1 30 Harshbetger. — Maize : 



The French arrived in Canada in the year 1534. Cartier 

 sailed up the St. Lawrence, and in 1535 reached Montreal 

 {situ) in the midst of extensive corn-fields. 1 He found every- 

 where maize," "mil gros comme poix, pareil a celui qui croit 

 au Bresil, dont ils magent au lieu de pain." In the brief 

 record of the second voyage mention is made of its use by 

 the Indians. Champlain arrived in 1603 on the St. Lawrence, 

 and found the Five Nations at war with the Adirondacs. 

 The Adirondacs were hunters, but the Five Nations made 

 the planting of corn their business/' He says, 4 " that when 

 coasting eastward from the River Ouinibequey (Kennebec) 

 he saw the Indians planting their ' bleds d'lnde,' and that 

 in every hill they put four Brasilian beans which grow of 

 many colors, and as they grow they wind about the corn, 

 which rises to the height of five or six feet. The soil was 

 feebly scratched with hoes of wood or bone." 5 



The Puritans landed on the bleak and inhospitable New 

 England coast in 1620. Captain Miles Standish, with fifteen 

 others, at once set out to explore the country. We are told that 

 they very soon found "much plain ground," about 500 acres fit 

 for the plough, and some signs where the Indians had formerly 

 planted their corn/' Later, they discovered a cache. Indian 

 corn carried them over the long dreary winter of 1620-21, for 

 it is mentioned in an early narrative "that they bought 

 greate stores of venison and eighte hogsheads of corne and 

 beanes. 7 In the spring of 1621 the Puritans began to plant 

 their corne, in which service Squanto (an Indian) stood them 

 in great stead, showing them both ye manner how to set it, 

 and after how to dress and tend it. Also he tould them 

 excepte they got fish and set within these olde grounds, it 

 would come to nothing, and he showed them yt in ye middle 

 of April]." "We set the last spring some twenty acres of 



1 Delafield, Trans. New York Agric. Soc., 1850, 3S2. 

 •-' Trumbull, J., Torrey Botan. Bull., VI, 86. 



3 Transactions Canadian Institute, 1, Part 1, 90; Colden, History of Five Nations, 

 London, 1747: Bailey, J. M., Ensilage, 77, Slafter, Champlain, Prince's Soc. Publ. 



4 Champlain, Narrative (final edition), 1632. 



•'• Champlain's Account, American Antiquarian, vn, iS. 



''• Mourt's Relations, 125-130. 



' Mourt's Relations, 79. 



* Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4, in, 1856, 100; Goode, G. B., American Naturalist, xiv',473. 



b 



