ain village, where a livelihood was more readily
obtainable. Hence, in territory which had enjoyed a considerable
interval of peace the settlements were in the nature of small
agricultural communities, established at short distances from each other
and extending in the aggregate over a considerable extent of country. In
the case of populous tribes the villages were probably of the character
of the Choctaw towns described by Adair.[4] "The barrier towns, which
are next to the Muskohge and Chikkasah countries, are compactly settled
for social defense, according to the general method of other savage
nations; but the rest, both in the center and toward the Mississippi,
are only scattered plantations, as best suits a separate easy way of
living. A stranger might be in the middle of one of their populous,
extensive towns without seeing half a dozen houses in the direct course
of his path." More closely grouped settlements are described by Wayne in
American State Papers, 1793, in his account of an expedition down the
Maumee Valley, where he states that "The margins of the Miamis of the
Lake and the Au Glaize appear like one continuous village for a number
of miles, nor have I ever beheld such immense fields of corn in any part
of America from Canada to Florida." Such a chain of villages as this was
probably highly exceptional; but even under such circumstances the
village sites proper formed but a very small part of the total area
occupied.

[Footnote 4: Hist. of Am. Ind., 1775, p. 282.]

From the foregoing considerations it will be seen that the amount of
land occupied as village sites under any circumstances was
inconsiderable.

_Agricultural land_.--It is practically impossible to make an accurate
estimate of the relative amount of land devoted to agricultural purposes
by any one tribe or by any family of tribes. None of the factors which
enter into the problem are known to us with sufficient accuracy to
enable reliable estimates to be made of the amount of land tilled or of
the products derived from the tillage; and only in few cases have we
trustworthy estimates of the population of the tribe or tribes
practicing agriculture. Only a rough approximation of the truth can be
reached from the scanty data available and from a general knowledge of
Indian methods of subsistence.

The practice of agriculture was chiefly limited to the region south of
the St. Lawrence and east of the Mississippi. In this region it was fa