Note 6 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

It appears that, where agriculture is carried on without the aid of domestic animals, subsistence does not depend on capital. The savage agriculturist is unacquainted with the more perfect and costly agricultural implements used in Europe, and, where population is scarce (as it is among most savages) cultivates only such grounds as are most fertile and easiest of access. Even the plough is used by very few savages; they most often content themselves with a pointed stick or hoe, wherefore Hahn calls the agriculture carried on by them hoe-culture (Hackbau), as distinguished from agriculture proper (Ackerbau)6. And even where agriculture is carried on in a more skilful manner, e.g. by means of irrigation, it is not capital that is wanted, but labour. The construction of the irrigation-works may be a long and laborious task, but the materials cost nothing. There is only one instance in which we have found it stated that agriculture cannot well be carried on without capital. Radloff tells us that the Kazak Kirghiz, besides rearing cattle, are largely agricultural. Some fields want constant irrigation, and the water is very difficult to procure. The rich use a paddle-wheel; the poor bring the water to their fields in buckets and wooden vessels, but this is of little avail. Therefore it is only the rich who are capable of carrying on agriculture to any considerable extent7. But this state of things probably had not yet existed more than some 30 years; for Levchine (writing about 30 years earlier than Radloff) states that in his time agriculture was of little importance; and he does not make any mention of irrigation8. The introduction of the paddle wheel has therefore probably to be ascribed to the Russians; for the Kazak Kirghiz, in Radloff’s time, were already strongly influenced by them; so we may not speak here of a fact belonging to savage life. We have not found any other instance of this dependence of agriculture on capital; but even if there be a few instances, we are justified in concluding that, generally speaking, the savage agriculturist can perfectly well do without capital, except, of course, where he depends on cattle.