What the Ancients Ate

What the Ancients Ate Archaeologists Uncover Fascinating Story of Early American Agriculture

(Editor's Note: This is the second of two articles on early-day agriculture by M. E. Bemis, who has done much to brush aside the mysterious veil which divides the present from the past).

By M. E. BEMIS A FINE line of demarcation separates the known from the unknown agriculture of the aborigines. Archaeologists by patient study and much careful research have discovered a great deal concerning the ancient people of Arizona and the Southwest. While discoveries are being made each year, it will never be possible to know as much about the products grown by the ancients as we know of the crops the Indians were growing when the first white men came. Therefore the records of Coronado and his followers give us the beginning of the recorded story of the soil products of Arizona.

It does not seem out of place to mention again, and by the way of emphasis,the full significance and importance of the food obtained from Indian farmers by the Spanish conquistadors. Some of the food supplies were taken in raids, but much more was given willingly, usually we may hope in exchange for articles of value to the Indians. Coronado was undoubtedly furnished with corn, beans, squash and dried venison by the Opatas in Sonora, and the Papagoes, possibly the Pimas, in Arizona and if as supposed his trail was down the San Pedro, he probably was materially aided by the now extinct Sobaipuris, which like the Opotas and the Papagoes belong to the same linguistic group as the Pimas. All of them were agricultural, and more or less sedentary. Through the last part of his journey, which Coronado and other writers of that expedition call the wilderness (probably our White Mountains) food became rather low. When Hawikuh, the first of the "seven cities of Cibola" was reached, his soldiers were weakened by hunger. Food was essential, and therefore there was little time for extended parley. They were met with aggressive resistance which only was broken by a combined attack of the entire force. The Zuni (Cibola) Indians had never seen horses or firearms, and were as much disturbed by these unknown agencies of warfare as the Spaniards were desperate with the pangs of hunger.

The Zunis retreated to a higher mesa, leaving Coronado in possession of stores of corn and other food which the retreating Zunis were unable to take, and which as one of the Coronado's followers wrote, "we so badly needed." Coronado contributed something to the agriculture of Arizona, although it is not certain that his contribution was permanent. He was supposed to have taken with him 260 horses for his soldiers, 1,000 pack animals and "large droves of cattle and sheep." He report-

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