this with wooden spades, rude hoes made of large flakes of flint,
or the shoulder blades of the buffalo, was impossible on any
large scale. Now and then in some river bottom where the grass
grew in clumps and could be easily pulled up, a little
agriculture was possible. That is all that seems to have been
attempted on the great grassy plains.

The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the
plains not only because they lacked iron tools but also because
they had no draft animals. The buffalo was too big, too fierce,
and too stupid to be domesticated. In all the length and breadth
of the two Americas there was no animal to take the place of the
useful horse, donkey, or ox. The llama was too small to do
anything but carry light loads, and it could live only in a most
limited area among the cold Andean highlands. Even if the
aboriginal Americans could have made iron ploughs, they could not
have ploughed the tough sod without the aid of animals. Moreover,
even if the possession of metal tools and beasts of burden had
made agriculture possible in the grass-lands, it would have been
difficult, in the absence of wood for fences, to prevent the
buffalo from eating up the crops or at least from tramping
through them and spoiling them. Thus the fertile land of the
great plains remained largely unused until the white man came to
the New World bringing the iron tools and domestic animals that
were necessary to successful agriculture.

Although farming of any sort was almost as impossible in the
plains as in the dry regions of winter rains farther west, the
abundance of buffaloes made life much easier in many respects. It
is astonishing to see how many purposes these animals served. An