The first explorers of the Atlantic seaboard found many of the tribes
cultivating the soil to a limited extent, corn being the chief product.
The methods and appliances were exceedingly primitive, and the
implements employed, whether wood, bone, stone, or shell, possess but
little interest to art.
Unworked shells, lashed to rude handles, served all the purposes as well
as if wrought out in the most fanciful manner. The large, firm valves of
clam-shells were most frequently used, as the following extracts will
show.
"Before the Indians learned of the English the use of a more convenient
instrument, they tilled their corn with hoes made of these shells, to
which purpose they are well adapted by their size."[42]
A further reference to this shell is found in Wood's New England
Prospect: "The first plowman was counted little better than a Juggler:
the _Indians_ seeing the plow teare up more ground in a day, than their
Clamme shels could scrape up in a month, desired to see the workemanship
of it, and viewing well the coulter and share, perceiving it to be iron,
told the plowman, hee was almost _Abamocho_, almost as cunning as the
Devill."[43] And again the same author says: "An other work is their
planting of corne, wherein they exceede our _English_ husband-men,
keeping it so cleare with their Clamme shell-hooes, as if it were a
garden rather than a corne-field, not suffering a choking weede to
advance his audacious head above their infant corne, or an undermining
worme to spoile his spurnes."[44]
Other writers make but the most casual mention of this subject. De Bry
gives, in Plate XXI, Vol. II, a picture in which a number of natives are
engaged in cultivating their fields. In Fig. 3, Plate XXVII, I give an
enlarged cut of one of the implements employed; the original drawing has
probably been made from memory by the artist, and the cut serves no
purpose except to give an idea of the general shape of the implement and
to suggest the manner of hafting, if indeed the implement is not made
wholly from a crooked stick.
[Illustration: PL. XXVII--SHELL IMPLEMENTS.
1. Shell implement, Tennessee.
2. Probable manner of hafting celt.
3. Implement illustrated in De Bry.
4. Shell club-head, Florida.
5. Shell implement, Peru.]