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Bee-Culture at Present: Indians

The Indians are said to have foretold the approach of the white man by the swarms of bees that shortly preceded him, - a form of divination whose prophecies have always come true, and had the Red Man recognized in them an emblem of misfortune to his race, as some of the ancients did, that prophecy would also have come true.

Thomas Jefferson thus informs us : - "The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man's fly."

And Washington Irving adds : - "It is surprising in what countless swarms the bees have overspread the far West within but a moderate number of years. The Indians consider them the harbingers of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man, and say that in proportion as the bee advances, the Indian and the buffalo retire. We are always accustomed to associate the hum of the bee-hive with the farmhouse and the flowergarden, and to consider those industrious little animals as connected with the busy haunts of man; and I am told that the wild bee is seldom to be met with at any great distance from the frontier. "They have been the heralds of civilization, steadily preceding it as it advances from the Atlantic borders; and some of the ancient settlers of the West pretend to give the very year when the honey-bee first crossed the Mississippi. "At present it swarms in myriads in the noble groves and forests that skirt and intersect the prairies, and extend along the alluvial bottoms of the rivers. It seems to me as if these beautiful regions answer literally to the description of the land of promise, - 'a land flowing with milk and honey;' for the rich pasturage of the prairies is calculated to sustain herds of cattle as countless as the sands upon the seashore, while flowers with which they are enamelled render them a very paradise for the nectar-seeking bee." While the date of the first arrival of the honey-bee in the United States is doubtful, the date of its introduction into California is better known.

It did not find its way by slow degrees as the line of Bee-Culture at Present white settlements gradually extended across the continent, but was introduced there with great painstaking.