CHAPTER II
HEN MAN reaches a certain stage in development he adopts Agriculture. In Asia, herding undoubtedly preceded the cultivation of the soil, but in America the goat and the ox did not exist, and agriculture was immediately imposed upon the hunting age.
The trend of agriculture was evidently from the South toward the North, and especially is this Northward trend evident in the case of the Indian corn, the principal agricultural staple of the Indian dietary.
Without referring to the Aztec race (an agricultural people who inhabited Mexico and were distinct from the Indians), we may say that the inhabitant of this continent North of the Rio Grande lived in some twelve different ethnic, or radical environments which produced as many different types of Indians. Natural environment determines the nature of the food supply for man and determines also what his clothing needs to be, what shelter he requires, and, through these what his domestic industries, and personal and social customs shall be. So in the Arctic region, where the major portion of the year is intensely cold, where the country is a barren, treeless waste, we may find a people dependent entirely upon animal life for food, clothing and tent-
