ards and small marsupials, while the men look for larger game. Everything that is edible is used for food, the honey-ants being a favorite dish. They know the use of fire, but they have little in the way of implements besides the spear, shield, spearthrower, boomerang, stone knives, and, rarely, hatchets. When times are prosperous they are light-hearted; but there is always an undercurrent of anxious feeling which may assert itself, and then they think of some hostile medicine man who may be trying to harm them with his evil magic. They decorate their bodies with scars, and observe a strict code of custom and ceremony. If a man's ancestor painted a white line across his forehead in the performance of a certain ceremony, for example, that line he must also paint.1

The North American Indians offer especially good material for studying the hunting and fishing stage because of their varying degrees of development within that stage. In the northern and western part of the continent we find purely hunting tribes that did not cultivate the soil; in the eastern half of what is now the United States a simple kind of soil cultivation was generally practised; and the village Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America depended almost exclusively upon the produce of their fields for sub

1 This description is taken from Spencer and Gillen's "The Native Tribes of Central Australia," London, 1899, Ch. I, passim.

sistence, used irrigation, and built houses usually more than one story high.1

This last group of tribes, indeed, might be put in the agricultural stage, although they did not use domesticated animals in tilling the soil. Confining our attention, then, to the first two groups, let us ask what are the characteristics of man in this first stage of economic development.

The life of primitive man is nomadic. An early writer says, "From the first land (which is Newfoundland) to the country of the Armouchiquois, a distance of nearly three hundred leagues, the people are nomads, without agriculture, never stopping longer than five or six weeks in a place." And another: "They (thé Sioux) live on wild oats . . . and by hunting. They

have no fixed Abode, but travel in great Companies like the Tartars, and never stay in one Place longer than the Chace detains them."3 Such a wandering life is plainly necessary so long as people depend on what they can find for a living. This characteristic applies to a less extent to the more advanced tribes of the East and South, who

1 Morgan, "Houses and House Life of the American Aborigines," United States Geographical and Geological Survey, "Contributions to North American Ethnology," Vol. IV, p. 42.

2 Lescarbot, "La Conversion des Savvages, 1610," in "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents," edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites, 73 vols., Cleveland, 1896-1901, Vol. I, p. 83.

8 Charlevoix, "Voyage to Canada," London, 1763, p. 110. Jones, "Antiquities of the Southern Indians," New York, 1873, p. 297.

had learned to cultivate the soil.1 The Indians of Pennsylvania, for example, raised maize, potatoes, beans, pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers, melons, and occasionally cabbages and turnips.2

The method of soil cultivation forms another characteristic of this stage. It has been aptly termed "hoe culture." The work was done by hand with the aid of sticks and rude hoes and spades made of bones, shells, or stone.3 In a Southern tribe the men broke up the surface of the ground with fish bones attached to wooden handles, and after them came the women, who, with the aid of sticks, made holes into which they dropped the beans or grains of corn which they carried in small baskets. Ploughs and draught animals were not used. The field labor was done chiefly by the women,5 although the men occasionally helped. In fact, one writer says that the

1 The extent to which the Indians relied on the products of their fields for subsistence is a matter of some doubt. In some cases it may have been the chief source (Jones, loc. cit., p. 308), but not as a rule. The best general reference on the subject is "The Mounds of the Mississippi Valley,” by Lucien Carr, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1891, Vol. I, pp. 507 ff.

2 Heckewelder, "An Account of the History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, who once inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States." Published in Transactions of American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, 1819, Vol. I, p. 184.

8 Abbott, "Primitive Industry," Salem, Mass., 1881, Ch. XVI. 4 Jones, "Antiquities of the Southern Indians," p. 301.

5 Hugh Jones, "Present State of Virginia," 1724, reprinted, New York, 1865, p. 9.

Iroquois are the only tribe among whom it cannot be shown that the warriors did take some part either in clearing the ground or in cultivating the crop. To illustrate the fact that the women were the toilers while the men devoted their attention to hunting and fighting, it is not necessary to go to the accounts of early travellers. The same division may be seen among the Indians on their reservations. The woman's work in a Colorado reservation is thus described: "Each day, as the sun descends, she and her daughters come into the village from the timber valleys loaded with firewood the load weighing from twenty to one hundred pounds; she rises first in the morning, and builds the fire and prepares the breakfast. . .; as soon as this is over she is out in the sun stretching or dressing buckskin or buffalo hides, or stroking down beaver or otter skins, or cutting out garments, or sewing or ornamenting them with bead work or embroidery, often in a neat, artistic manner, with symmetrically flowing lines; and, except in rare cases, she has no idle hours. The truth is, an Indian village is, so far as the women are concerned, as full of active industry as any factory village of New England. Meanwhile the men have nothing to do." 2

1 Carr, loc. cit., p. 511. See also "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents," Vol. LXV, p. 133.

2 N. C. Meeker, in the Greeley (Colo.) Tribune, December 11, 1878, quoted in Boyd's "History of Greeley and the Union Colony of Colorado," Greeley, 1890, p. 328.

In an unsettled life, where labor in the fields forms but a minor part, if any, of the food-getting activities, there is not much opportunity for the development of the institution of slavery. There was little incentive to refrain from killing the captives taken in battle, and when the lives of the prisoners were spared, it was very common for them to be adopted as members of the tribe. Speaking of the captives, one writer says, "Many are killed, but if one outlives this trial, he is adopted into a family as a son, and treated with paternal kindness; and if he avoids their suspicions of going away, is allowed the same privileges as their own people." 1 Heckewelder says, "The prisoners are generally adopted by the families of their conquerors in the place of lost or deceased relations or friends, where they soon become domesticated and are so kindly treated that they never wish themselves away again.' On the other hand, slaves were held to some extent and compelled to work. Of certain Canadian tribes, La Hontan says, "The Women Slaves are employed to Sow and Reap the Indian-Corn; and the Men Slaves have for their Business the Hunting and Shooting where there is any Fatigue, tho' their Masters will very often help them."3 One

"2

1 Filson, "The Discovery, Settlement, and Present State of Kentucky," New York, 1793, p. 102.

2 Loc. cit., p. 211.

8 La Hontan, "New Voyages to North America," London, 1703, Vol. II, p. 18.