uriant carpet of
grass which covered the plains and partly to the supply of animal
food afforded by the vast herds of buffaloes which roamed in tens
of thousands throughout the whole territory. The grass was important
chiefly because it prevented the Indians from engaging in agriculture,
for it must never be forgotten that the Indians had neither iron tools
nor beasts of burden to aid them in overcoming the natural difficulties
in the way of agriculture. To be sure, they did occasionally pound
meteoric iron into useful implements, but this substance was so rare
that probably not one Indian in a hundred had ever seen a piece. The
Indians were quite familiar with copper, but there is not the slightest
evidence that they had discovered any means of hardening it. Metals
played no real part in the life of any of the Indians of America, and
without such tools as iron spades and hoes it was impossible for them to
cultivate grassland. If they burned the prairie and dropped seeds into
holes, the corn or beans which they thus planted were sure to be choked
by the quickly springing grass. To dig away the tough sod around the
hole for each seed would require an almost incredible amount of work
even with iron tools. To accomplish this with wooden spades, rude hoes
made of large flakes of flint, or the shoulder blades of the buffalo,
was impossible on any large scale. Now and then in some river bottom
where the grass grew in clumps and could be easily pulled up, a little
agriculture was possible. That is all that seems to have been attempted
on the great grassy plains.

The Indians could not undertake any widespread cultivation of the plains
not only because they lacked iron tools but also because they had no
draft animals. The buffalo was too big, too fierce, and too stupid to
be domesticated. In all the length and breadth of the two Americas there
was no animal to take the place of the useful horse, donkey, or ox. The
llama was too small to do anything but carry light loads, and it could
live only in a most limited area among the cold Andean highlands. Even
if the aboriginal Americans could have made iron ploughs, they could not
have ploughed the tough sod without the aid of animals. Moreover,
even if the possession of metal tools and beasts of burden had made
agriculture possible in the grass-lands, it would have been difficult,
in the absence of wood for fences, to prevent the buffalo from eating up
the crops or at least from tra