132 Hmshberger, — Maize : 



Catskills in 1609 bought ears of Indian corn, pumpkins and 

 tobacco. 1 New Amsterdam was seized by the English, but 

 the French still claimed the northern portions along the St. 

 Lawrence. Marquis de Nouville, in his celebrated expedition 

 against the Seneca Indians, says : " On the fourteenth of 

 July, 1685, we marched to one of the larger villages of the 

 Senecas, where we encamped. We remained at the four 

 villages of the Senecas ten days. All the time we spent in 

 destroying the corn, which, including the old corn that was 

 in cache, which we burned, was in such great abundance that 

 the loss was computed at 400,000 minots, or 1,200,000 bushels. 

 This was in Ontario County, New York.' The French army, 

 under Frontenac, spent three days in 1696 destroying the 

 corn of the Onondagas. 3 



The Swedish settlements in New Jersey and Pennsylvania 

 were obliged to buy maize of the Indians for sowing and eat- 

 ing, as Kalm writes. 4 Quaint old Gabriel Thomas, writing 

 about 1696, tells us that " they live chiefly on maze or Indian 

 corn, roasted in the ashes, sometimes beaten, boyled with 

 water, called homine." 5 Heriot refers to the cultivation of 

 maize in Virginia, in 1586, called by them pagatour. 



Jamestown was founded in 1607. During this year, Captain 

 Newport, who commanded the colony, went up the Powhatan 

 River to visit the chief Powhatan, who he relates had exten- 

 sive fields that came down to the river's edge, in which fields 

 Powhatan cultivated corn, beans, pumpkins, tobacco. The 

 English at Jamestown were sustained by the liberality of the 

 natives. Pocahontas in person accompanied " conductas " of 

 grain. fi 



The Indians taught the settlers the use of maize. 7 Captain 

 John Smith, in his " Indians of Virginia," says: " The greatest 

 labor they take is in planting their corne, for the country is 

 naturally overgrown with wood. To prepare the ground, they 



I Trumbull, J. E., Torrey Botanical Bulletin, VI, 86; Wise. Academy of Sciences, 30. 

 - Aboriginal Monuments of New York, 63-66. 



3 Documentary History, New York, 1, 212 



4 Trans. New York Agric. Soc, 1850- 

 Public Ledger, Dec. 27, 1892, 3. 



II Jones Antiquity of Southern Indians, 296. 



7 Jefferson's Notes on Virginia: U. S. Patent Office Report, 1S54, 9S. 



