equal areas, and with irrigation is immensely productive; but there was a drawback in the smallness of the areas that could be cultivated. The thought of subduing the forest never entered the Indian mind. To clear it was impossible without metallic implements, and field agriculture equally impossible without the horse or ox and the plough, neither of which were known to the American aborigines. They cultivated therefore only small patches of alluvial land upon the margins of rivers and lakes, and such shreds of prairie as they were able to dig over, and such bottom lands, in the dry regions, as they were able to irrigate by means of canals. But little is known of their implements for horticulture (for it was horticulture, rather than agriculture, which they practised). The Northern Indians probably used the common stone chisel, set in a handle like a pick, as a pointed instrument to break the soil; but even this is partly conjectural. A stick or a bone was the usual implement. In Mexico and Central America implements of native copper were used to some extent. Clavigero remarks that, "to hoe and dig the ground they [the Aztecs] made use of the coatl, which is an instrument made of copper, with a wooden handle, but different from a spade or mattock. They made use of an axe to cut trees, which was also made of copper, and was of the same form as those of modern times, except that we put the handle in the eye of the axe, whereas they put the axe into an eye of the handle." And he naively concludes: "They had several other instruments of agriculture; but the negligence of ancient writers on this subject has not left it in our power to attempt their description.* Herrera, speaking of the Village Indians of Honduras, observes that they have "also Indian wheat, and kidney beans, which they sow thrice a year; and they were wont to grub up great woods with hatchets made of flint, which all could not get before they had the use of iron. They turned up the earth with long staves that had two hooks or branches coming from them, one above and another below, to press hard with the arm and foot, as also sharp shovels; being wont to sow little, as they were very slothful and often in want, eating several sorts of roots."† Bernal

Diaz remarks that "copper axes and working tools" were offered for sale in the markets of Mexico, but gives no particulars of them.* The implements that they used were doubtless of the simplest and rudest kind. After their garden-beds were once formed, the work of planting and cultivating them would be moderate from year to year; but the reduction of the ground in the first instance, was the permanent obstacle to the use of large areas. Amongst the partially Village Indians labor was despised by the males; the cultivation, consequently, fell upon the overtaxed females. Nevertheless this class of Indians, east of the Mississippi, raised crops of corn, not large enough to save them at all times from famine, yet sufficient to sustain them in considerable numbers. In New Mexico and southward the labor of cultivation appears to have been shared more equally between the sexes, which serves to explain the greater productiveness of the horticulture of that region.

Irrigation was the favorite method of cultivation with the Village Indians. It was extensively practised in Mexico, and appears to have been the exclusive method in New Mexico. A brief explanation of the ancient method in the latter territory, where it is still practised, will assist materially to an understanding of Indian agriculture. The sites of their pueblos were usually in narrow valleys, watered by streams often of inconsiderable size. The pueblo was located upon high ground within the valley, but the garden-beds were upon the first river terrace. An acequia, or canal, commencing sometimes a mile or more above the village, was excavated deep enough to draw off a portion of the water of the river and conduct it back of the garden-beds to be irrigated, and not unfrequently one or two miles below the pueblo, where it was discharged into the river. The acequia, starting from the river, was led back to the outer margin of the valley as soon as the descent would permit, and then carried past the pueblo at such an elevation that the bottom of the canal would be higher than the garden-beds, which were laid out between the canal and the river. These canals were usually about ten feet wide at the bottom, with sloping banks, and the flowing water within them about a foot and a half deep. If the soil was loose, and the water not abundant,

* History of the Conquest of Mexico, I. 206.

*

the bottom was often paved with cobble-stones, or, in some cases, with flat tiles of clay. Lots were laid off with a frontage upon the main canal, and separated from each other by dividing ridges. Each family, or group of families of related persons, had their own lot, which was private property. These lots, measured on the canal, varied from fifty to two hundred feet in width, and extended from the canal to the river, or as far as the proprietor chose to cultivate. Each lot was subdivided into garden-beds about twenty feet square, surrounded by embankments about a foot high; so that a lot sixty feet front on the canal and two hundred feet deep would contain thirty such beds. After the ground was prepared, and before the seeds were planted, a sluice was cut from the main canal to the first lot, and the several garden-beds overflowed with water to the depth of about eight inches; openings being made through the low embankments separating the several gardenbeds, until the water was conducted over the entire lot. In thus irrigating it was necessary to dam the main canal, below the side cut, in order to turn the flow of water into the garden. This process was repeated from day to day, until all the garden lots of the pueblo had been submerged, and by the absorption of the water brought into a proper condition for the seeds. The same process of irrigation was repeated when the growing corn was about eight inches high; and usually a third time at a later stage of its growth, the number of times depending upon the amount of rain which might fall during the growing-season. Very large crops of corn, beans, and squashes were thus raised upon small areas; but it will be seen that it involved such an amount of labor to prepare and grade the ground as to restrict the area cultivated to a small one for each pueblo.† This simple

* There are miles of acequias now in use in New Mexico, and the remains of miles of abandoned acequias near the pueblos in ruins. Captain Johnson, U. S. A., thus speaks of a district on the Gila fifteen miles long: "The ground in view was about fifteen miles, all of which, it would seem, had been irrigated by the waters of the Gila. I also found the remains of an acequia, which followed the range of houses for miles. It had been very large.” — Reconnoissance in New Mexico, Journal Captain A. R. Johnson, Ex. Doc. No. 41, 30th Congress, 1847-48, p. 598.

↑ "A mistaken idea prevails in regard to the great advantages of artificial irrigation over that of natural rains. It is true that when the cultivator can depend upon an ample supply of water at all seasons in the irrigating canals, he possesses an advantage over him who relies exclusively on nature. But the misfortune is that

but ingenious method of cultivation is the highest evidence that can be adduced of the progress made by the Village Indians in civilization.

Another method of irrigation appears to have been practised, and upon a very extended scale, by the Aztecs and their confederates in the valley of Mexico. It is a difficult and haz ardous subject to touch. Few nations as small have elicited such masses of historical writing; and none have had their public affairs decorated with such wealth of imagination; yet, when it comes to a practical question as elementary as the means whereby they lived, these histories afford very little. direct information. It appears that they cultivated in gardenbeds, and upon a large scale, corn, beans, and pepper; that they raised cotton and tobacco; and that they had cocoa, the banana, and the maguey, the latter of which was utilized in many different ways. Provisions, such as they were, seem to have been abundant. But the support of the excessive population credited to this valley, upon the products named, in the absence of a field agriculture, would have required horti cultural cultivation upon a much more extended scale than there is reason to suppose could ever have existed. The neces sity of resorting to conjecture to explain the cultivation of this valley is the best evidence of the imperfect state of our knowl edge. The one about to be offered must be taken for what it is worth.

In a previous article in this Review,* the writer observed that "Mexico appears to have been surrounded by shallow artificial ponds, which answered as an exterior defence. It may be conjectured that the water was held there by means of dikes and causeways, and that the supply of water was obtained by damming Lakes Xochimilco and Chalco. These lakes at present are a little less than five feet higher than the Plaza of Mexico, which, in turn, is about six feet higher than the present level of

when water is most needed the supply is the scantiest. In February and March there is always enough [in New Mexico] for the first irrigation. In April and May the quantity is much diminished; and if the rise expected to take place in the middle of May fails, there is not enough to irrigate properly all the fields prepared for it; the consequence is a partial failure of the crops."- Bartlett's Personal Narrative, I. 187.

* April, 1869, p. 492, note.

Lake Tezcuco. By means of dams and dikes, with both of which the Aztecs were familiar, this result might have been attained." These suggestions need further development. In the absence of any evidence that the climate of Mexico has changed since the Spanish conquest, it must be assumed that the level of Lake Tezcuco was the same then as now; less the amount of water discharged into it by the small lakes to the northward of Mexico, the outlets of which were turned out of the valley by the tunnel of Huehuetoca, constructed in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The level of the lake would vary with the relative amounts of precipitation and evaporation. Lake Tezcuco, which is now three miles east of Mexico, is thirteen miles long and nine broad. Lake Chalco is now nine miles south of Tezcuco; and Lake Xochimilco, at its west end, is five and a half miles south of Mexico. These last lakes are connected by an outlet, and together are fifteen miles long,* and discharge into Lake Tezcuco, through an outlet seven miles long, running along the borders of the present city of Mexico. At the time of the Spanish invasion, in 1519, there is no doubt that the waters of the three lakes were united by a narrow neck, and covered more than twice their present areas, and that the pueblo of Mexico was entirely surrounded by water. "The city of Mexico was then situated," says Clavigero," as we have already said, upon a small island in Lake Tezcuco. . . For the convenience of passing to the mainland, there were three great causeways of earth and stone raised in the lake. That of Iztapalapan, towards the south, upwards of seven miles; that of Tlacopan, towards the west, about two miles; and that of Tepejacac, toward the north, of three miles in length; and all three so broad, that ten men on horseback could pass abreast." And Herrera to the same effect:" Mexico, Tenochtitlan, is every way encompassed with fresh water, though thick, and, being in the lake, has only three avenues along the causeways. One of them comes from the west, about half a league in length, another from the north, a league long. On the east there is no causeway, but only canoes to come at it.

The other

* Map of the Valley of Mexico, by Lieut. Hardcastle, U. S. A.; General Scott's Expedition to Mexico, 1847 ; President's Message and Documents, 1847 - 48, p. 256. + History of Mexico, II. 359.