established is to plow the field and start over again, but this
the Indians could not do. When first a clearing was made in the
midst of the forest, there was no grass to be contended with.
Little by little, however, it was sure to come in, until at
length what had been a garden was in a fair way to become a
meadow. Then the Indians would decide that it was necessary to
seek new fields.

One might suppose that under such circumstances the Indians would
merely clear another patch of forest not far from the village and
so continue to live in the old place. This, however, they did not
do because the labor of making a clearing with stone axes and by
the slow process of girdling and burning the trees was so great
that it was possible only in certain favored spots where by
accident the growth was less dense than usual. When once a
clearing became grassy, the only thing to do was to hunt for a
new site, prepare a clearing, and then move the village. This was
apparently the reason why the Iroquois, although successful in
other ways, failed to establish permanent towns like those of the
Pueblos and the Haidas. Their advancement not only in
architecture but in many of the most important elements of
civilization was for this reason greatly delayed. There was
little to stimulate them to improve the land to which they were
attached, for they knew that soon they would have to move.

Farther south the character of the grassy vegetation changes, and
the condition of agriculture alters with it. The grass ceases to
have that thick, close, turfy quality which we admire so much in
the fields of the north, and it begins to grow in bunches. Often
a southern hillside may appear from a distance to be as densely