regularly breeding them. The use of the iron axe of course spread
with vastly greater rapidity than that of the horse, for an axe
or a knife was the first thing that an Indian sought from the
white man. In the eighteenth century agriculture had thus become
immeasurably easier than before, yet even then the Indians still
kept up their old habit of cultivating the same fields only a
short time. The regular practice was to cultivate a field five,
ten, and sometimes even twenty or more years, and then abandon
it.*

*Ordinarily it is stated that this practice was due to the
exhaustion of the soil. That, however, is open to question, for
five or ten years' desultory cultivation on the part of the
Indian would scarcely exhaust the soil so much that people would
go to the great labor of making new clearings and moving their
villages. Moreover, in the Southern States it is well known today
that the soil is exhausted much more rapidly than farther north
because it contains less humus. Nevertheless the southern tribes
cultivated the land about their villages for long periods. Tribes
like the Creeks, the Cherokees, and the Natchez appear to have
been decidedly less prone to move than the Iroquois, in spite of
the relatively high development of these northern nations.


What hindered agriculture most in the northern part of the
deciduous forest was the grass. Any one who has cultivated a
garden knows how rapidly the weeds grow. He also knows that there
is no weed so hard to exterminate as grass. When once it gets a
foothold mere hoeing seems only to make it grow the faster. The
only way to get rid of grass when once it has become well