carried pork and
potatoes while on the march. The pork as well as the coffee was, of
course, obtained from the whites, but the potatoes, so-called, were
probably wild artichokes which Lapham found in use as food among the
Indians in what is now Brown County. In 1844 he found them using “a very
good kind of potato * * * the mode of preserving which was entirely new
to us. The potatoes, which are of an oblong shape, and not longer than a
man’s thumb are partially boiled, and carefully peeled while hot,
without breaking the pulp, and strung like so many beads upon a twine or
tough thread of bark and then hung in festoons on the ridge pole of the
wigwam, over the smoke of the fire, where they became thoroughly dry.
This process renders the potatoes fit for transportation and use during
the severest frosts without injury. The squaws take great interest in
preparing this article of food which is about the only vegetable they
cultivate.”[21] However, the Indians around Green Bay were by no means
restricted to one agricultural product, although contact with the white
men tended to make them more and more dependent, since they found it
easier to barter furs for food than to raise grain.
From the above citations, it appears that the cultivated fields of the
Indians occupied a diagonal line across the state, following the courses
of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers and Green Bay; and that the Sauk, Foxes,
and Winnebago were the most inclined, in the struggle for existence, to
make use of their agricultural knowledge and opportunities. It may also
be shown that there were some important cultivated areas along the
Mississippi and Rock rivers, and some insignificant patches near Lake
Michigan. The settlement of Black Hawk’s followers on the lower part of
the Rock, on the point between that river and the Mississippi is of
interest, and these were Wisconsin Indians, who had resumed their
agricultural labors in a new home.
Something of the skill of these people in choosing land on which to grow
corn, also an idea of the quantity grown, are furnished by Black Hawk in
his _Autobiography_: “In the front a prairie extended to the
Mississippi, and in our rear a continued bluff gently ascended from the
prairie. * * * On the side of this bluff we had our corn-fields,
extending about two miles up parallel with the larger river, where they
adjoined those of the Foxes, whose village was on the same stream
opposite the lower end of Rock Island and three miles distant from ours.
We had eight hundred acres in cultivation, including what we had on the
islands in Rock River. The land around our village which remained
unbroken, was covered with blue-grass which furnished excellent pasture
for our horses. * * * The land being very fertile never failed to
produce good crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes.”[22]
Black Hawk then goes on to state that, owing to encroachments of the
white settlers, his people had hard work to find sufficient land on
which to plant corn, and gives a sorrowful account of the distress
caused by the confiscation of their crops by the whites. Black Hawk does
not give any estimate of the area cultivated by the Foxes, but Col. John
Shaw, in speaking of both settlements, estimates the fields at five
thousand acres.[23] This is probably an exaggeration, but it serves its
purpose in giving some notion of the importance of agricultural industry
to the Indians themselves, and surely it was not inconsiderable. Anyone
wishing to estimate the amount of these products by the various tribes,
will find some data in the _Emigrant’s and Traveller’s Guide_, where a
fairly good estimate of the numbers of the several Indian tribes in 1834
appears.[24]
A great many more references could be given, emphasizing the reliance of
the red man on his rude husbandry; but perhaps enough has already been
said to make it plain that something is due him for taking the initial
step in the development of the great grain regions of the upper
Mississippi valley. Neither are we left wholly to deduce our conclusions
from circumstantial evidence. The early military expeditions of the West
and Northwest were for the most part dependent on supplies obtained from
the Indians.[25] The accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition tell of
the dependence of the party on provisions furnished by the Indians, and
even so far north as the Mandan village they traded for Indian corn. At
Mackinac Island, a point hardly within the present corn belt, the
Indians raised a sufficient quantity of that cereal to attract the
attention of the British garrison as well as of various travellers. As
early as 1766 Jonathan Carver saw the importance of the agricultural
products of the Wisconsin Indians, and after enumerating the crops grown
by the “Saukies” before mentioned, speaks thus of the Sauk village:
“This place is esteemed the best market for traders to furnish
themselves with provisions, of any within eight hundred miles of it.”
Thus it is seen that the Indians, on their own account, furnished
provisions for their own war parties; for the English forays against
Americans and Spanish; for explorers like Marquette, Carver, and Lewis
and Clark, and the long list of later adventurers who came to spy out
the land and eventually to expel the tribesmen from their fields. The
traders who ranged the woods and rivers for a century before
civilization ruined their traffic, depended in a large measure on the
meagre stores of Indian corn and beans; while even the troops which
finally hunted the natives from their homes, filled their camp kettles
either from the _caches_ or the corn fields of the fugitives. Nor was
this all. The earliest settlers seized upon the little cultivated plots
as the most desirable ground for their own first plantings, and utilized
the native-grown seed, since it was known to be adapted to the soil and
climate. It is interesting to note that the two crops which the Indians
prized most highly, corn and tobacco, are at present two of the foremost
products of Wisconsin.