Tag Archives: agriculture

Farming is the Focus at Steuben County History Awareness Week

In the beginning, there were loggers. And then there were farmers.

*When white people muscled into our region, the lucky ones got fields that had been cleared by Native farmers. For others, though, their first priority was to clear the forests, and lumber was their first product.

*By clearing the land, they created space where they could either run livestock, or plow and plant. Practically everybody in the world was engaged in food production, at least as a sideline. Every single country dedicated at least 90% of its economy to food production.

*Most of us know that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison owned and operated plantations growing large amounts of foodstuffs, and even experimented with ways of improving the yields and strengthening the strains.

*But they were all rich. Even for non-rich John Adams, his home was a farm, and even while he was president he worked it alongside the hired men whenever he was home.

*So our early white residents were almost all involved with farming.

*That percentage is now much lower… though it has crept back upward, with Amish and Old Order Mennonites buying and operating small farms. But Steuben is still one of New York’s top counties for agriculture.

*In the earliest years the main product (after timber) was grain, and men might spend a week each winter haulting their grain by sledge to Naples for milling. Later Jemima Wilkinson built mills on Keuka Outlet, and eventually there were mills right here at home in Steuben.

*They might haul unmilled grain to Bath or Arkport, there to be poured into capacious “arks” that would then be poled and drifted downriver to Baltimore by way of the Conhocton, Canisteo, Chemung, and Susquehanna Rivers. Since they couldn’t work UPriver, once the grain was gone they’d sell the arks as lumber, and then walk home with their cash.

*When the Erie Canal opened it 1825 it wrecked that river traffic, and pretty much wrecked the Southern Tier along with it. Business (and farming) picked up again about 10 years later, once canals connected Keuka Lake and the Conhocton River to Seneca Lake, and thence to the Erie system. Produce now flowed north instead of south, but at least it WAS flowing again.

*Just as the Civil War approached the Keuka Lake towns discovered grapes, soon making growing and winemaking a big business in Yates and Steuben.

*For the rest of the county, potatoes and dairy became major products. But the Civil War… and later, the two World Wars… required mechanizing agriculture to replace all those young farm hands who’d gone into uniform. Now we grow more food, but with fewer workers and with fewer (and bigger) farms.

*All of that will be the focus of this year’s Steuben County History Awareness Week, October 1 through 5. Multiple agencies and historical societies have created exhibits that will be in the Horticultural Building at Steuben County Fairground (2 to 6 on Tuesday through Friday, ten to noon on Saturday).

*On Thursday Allegany County Historian Craig Braack will speak on “The Story of Barns, Silos and Outhouses.” On Friday I will present “From Wheat to Grapes: The Steuben Farming Story.” Both presentations will be at 6:30 in Haverling High School, and all the activities are free and open to the public.

*The finale will be on Saturday at Howard Community Center. At 1:00 there will be a demonstration of vintage plowing with work horses, followed from 2 to 4 by a Barn Dance with live music, “taste of Steuben” refreshments, and Harvest Basket Raffle. Please – join us at least once this week!

Farming Today

For well over a century, agriculture was the number one business in Steuben County and its neighbors. Far fewer people are engaged today, but what IS the current (and future) state of local agriculture?

*Farms in our area went back to scrub and forest as agriculture dwindled in the 20th century, and the deer came back as the trees grew up. Much of our forest is actually very young – it’s grown up since the Great Depression, or even since the Second World War; starting in the 1950s and 60s, farms went out of cultivation in huge numbers. This is also when the Amish and Old Order Mennonites started coming in. They WANTED small farms that could be operated by a family, and bought land that otherwise had no takers.

*Another significant change took place in the grape and wine sector. Men such as Charles Fournier and Konstantin Frank had pioneered bringing in European strains and producing more premium wines. Along with that specialization, in 1976 Governor Hugh Carey signed a boutique winery act. If you produced at least 51% of your own wine, and kept output under a certain amount each year, you could sell directly to the public, operate a tasting room, pay reduced taxes and fees. As we know, the number of operations has boomed.

*So as we are well into the third century of European-style farming in Steuben County, what do we see? Those marvelous muck lands in the northwest continue to be very productive. The uplands are rather limited in large-scale farming, but Amish and Old Order communities preserve the family farm, often using draft animals. Maple production, often selling raw sap, is important in the southwest. Lumbering has continued on small scale, but dairy has dwindled almost to nothing, though the Dairy Festival continues.

*Only three or four high schools have F.F.A. programs. M. J. Ward closed and dismantled the last grain elevator in Steuben County a few years back, and has now gone completely out of business. The County Fair continues, and while it still has a large agricultural component, it must always appeal to the NON-farm folks to keep the fair running. Interestingly, Steuben County has become one of New York’s most significant hunting areas – number one county in deer take, top five in turkey – BECAUSE so many farms have gone out. Hunting, much of it by out-of-county visitors, pumps a tremendous amount into our economy.

*Besides the small family farms of the conservative anabaptists, and besides the ongoing productive use of the mucklands, there are two possible portents for the future. One is the proliferation of small farmer’s markets, which ties in with the local-food movement and the direct-to-consumer movement, particularly C.S.A’s, such as that operated by the Peace Weavers in Wheeler.

*Secondly, such changes as the transition of Blue Gill Farms, operated by the Weaver family on Mitchellsville Road in Bath. Long a substantial dairy operation, Blue Gill moved out of that ten years back or so. Now they raise hogs for Hatfield, with the pig barns in the hills of Wheeler while they grow much of the feed on the flats in Bath.

*And around Keuka Lake, of course, the story is grapes. Throughout several millennia of human history, steep, inaccessible, or unproductive land has been reserved for grapes and graveyards. Grapes, it was said in the 1870s, were the first thing Pulteney folks ever found to justify the taxes on their land. The Steuben County shield bears a picture of a wheat sheaf. In 1900 it might have been a milk can, and in the 1930s a bushel of potatoes. If the shield were being created today, it might well bear a bunch of grapes!

*At 4 PM Friday, March 1, I’ll be doing a free presentation, “From Wheat to Grapes: The Steuben Farming Story” at Bath Fire Hall, as part of Steuben County Historical Society’s Winter Lecture Series. We hope to see you there!

The Farming Story Part 7: Our Third Century

Farms in our area went back to scrub and forest as agriculture dwindled in the 20th century, and the deer came back as the trees grew up. Much of our forest is actually very young – it’s grown up since the Great Depression, or even since the Second World War; starting in the 1950s and 60s, farms went out of cultivation in huge numbers. This is also when the Amish and Old Order Mennonites started coming in. They WANTED small farms that could be operated by a family, and bought land that otherwise had no takers.

*Another significant change took place in the grape and wine sector. Men such as Charles Fournier and Konstantin Frank had pioneered bringing in European strains and producing more premium wines. Along with that specialization, in 1976 Governor Hugh Carey signed a boutique winery act. If you produced at least 51% of your own wine, and kept output under a certain amount each year, you could sell directly to the public, operate a tasting room, pay reduced taxes and fees. As we know, the number of operations has boomed.

*So as we are well into the third century of European-style farming in Steuben County, what do we see? Those marvelous muck lands in the northwest continue to be very productive. The uplands are rather limited in large-scale farming, but Amish and Old Order communities preserve the family farm, often using draft animals. Maple production, often selling raw sap, is important in the southwest. Lumbering has continued on small scale, but dairy has dwindled almost to nothing, though the Dairy Festival continues.

*Only three or four high schools have F.F.A. programs. M. J. Ward closed and dismantled the last grain elevator in Steuben County a few years back, and has now gone completely out of business. The County Fair continues, and while it still has a large agricultural component, it must always appeal to the NON-farm folks to keep the fair running. Interestingly, Steuben County has become one of New York’s most significant hunting areas – number one county in deer take, top five in turkey – BECAUSE so many farms have gone out. Hunting, much of it by out-of-county visitors, pumps a tremendous amount into our economy.

*Besides the small family farms of the conservative anabaptists, and besides the ongoing productive use of the mucklands, there are two possible portents for the future. One is the proliferation of small farmer’s markets, which ties in with the local-food movement and the direct-to-consumer movement, particularly C.S.A’s, such as that operated by the Peace Weavers in Wheeler.

*Secondly, such changes as the transition of Blue Gill Farms, operated by the Weaver family on Mitchellsville Road in Bath. Long a substantial dairy operation, Blue Gill moved out of that ten years back or so. Now they raise hogs for Hatfield, with the pig barns in the hills of Wheeler while they grow much of the feed on the flats in Bath.

*And around Keuka Lake, of course, the story is grapes. Throughout several millennia of human history, steep, inaccessible, or unproductive land has been reserved for grapes and graveyards. Grapes, it was said in the 1870s, were the first thing Pulteney folks ever found to justify the taxes on their land. The Steuben County shield bears a picture of a wheat sheaf. In 1900 it might have been a milk can, and in the 1930s a bushel of potatoes. If the shield were being created today, it might well bear a bunch of grapes!

The Farming Story Part 6: Post-War Change

Like the Great War and the Civil War, World War II was again a boom period for agriculture, as America and Canada fed their European allies in addition to themselves. If you were farming, you could ALSO get a draft deferment! And, of course, there were always black market opportunities.

*Both World Wars revived a product whose use had been fading… maple sugar products. (Cane sugar was rationed, but maple wasn’t.) Maple had traditionally provided a cash crop in a slack season, when the cows stopped giving and the hands stood idle. But it was murderous work, and folks considered it fuddy-duddy peasant food when compared with cane sugar – the reason that the highest grades are the versions that are the LEAST mapley. Now UNrationed maple sugar supplemented rationed cane.

*World War II was also the last gasp of the horse, as tires and gasoline were rationed off the road. The war ended in ’45 and by ’50 we were embarked on major social change. Rural Electrification was soon completed. The one-room schools were closed, even as Corning Community College opened. TV came in. Factories boomed (Corning, Mercury, the Rand). TB and polio began to disappear. By 1950 more women were working than had been the case during the war. By 1960, they had the birth control pill. The New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the G.I. Bill were gigantic social engineering programs, and they guaranteed that the postwar recession was short and shallow, and our economy boomed.

*In 1919, as World War I was ending and Prohibition beginning, Walter Taylor had bought the Columbia Winery. Since so much of his business was in grape juice and sacramental wines, he was somewhat insulated from Prohibition. In 1936 (after Repeal) they began the manufacture of champagne, and in 1940 dropped non-alcoholic products. A stock offering in 1961 raised capital to buy the Pleasant Valley Wine Company, and Taylor became the second-largest employer in Steuben County, until closing out in the early ‘nineties.

*Joe Paddock told me that when he began his veterinary practice in the mid ‘fifties, there were 300 dairies in the Town of Bath… half a dozen of those within the Village limits. If you had one cow and sold the milk, that constituted a dairy, and I’m sure that many of these were small family operations supplementing a small general farm, or a small specialty farm, OR a factory job.

*For about 30 years after the war, an annual influx of migrant workers was a prominent feature of Steuben life and farming. Still, the family farms in general were going out. Many of the farms and ranches out west in the 1800s were large-scale corporate operations. Their success ruined the farmers of eastern Europe, who then immigrated over here in huge numbers. Now that was catching up with farmers here in the northeast, along with the reality that the children now had other options. If they stayed farming it’s because they wanted to, not because they were stuck with it. But even if they wanted to, cruel economic realities often forced them out.

*The farms went back to scrub and forest, and the deer came back as the trees grew up. Pheasant population dwindled but the deer came back, and then the turkeys, then the beaver and then the bear, and now the bobcat. Hunting became big business for Steuben. The hunter and the hiker often came upon old foundations, long-neglected stands of apple trees, and long-since forgotten graves.

The Farming Story Part 4: Prohibition, Depression, Floods, and War

As in the Civil War, so in World War I. The young farm hands went into uniform even as agricultural demand boomed. (We were helping feed France and Britain, as well as ourselves.) There was local agitation to create a Farm Bureau, which as we know was effective, and the Farm Bureau quickly set up tractor workshops. Farms mechanized, BUT the war ended unexpectedly in 1918. Farm prices crashed, and many farmers were now left struggling with time payments on their equipment.

*Then, at the same time, Prohibition came in! This closed the wineries and ruined the grape growers. We think of the Great Depression as starting in 1929. But for many farm families it started ten years earlier, in 1919. With widespread use of the motorcar, community and economic life began to dry up in the hamlets. They had had their own stores, schools, doctors, churches, undertakers. But who needed the little store in Coss Corners or Harrisburg Hollow when you could drive to Bath… or from Perkinsville to Wayland, Bloomerville to Avoca, Hornby to Corning? The rich man of Risingville now ran a shabby little shop in the sticks, with an outhouse in the back, and a kerosene lamp on the counter.

*This is the period in which thousands of Steuben people joined the Ku Klux Klan, which then as now exploited fear and turned it into hate by telling lies about people who are Not Like Us, and blaming THEM for all the trouble.

*When the Great Depression truly set in, one bright star locally (besides the evaporation of the Klan) was the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. Charles Fournier came from France to revive Gold Seal with up-to-date practices. Taylor, which had eked its way through the dry years, expanded its operation, and new wineries opened. Every Labor Day growers and buyers met in Penn Yan to hammer out “the grape deal,” establishing prices that would be paid that year.

*This is also the period in which County Agent Bill Stempfle took the lead in reviving and modernizing potato production in the mucklands, bringing in growers from Maine and Long Island who were grateful to find lower land prices, and whose intensive farming practices could offset worn-out land. And, of course, there were New Deal programs to help the farmer.

*BUT this is the period in which the bill came due for almost 150 years of short-sighted land use practices… especially when catastrophic floods struck in 1935, 1936, and 1946. The ’35 flood, which killed 44 people regionwide, was in many ways far worse than the ’72 flood. One Avoca sharecropper in 1935 received as his share for the year one calf. Avoca became a pilot program for New Deal soil conservation practices. From this period we get diking and re-routing of the Conhocton and Canisteo Rivers, the Almond Dam, the Alfred Dam, tree plantations, drainage ditches… much of the work carried out by Civilian Conservation Corps lads from their main camp in Kanona.

*When the New Deal started, 10% of American farms had electricity. When it ended eight years later with the advent of World War II, 10% of farms did NOT. However, that 10% included Steuben County. R.E.A. got about 50 miles of wire strung before the needs for another world war cut off their materials. But demand for farm producrs, once again, went up… even as, once again, the prime workers were siphoned away.

The Farming Story Part 4: Grapes, Dairy, and Potatoes

The 1860 gazetteer told us that Steuben folks annually produced over 1.5 million bushels of grain; 60 thousand tons of hay; more than a quarter-million bushels of potatoes; almost 300 thousand bushels of apples; 2 million pounds of butter; and 200 thousand pounds of cheese.

*So what’s missing? Grapes. The 1860 gazetteer gives grapes exactly three sentences, in a footnote, saying that in 1857 Urbana had 30 acres in vineyards, and double that the following year, with about 2000 acres suitable for the purpose.

*Eight years later the county directory shows 117 related opreations… vineyards, wineries, boxmakers, etc. – in Urbana along, plus 36 in Pulteney and 15 in Wayne.

*Folks started experimenting commercially with grapes just as an Ohio grape region was wiped out by blight, leaving immigrant workers and winemakers from Europe available. This may help explain the European feel of the earliest wineries. Grapes and wine became a very big deal in Steuben, Yates, and Schuyler Counties, with Hammondsport and keuka lake being the heart of the region.

*Another feature of late 19th-century agriculture in Steuben was the appearance of small creameries and cheeseries scattered across the map, and often run as co-ops. As ever, the original producer got the least out of his efforts, while those higher up on the chain got more. These small operations were a way of keeping some of that in the community.

*Tobacco too became a noteable product at this time.

*Likewise we experience the advent of Grange, or the Patrons of Husbandry. (Francis McDowell of Wayne was one of the eight original founders.) While out west Grange was an active political force, here in the northeast it often served more of a social purpose. But Grange worked hard to educate the farmer and improve practices, AND it fought a decades-long battle for Rural Free Delivery. Until that was well in place, a little after 1900, the only way you could get your mail was to go to the post office and ask for it. It’s hard for us to recognize how isolated the farm family was. R.F.D. helped change that.

*The second force for education was the Steuben County Fair. It’s been continuous since before the Civil War, when the new Ag Society took it over, and bought the curremt sire while the war still raged. In the next few years the first permanent facilities went up, notably the gatehouse, the fair building, and the track. Hornell, Troupsburg, and Prattsburgh also maintained annual fairs for many years.

*And, of course, there was Cornell University, thanks to the Morill Land Grant College Act, providing federal support to help each state create a college for the teaching of agriculture, mechanics, and the useful arts.

*By 1900 or so there were over 8000 dairy farms in Steuben County, and Steuben was the second county in the United States for potato production. But the small family farms on the hilltops had become uncompetitive, and people started walking away from them, not even attempting to sell because there were no buyers. Many of these were eventually taken for taxes, and formed the basis of our vast system of state forests and state game lands.

The Farming Story Part 3: Canals, Railroads, and War

Everyone was very relieved when the 1816 “Year Without a Summer” turned out to be a fluke, and growth resumed until the even-more disastrous year of 1825, when that busybody DeWitt Clinton went and opened the Erie Canal. While a spectacularly excellent thing over all, it hit the Southern Tier like a neutron bomb, completely wrenching all the patterns of travel and commerce. You can still see that Bath was laid out to be the great metropolis of western New York, with traffic running down the Conhocton and Chemung to the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay. Now Bath stalled while little no-account shanty towns like Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester started to boom.

*Land prices down here collapsed, and farmers suddenly found themselves paying mortgages that far exceded the new values of their properties. There were demonstrations, near-riots, and conventions until they finally held a summit conference with representatives from all the towns, and the Land Office agreed to revalue all the properties.

*Opening the Crooked Lake Canal in 1833 ameliorated this to some extent. While not in Steuben, it drained commerce on Keuka Lake into Seneca Lake and thence to the Erie Canal system. Hammondsport became a true port, transshipping goods from as far away as Pennsylvania up to Penn Yan and the canal. The later Chemung Feeder Canal, linking Corning with Watkins on Seneca, also helped.

*Steuben County was larger back then than it is today, and the 1835 gazetteer showed that 43% of its land – almost 40,000 acres – was “improved,” that is, cleared and useable for farming. This was quite an accomplishment for a feat done entirely with hand tools and draft animals, in about four decades. Of course it was also an ecological holocaust, and an open invitation to flooding.

*Steubeners in 1835 owned 43,000 cattle, 11,000 horses, a hundred thousand sheep, and 36,000 swine. They owned and operated 43 grist mills, 257 sawmills, two oil mills, 18 fulling mills, two paper mills, one iron works, three woolen factories, five distilleries, two breweries, 19 asheries, and 32 tanneries. So all those sawmills, asheries, and paper mills prove that lumbering was still vital.

*The Crooked Lake Canal helped, but real revival began with completion of the Erie Railroad main line in 1851, serving Corning, Painted Post, Addison, Cameron Mills, Canisteo, Hornell, Arkport, and Almond. The Rochester Branch soon also served Coopers Plains, Campbell, Savona, Bath, Kanona, Cohocton, and Wayland. By the time of the 1860 directory there was actually LESS improved land, but there was also less TOTAL land, thanks to the loss of several townships, so the percentage had climbed from 42 to 45. Steuben folks now owned more cattle, sheep, and horses than they had in 1835, but considerably fewer swine.

*The 1860 gazetteer also tells us something about their PRODUCE. Steuben folks annually produced over 1.5 million bushels of grain; 60 thousand tons of hay; more than a quarter-million bushels of potatoes; almost 300 thousand bushels of apples; 2 million pounds of butter; and 200 thousand pounds of cheese. Much of this, ESPECIALLY the dairy products, would have been useless without fast transportation. According to this gazetteer, “In extent of territory and in agricultural wealth [Steuben] now ranks among the first [counties] in the state.”

*I can’t state this for a fact, but I assume that Steuben followed the general national trend of mechanizing its farming during the Civil War. Thousands of young men who normally would be swinging scythes were now shouldering rifles. Production was kept up by mechanical combines, reapers, and the like.

*This meant that farming became much more CAPITAL-intensive and much less LABOR-intensive. It took more monetary investment, and larger farms, to farm successfully, and it was harder to find a job in the field, even for the men who came back from the war. Many of the veterans who populated the “Soldiers’ Home” (now Bath V.A.) after 1878 were only winter residents. During the growing season they got those jobs that were still left, or they went back to family farms as unpaid extra hands. But the work wasn’t there to employ them ’round the year.

The Farming Story Part 2: The Europeans Arrive

Once Europeans started muscling into our area in noticeable numbers, about 1790, the first economic pursuit, no surprise, was lumbering. Settlement at first spread along rivers, so you cut down the trees and rolled them down to the stream. You kept cutting until you didn’t want to roll any farther.

*Their construction and their implements all made heavy use of wood, plus of course they used it for fuel. But while much of the lumber could then be for own use, it was also a cash crop. Well into the 20th century long rafts of lumber were floated down the Canisteo, Conhocton, and Tuscarora to the Chemung. At places like the Gang Mills, sawmills dressed the logs, or they might be floated further down the Chemung to the Susquehanna.

*On that newly-cleared ground, you could now plant crops and pasture livestock.

*But if you produced beyond your own consumption… which is what most people wanted to do… how could you then handle your produce? Men on Mount Washington spent several weeks each winter hauling their grain by sledge through snow to Naples, where it could be milled. Before too long, though, gristmills were scattered throughout the region – Jemima Wilkinson ordered mills built on Keuka Outlet. William Ovenshire of Barrington paid off twenty dollars on his farm by making eighteen trips to Wagener’s Mill in Penn Yan, each time leading a horse carrying three bushels of grain, “by a path only recognized by blazed trees.”

*Even then, though, you still needed to get your goods to market. Well, remember all that lumber? The reason this area was attractive to the Pulteney investors, and the reason Charles Williamson founded Bath, is that those river connections on which the lumber was drifted connected all the way to Chesapeake Bay and the Tidewater – probably the richest part of America.

*The rivers were the highways, and Williamson’s business plan was to sell vast country estates to the wealthy Tidewater barons, who would settle the region lightly with their retainers and their slaves.

*This didn’t happen, thank God, but Steuben County farmers cut trees and seasoned lumber, and stored up a year’s worth of produce. Then they used the lumber to build rafts or arks, loaded up their produce, and poled down all the way to salt water, then often along the shore to Baltimore. There they sold their produce, then sold the ark for the lumber, pocketed their money, and walked back home.

*One man decided he wanted to see George Washington’s home. So after poling down to Baltimore he walked from there to Mount Vernon, made his visit, and then walked back home to Prattsburgh.

*Steuben County was officially created in 1796, and things progressed for exactly 20 years when they hit 1816 – the Year Without a Summer.

*Snow fell every month of the year. Frost formed every month of the year. The Tuscarora Creek froze over in April, and again in September. All the grain died in the fields. All the vegetables died. Almost all the fruit died. And people died with them, not so much from cold (the summer was still warmer than a Finger Lakes winter) as from poverty and hunger.

*We now know that volcanic eruptions caused the catastrophe, but people then wondered if the sun was burning out… or if the end of the world was upon them. What would the next year bring?

The Farming Story, Part 1: Native Farmers

An otherwise excellent documentary on farming in the Finger Lakes said that Native people had been farming this land for a thousand generations. Charitably calculating a generation as 20 years, a thousand generations takes us back 20,000 years, at which time we were under a mile of ice. So crop yields were pretty thin.

But, once the ice receded and people moved in, farming did develop. The white people in the westward expansion are often called settlers… a very gentle noun… rather than invaders. They also make much of clearing the wilderness, or taming the wilderness. But this was NOT wilderness. One of the reasons the land was so attractive was that so much of it was cleared, there were towns, there were orchards, there were farm fields. Native people had been terraforming for hundreds of generations, as human beings always do.

Steuben County, though under Iroquois RULE, was home to groups of several ethnicities. It was sort of a military frontier, with small towns and large patrols. There’s a habit of dismissively calling any Indian settlement a village… the “village” Custer attacked at the Little Big Horn had as many people as Hornell… and the main Iroquois settlements at the north end of the lakes were honest-to-goodness cities, larger than most communities in the new United States.

But around here smaller towns were the rule. There was one at the Painted Post, and one at the Chimney Narrows (east end of Corning). There were two in today’s Canisteo… one at the mouth of Bennett’s Creek, one at the mouth of Colonel Bill’s Creek.

Much of Indian settlement was somewhat decentralized, which makes sense if you recognize that with no livestock animals in America, meat came from hunting, fishing, and clamming. A community needed a large geographic spread as its larder, to avoid overhunting or overfishing.

In Europe, farming was a he-man’s work, while hunting was a recreational activity, indulged in once or twice a year. To their ethno-centric eyes, Indian men were lazy sons-of-guns who made their wives do all the work on the farm while they went off hunting. They didn’t recognize that this required constant reconaissance, journeys sometimes of several days in all kinds of weather to reach a given hunting ground, processing the kills on the spot and then packing it all back.

In Europe after the Black Death chopped population almost in half, the legal doctrine of waste land arose. If land was NOT plowed, and if no one ran cattle on it, you could move in and take possession as long as you started doing one of those things. When Europeans arrived here, they said, “Look at all the waste land!” And started grabbing all they could. The Indians didn’t really USE it after all… they might just come through hunting one week a year. Roger Williams pointed out that the reason the Indians don’t run cattle is because THERE ARE NO CATTLE IN AMERICA – which is also why they don’t plow! In addition to the immorality of taking Indian land, Williams argued that the waste land doctrine had no meaning over here, but he, of course, was completely ignored. One of several reasons Rhode Island is so small!