cultivation. There are some facts that seem to favor this hypothesis.[1] At present I wish to call attention to such existing evidence as points to the San Juan district as the anterior home of a number of historic Indian tribes.
1 . The Mound- Builders. — Although these tribes had disappeared at the epoch of European discovery, and cannot be classed with any known Indian stock, their condition as horticultural tribes, their knowledge of some of the native metals, and the high character of their stone implements and pottery place them in the class of Village Indians. The nearest region from which they could have been derived is New Mexico. There is no reason for referring them to the San Juan region more than to the nearer country of the Rio Grande, unless it should appear probable that the inhabitants of the latter valley were themselves migrants from the same region. But there are good reasons for deriving the Mound-Builders from the Village
Indians in some part of New Mexico.
- ↑ Where maize was indigenous is unknown, except that it was somewhere upon the American continent. It is the only cereal America has given to the world. At the period of European discovery, it was found cultivated and a staple article of food in a large part of North America and in parts of South America. There were also found beans, squashes, and tobacco, with the addition in some areas of peppers, tomatoes, cocoa, and cotton. The problem of the place of the origin of maize is probably insoluble, but speculations are legitimate, and such are all that I have to offer. The fecundity of plant-life in the Rocky Mountains is remarkable, particularly on the southern slopes, where they subside into the mesa, or table-land formation, north of the San Juan River. The continental divide is in the eastern margin of this region. The first suggestion I wish to make is that all cereals and cultivated plants must have originated in the great continental mountains of the two hemispheres, and have propagated themselves along the water courses of the mountain valleys down to the plains traversed by the great rivers formed by these mountain tributaries. All the cereals belong to the family of the Grasses (Gramineæ), and each of them, doubtless, is the last of a series of antece- dent forms. I saw rye, barley, and oats growing wild by self-propagation in the mountain valleys of Colo- rado the present season ; also the wild pea, whose stunted seeds had the taste of the cultivated pea. Turnips, onions, tomatoes, and hops are found growing wild in the Pine River Valley, and the pie-plant or rhubarb is said to grow luxuriantly in the Elk Mountain valleys. I also saw wild flax and the gourd growing by self-propagation in the valley of the Animas. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries, and strawberries are found in the mountain valleys in numerous places, together with flowering plants of many species and varieties. Tiny forms of flowering plants are to be seen above patches of snow in places where the snow had recently melted. This fecundity of plant-life from ten to twelve thousand feet above sea level, and the relation of these mountain tributaries to the San Juan, which runs from east to west, not remotely from the base of these mountains, in such a manner as to invite and receive into its lap, so to express it, the vegetable wealth developed in these mountain chains, are facts that force themselves upon the attention of the observer. The altitude of the San Juan Valley ranges from seven thousand feet at Pagosa Springs to live thousand nine hundred and seventy feet at the mouth of the Animas, and diminishing to four thousand four hundred and forty-six feet near the point where it empties into the Colorado (Hayden's Atlas of Colorado, Sheet 111). The altitude at Conejos is seven thousand eight hundred and eighty feet (Ib.,) which is about as great an elevation as admits of the successful cultivation of maize. I noticed in a field of maize growing at Conejos that the stalk grew only about three feet high, and the fact that the
