BROOKLYN BOTANIC GARDEN RECORD 
VOL. XVIII NOVEMBER, 1929 NO. 6 
THE STORY OF OUR METATE 
A CHRONICLE OF CORN 
By F. W. Honcer, Curator, 
Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation 
Metates,* or stone grinding mills, have been among the most 
important utilitarian objects eeriores by corn-raising Indians 
from Central America northward through Mexico into our desert 
Southwest from the earliest times to the present day. Let us see 
why this is so. 
What the Indians Have Given Us 
First, how many of us pause to think of the wonderful heritage 
we have received from the American Indians in the way of food 
products in addition to corn or maize—squash, potatoes, sweet- 
potatoes, tomatoes, pineapples, cacao (from which chocolate is 
prepared), peanuts, manioc (the source of cassava and tapioca), 
the Jerusalem artichoke, cayenne pepper, all of which were culti- 
vated for food by the aborigines centuries before Queen Isabella 
sold her jewels to enable Columbus to discover a New World. 
Indeed their gifts have been so great that we may well wonder 
how the people of Europe subsisted in the days before America 
and its strange inhabitants became known. 
Of all the products of Indian origin, however, maize was and is 
the most important to them, as it is the most important to agri- 
culture in the United States at the present time. If we may be 
forgiven for being satistical for a moment, in 1928 the total pro- 
duction of corn in this country alone amounted to 2,839,959,000 
bushels, with a farm value of $2,132,991,000, while the value of 
* Pronounced, may-tah’-tays. Aztec, metatl. 
