134 Harshbetger. — Maize: 



de Galligos, who with eighty lancers and one hundred foot 

 soldiers he had sent to reconnoitre the country, had seen 

 fields of maize, beans and pumpkins, with other fruits and 

 provisions in such quantity as would suffice to subsist a very 

 large army without knowing a want. De Soto's officers 

 found in one place 500 measures of ground maize, besides a 

 large quantity of grain. 1 



Captain Ribaut and the French Huguenots sailed up the 

 St. John's River, Florida, in 1562, and founded Port Royal. 

 Captain Ribaut 2 says: "About their houses they labor and 

 till the ground, sowing the fields with a grain called mahis, 

 whereof they make them meal, and in their gardens they 

 plant beans, gourds, cucumber, citrons, peas and many other 

 fruits and roots unknown to us." 3 In the narrative of Rene 

 Laudonniere (1564), he says of his expedition from Fort Caro- 

 line, at the mouth of the River May (St. John's) : " I departed 

 with fifty of my best soldiers in two barks, and arrived in the 

 dominion of Utma, distant from the river, where we took him 

 prisoner. They [his tribe], therefore, brought me fish in 

 their little boats and their meal of maize." Le Moine, in his 

 "Narrative," illustrated with drawings and written in 1564, 

 mentions maize. " I sent a second expedition with two 

 shallops, having soldiers and sailors aboard, with a present to 

 be given in my name to the widow of a deceased chief named 

 Hionacara, who lived twelve miles north of us. She received 

 my men kindly, and loaded both of our shallops for me with 

 maize and nuts, and sent in addition some baskets of cassine 

 leaves, of which they make a drink." 



In Plate XXI, Brevis Narratio, 4 six Indians are seen pre- 

 paring the ground and sowing corn. The explanatory note 

 reads : 



" Diligenter colunt terram Indi ; earn ob causam ligones e 

 piscium ossibus parare norunt viri quibus manubria lignea 

 aptantes, terram fodiunt satis facile, nam mollior est : ea de- 



1 Lawson, History of the Carolinas, 296. 



2 Jones, Antiquity of Southern Indians, 299. 



3 The Whole True Discovereye of Terra Florida, London, 1563. 



4 A Brief and True Report of the new found land of Virginia (Florida is meant here). 

 Thomas Hariot, 1590 



