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Show 176 LEADING OF NEW MEXICAN HISTORY Pi Ca ot atets os ee oe ee Co BO ie se 2 %. ey gt a) a J ea a = a) Eklt Ce ae ee ie Aik Wea Bale th Te . £-8—*# * Pr eeee & Ye * ee &Pee eee ee re ie eid hed Oe ee Pe a ee ca FACTS to a point, would run fiat, and opened a furrow similar to the ordinary shovel-plow. Their fields, called labores and milpas, were seldom fenced. Owners of cattle were required to keep herdsmen with them constantly or else graze the stock at a considerable distance from the cultivated fields, and if any damage happened to growing crops on account of trespassing stock, the owner of the stock, upon complaint to the alcalde, responded in damages. Nearly all crops were grown by irrigation, although at places at high elevations crops known as temporal (dry farming) were grown with some success. In irrigation the community ditch system was in vogue. The main ditch was known as the acequia madre, and this generally served for the conveyance of water to the cultivated fields owned by the people of any single town or settlement.128 The staple productions of the country were Indian corn and wheat. No cotton was grown in the country after the eighteenth century, although it was indigenous to the country and used by the Indians very extensively at the time of the Spanish entradas. The potato was not grown until late in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, although this was also an indigenous plant, being found in a state of nature in the mountain valleys, the tubers being of small size. Tobacco was universally used, but very little of it was grown, this being of a light and very weak species, called punche. The reason for the neglect in growing this plant was owing monopoly of the federal] government. The laws to the relative to the growing of tobacco were very strict, and although there was no pub- lic store-house in New Mexico, the people could not carry it else- where for purposes of sale, without risk of its being immediately confiscated by the government officials. Fruits of there apples, were peaches, practically apricots, none; and there some were pear supervision of the alli “and Sepa decea Tat ea mm 118 ditches 1 1 ry the same ° : manner a few trees. orchards There e were sO as road-taxes were worked out in the states. The Size of the main ditch depended upon the amount of land served. More trouble arose in New Mexico over the distribution and use of water than from any other cause, and in all sessions of the legislative assembly in days of nee rule, the New Mexican always stood guard for the perpetuation the of © ancient systems of irrigation practised in the country. »W. W oY. H. Davie“ Miller, 5. W. F. Raynolds. Secretaries of New Mexico o William M. Arny. 8. G. Ritch. 3. George W. Lane. 6. Benjamin M. Thomas. /. 9. George H. Wallace Nathan Jaffa. a oe |