ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE IN ANCIENT AMERICA 9
Where agriculture became the principal eco-
nomic activity, its yield depended on such natural
factors as soil fertility and climate and on the farm-
ing techniques employed. Forest people usually em-
ployed the slash-and-burn method of cultivation.
Trees and brush were cut down and burned, and
maize or other staples were planted in the cleared
area with a digging stick. Because this method soon
exhausted the soil, the clearing had to be left fallow
and a new one made. After this process had gone
on long enough, the whole village had to move to a
new site or adopt a dispersed pattern of settlement
that would allow each family group suffi cient land
for its needs. Slash-and-burn agriculture thus had
a structural weakness that usually sharply limited
the cultural development of those who employed it.
That a strong, controlling authority could at least
temporarily overcome the defects of this method is
suggested by the success of the Maya: their brilliant
civilization arose in a tropical forest environment
on a base of slash-and-burn farming directed by a
powerful priesthood, but abundant evidence now
exists that, from very early times, this was supple-
mented by more intensive methods of agriculture.
A more productive agriculture developed in
the rugged highlands of Middle America and the
Andean altiplano and on the desert coast of Peru.
In such arid or semiarid country, favored with a
temperate climate and a naturally rich soil, the land
could be tilled more easily and its fertility preserved
longer with digging-stick methods. Most important,
food production could be increased with the aid of
irrigation, which led to larger populations and a
greater division of labor. The need for cooperation
and regulation on irrigation projects favored the rise
of strong central governments and the extension of
their authority over larger areas. The Aztec and Inca
empires arose in natural settings of this kind.
Finally, the vast number of human groups
that inhabited the American continents on the eve
of the Spanish Conquest can be classifi ed by their
subsistence base and the complexity of their social
organization into three levels or categories: tribe,
chiefdom, and state. These categories correspond
to stages in general cultural evolution. The simplest
or most primitive, the bandandtribal levels, usually
correlated with diffi cult environments (dense for-
ests; plains; or extremely wet, dry, or frigid areas)
that sharply limited productivity. It was charac-
terized by small, egalitarian groups who relied on
hunting, fi shing, and collecting; a shifting agricul-
ture; or a combination of these activities. Hunting
and gathering groups were typically nomadic, mi-
grating within a given territory in a cyclical pattern
according to the seasonal availability of game and
edible plants. Groups that supplemented hunting,
fi shing, and gathering with slash-and-burn agri-
culture were semisedentary. The often precarious
nature of the subsistence base tended to keep band
and tribal population densities low and to hinder the
development of a division of labor. The social unit
on this level was an autonomous band or a village;
a loose association of bands or villages, linked by
ties of kinship, real or fi ctitious, formed a tribe. So-
cial stratifi cation was unknown; all members of the
group had access to its hunting and fi shing grounds
and its land. Village and tribal leaders or chiefs owed
their authority to their prowess in battle or other
outstanding abilities; the exercise of their authority
was limited to the duration of a hunt, a military op-
eration, or some other communal activity.
Typical of these egalitarian societies were
many Brazilian tribes of the Amazon basin. A
frequent feature of their way of life was constant
intertribal warfare whose purpose was to capture
prisoners. After being kept for weeks or months,
the captured warriors were ritually executed and
their fl esh was cooked and eaten by members of the
tribe to gain spiritual strength and perpetuate the
tribal feud. The sixteenth-century French philoso-
pher Michel de Montaigne, who read about their
customs in travel accounts and met some Brazilian
Indians brought to France, was much impressed
by their democratic spirit and freedom from the fa-
miliar European contrasts of extreme poverty and
wealth. He used these impressions to draw an in-
fl uential literary portrait of the noble savage, the
innocent cannibal who represents a type of moral
perfection free from the vices of civilization.
Thechiefdom, the second category of indig-
enous social organization, represented an inter-
mediate level. Most commonly, the subsistence
base of the chiefdom was intensive farming, which
supported a dense population that dwelled in large