INDIAN HORTICULTURE WEST AND NORTHWEST OF THE COLORADO RIVER

IT HAS GENERALLY BEEN ASSUMED by historians and anthropologists that the indigenous groups living to the west and northwest of the Colorado River were non-horticultural with three or four exceptions: some horti-culture among the eastern-most Kamia, among the Chemehuevi who settled at a late date along the Colorado River, and among the Paiute of the Virgin River (considered by some to have been a Mormon-taught group); and the tobacco-planting of northwest California. A. L. Kroeber attempted to explain the absence of horticulture in much of California by asserting that native California failed to become agricultural because of its dry sum-mers, for which, so far as maize was concerned, no amount of winter pre. cipitation could compensate.... California today is not notably a corn-raising state. This statement apparently overlooks several important facts, how-ever. Coastal California's subsistence was based in considerable measure upon maize from 1769 until the it 85 0's and California Indians were the primary growers of that crop. * Furthermore there is considerable evi-dence which indicates that a number of groups beyond the Colorado were practitioners of simple horticulture. The bulk of the Indians of California (except in the north) became horticultural due in part to the influence of the Spanish establishment along the coast (1769-1821). In some cases the natives were taught how to care for crops as part of the enforced acculturation of the mission system, however, many Indians took up horticulture as a result of a more indirect type of diffusion, in some cases apparently learning from other Indians. Still others may have derived their horticulture from the Colorado River region. Of course, most anthropologists might refuse to consider agriculture derived from a Spanish source, no matter how far removed, as forming a part of the native culture of an area. Only "aboriginal " traits are to be so considered. On the other hand, the kind of horticulture brough