Show a MEN OF EARTH by russell lord a so it 1 I 1 fil k la N ati ile f it I 1 ill it II 11 0 11 14 1 ill 1 I 1 1 it 1 to 01 1 elritt liali it ill kv CORN HERMAN farming combines AMERICAN those basic practices which spread through europe from the mediterranean country with certain elements of a native technique developed in antiquity on this continent b by y the indians eminent among american indian farmers were those of the eastern seaboard the live five tribes of the iro fro quals especially they never learned to harden iron the only animals they ever domesticated were dogs yet the imprint of their agricultural practices Is upon even the most mechanized and complex of our american forms farms today they were indians who farmed more than they hunted their great crop was corn not the corn of the bible ahl which ch means any one of the small grains indiscriminately but maize the glant giant grass of prairies the grain that gives dives a special savor particularly to all that comes out kofl of our middle acres the corn belt i these iroquois place names which chime erime beside the greek in the finger lake region of upper new york cayuga at ithaca syracuse onondaga homer commemorate a people whose spirit was altogether native and pagan their tribal culture grew as naturally as a tree not only their sustenance but their poetry their oratory their statecraft and their worship took root in the unalterable realities of the soil and the tour four seasons the surviving iroquois penned upon five scattered reservations in upstate new york hold out against the white mans presbyterian methodist and baptist missionaries and face the sun as pagans still by legends which accord with the known facts of geology and of the theoretical theore history of races the iro fro quals trace back as do all american indians to a wandering tribe supposed to have come afoot from asia to america back in the early dawn stone ago no man can say how many thousands of years ago they came but when the first white adventurers penetrated northern america they found the then five nations of the iroquois united into a confederacy which was in effect a league to enforce pence peace these nations were the mohawks Mo hawks bawks the oneidas Onel das the onondagas Onon dagas the cayugan and the Se the or sixth nation was not admitted until 1714 the five nations embraced suffrage frage tuf iroquois women writes erl bates of cornell university were voting as early as 1550 and the young bucks and unmarried men had to grow corn beans and squash to feed the widows and orphans during the winter applied socialism when serfdom was the lot of europe I 1 later only the women voted they could depose a chief at a days notice nolice what Aristo phanes phares in his bis lysis relates as entire the iroquois matrons matrona established in fact during the years yean prior to iroquois golden age which ran from about 1560 1570 to 1770 the men of the nations had made as men often do in an agricultural society the help problem being what it Is certain placations to a n females way of looking at things but it was not until after 1600 that they submitted completely as a sex to enlightenment and progress did this asks bates make a soft people anything but under this order the braves of the iroquois confederacy fe conquered more land than tile the greeks did under alexander the word of the iroquois matrons matrona became the law from the headwaters of the st SL lawrence to the chesapeake and from the hudson to the mississippi cartler cartier and viewed with the maize fields and the and the oratory of the five their birst recorded words to the hiep clr inan were these Welco mcl inel the krial iea t spirit inalea ni edca big country we tru nil clil hiren of the great spirit there Is room here for all such were the heathen whom the first white men called the romans of 0 the new world and proceeded ded with the sword the cross and kegs of rum to civilize and subdue will doag president of the seneca republic was a tall man slightly stooped timid and proud like most seneca indians he was not very dark ile he wore the plain clothes of a plain white farmer a soft shirt without a collar or necktie a blue coat when he be came to town yet he was a person of distinction his face was long and seamed with each feature gauntly yet thinly and there w was as about his whole person an almost suggestion of gentleness and strength As he stood up to take my hand amid nil all the barber shop elegance of sala mancas most thoroughly modern hotel lobby he stood out this was in 1927 ile de was sixty six yea yead in s old ne ile drove a big car diffidently n the manner of one who learns to drive late in life and hesitantly as lie he drove he kept up his end of the talk it t was true he said as I 1 had heard the white people of salamanca new york paid taxes to his people the this rall railhead hend and small city Is in a sense not in the united states at all but on land ceded by treaty to another nation his own the form of arrangement was at that time a ninety alne year lease the rental divided on a tax basis amon among the some 1000 white inhabitants OF of the town it did not come he said to a very big tax not at least what t the he white man would call big maybe five dollars a year for the ordinary householder around a year for the largest business houses and two dollars for a hunting license good half a mile back from either bank of the allegheny river for some 12 miles down those he said were the limits of this acre reservation the allegheny reservation we were toward the middle of it now passing along a narrow dirt road between small neat farms their houses and their yards well kept their fields ris ing smoothly from the river banks it was early june the spring had been late the days previous had been days of cold driving rain but the sun was out now it was warm and everything for miles around was growing and shining things look good suld said will hoag it Is tine line land down here by the water he spoke now with greater animation and permitted himself a slight encircling gesture one that did not take the hand more than three inches from the steering wheel it Is good here in the spring this Is our small country we are free A nation within a nation separate the six nations of the iroquois of whom my people the Se make half still hold bolt about three times as much land as you see here we hold this land by treaty with george wash ington it was called the treaty ot 0 pence peace and friendship the year of it was 1795 i it gave alve us the right to have our own government and to take taxes from the white men who came to live here As long as the sun shines grass grows green gree n and water runs downhill that Is what tile the treaty says it provides also that on the ninth day of every august your government shall pay to the head of every iroquois family four yards of calico cloth and nine dollars in money this Is still done we call that day cloth day ue ne pointed out different places along the way those people raise vegetables and sell them in salamanca they do well this man follows the old ideas of farming the indian way ue he has bas better early vegetables so they say than anybody else ue he plants many herbs too that he cannot sell to the white people they are used among our own people as medicine that house also it was fairly modern and well kept with a large garden it belongs to an indian who fol lows iowa the old religion about half ot of our people still do they know some things the people who do things the old way that your college of agriculture cannot explain the men wh 0 come here from rom the college at ithaca have told me that in some gome ways the old indian corn bents beata the white mans varieties and that indian dian tobacco Is ways best it Is for one thing less likely to take disease disease but 1 think that the old way cannot last it was good for our ago very good for or them than there was plenty of land they lived in villages fenced in against enemies and went out in the day to farm when the land gave out they moved their villages and their farms some place else they did not know anything about live stock that Is the great thing thin that ray my people have had to learn that there are not now any new farms to go to that they must feed from animals the farms thuy they have now and keep them rich 1 I had to learn that myself I 1 grew greny early potatoes and my crops kept getting getling less then I 1 got some cows then more I 1 nm am through farming now my son has the place but before I 1 stopped I 1 lind had thirty cows and sold my milk from a wagon in salamanca it paid very well the farm Is as good now as it ever was we will go there after a while we rounded a turn and came upon a board shanty deserted with a flaring advertisement tor for chewing tobacco on its face that Is how my people lived twenty years ago I 1 was born in the kind of house that came even before a a wg log cabin I 1 was born in 1861 when I 1 was born there were nine hundred of us on this reservation there are a little more than that now we moved over into the valley and took up farming later I 1 bought out my brothers and sisters after a while I 1 was able to build one of the first modern frame houses on the reservation if this Is the place we drove in and saw arthur wills son a graduate as Is his wife of alfred university they are leaders of the tribes temperance society and have little to say to white men this Is a very busy time in farming murmured will we saw his grandchildren and took them with us to the white house their grandfathers small new bungalow there we left them fishing with bent pins for carp in a newly made presidential fish pond the farmer we visited next S A grouse crouse was a sort of secretary of the interior to the head of the republic he lacked it seemed to me only the proper robes over his stained overalls to make of him the perfect chinese mandarin ile he and the president put their feet on no the hub of an old wheel and conferred treaty mutters matte rs of moment were before congress they arranged to run down to washington in wills car at Tuon Tu nassa the quaker mission school where will hoag learned english we had lunch Is iroquois for stream of the shining pebbles the school tins has been there since ISM 1810 it Is a boarding school for more than a hundred years it has given fifty or so iroquois boys and girls the equivalent of a ten year grade and high school education they do not try to make us quakers will long told me they only try to make us good I 1 became a presbyterian but ant I 1 will never forget the kindness of these friends we went back to his bungalow and he showed me his collection of iroquois relies relics stone implements bark baskets for the harvest the wooden mortar aud and pestle that was used as a flour mill he showed me how bow they poun pounded tied their corn to meal ineal then sifted it 11 through three differently sieved has baskets k each one of a finer mesh fa E showed we me belts of wampum fingering lingell w which aich red ja jacket akee corn planter logan and other great seneca chiefs were better able to remember their orations A and n d t tom 0 m t toms 0 m s f for or d dancing a n el n g a and n d turtle es shell h e il r rattles a tt I 1 e s c commemorating 0 m me m 0 r a ti n g t the h e p prowess ro w e s of f that sacred animal which sa say y the iroquois pushed america up fro from in the bottom of the sea ile he showed me also cups and cooking utensils death masks ceremonial pipes and head dresses pottery papoose boards malze maize masks and hides tanned with the brains of deer I 1 asked about the present constitution of the six nations each he said I 1 Is somewhat differently governed some have chiefs some call them presidents some maintain the title hiawatha the legendary iroquois designation for it chief each tribe Is in effect i a a federated republic sending representatives to a central council of eighteen 1 I 1 was III first made president of the when I 1 was forty five years old our laws will not allow a pilles ident to succeed himself but I 1 have been elected every third two years ever since our six nations send twelve students each year to the winter course in agriculture at cornell that Is the greatest thing tor for the good of our people to have been started in my time some people are too impatient to farm but for most of us farming Is best in our cou councils nells the bears or farm clan always sat first farming was a part of our religion our fathers said that the white man was wab the most ungrateful man in the world he had only one thanksgiving day they had twelve following the moons the feast of the strawberries the feast of the green corn and so on through toe the year we do not all of us go to the long louse house now to church but we all keep a part of the old religion we do not want factories and cities our heart Is in the soil the progress that we want we want it to leave us free A few months after I 1 saw him I 1 he heard a rd th that a t he w was its de dead ad 0 western newspaper union |