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Sometimes Indians got lost in the woods, and even when Indians traveled well-worn roads, they were aware that the woods were filled with powerful spirits that must not be disturbed. Entire peoples were on the move in the century before contact. In the Southwest, drought set villagers and seminomads on collision courses. In the Northeast, the Iroquois moved out of Ohio and into New York. The folklore of the Creek peoples of Alabama recalls how the warriors migrated east and south along the river courses looking for suitable hunting grounds.

The Horticulture Age Begins Seven thousand years ago, on the Mexican Plateau, Indians who regularly harvested the wild grass teosinte for its small, coblike seedpods began to plant the seeds. The growers evidently experimented with different varieties of the plant, selecting and cultivating the variants with the largest cobs. Maize (corn) was not the first crop the Indians planted, but its cultivation spread out of the Mexican Plateau north and east as migrating farmers carried its seeds. Northern farmers did not adopt corn because they immediately saw its superiority in energy yield to earlier food sources, but because they could fit its cultivation into already established harvesting cycles of wild grasses.

But why domesticate only dogs? Middle Eastern goatherds and shepherds in the time of the Hebrew Bible were contemporaries of late-Archaic Americans and had already domesticated cattle, chickens, sheep, pigs, and goats, and rode horses and camels. Perhaps the animals of America were not amenable to domestication. Or it 27 28 WORLDS IN MOTION may be that the Americans did not need to domesticate animals—why feed and care for herds when wild animals could be taken in their natural haunts? In addition, North American natives’ symbiotic relationship with the animals may have precluded domestication.