ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 345 



or "fexoes" were — as Navarrete notes, " Colec." i. 200, 

 203 — "the same as frejoles or judias," Spanish names for 

 Kidney beans, which the Portuguese call " Feijaos." Oviedo 

 (1525-35) speaks of the "fesoles, as the Spaniards call them, 

 of which there are many kinds in the [West] Indias." These 

 fesoles, he says (lib. vii. c. 18), " are called by Pliny ' fagi- 

 voles ' : in Aragon we call them ' judias,' and the seeds of 

 those of Spain and of this country are properly the same." 

 The natives of Hispaniola raise these fesoles, but they are 

 much more abundant on the main land, especially in New 

 Spain and Nicaragua. " I have, in the province of Nagrando 

 in Nicaragua, seen them gather a hundred hanegas (bushels, 

 nearly) of these fesoles : and they also, in that country and 

 other parts of that coast, have many other kinds of fesoles, 

 besides the common sort: some have yellow seeds, others 

 spotted," etc. In another place (lib. xi. c. 1), Oviedo, men- 

 tioning plants that had been brought from Spain to Hispan- 

 iola and other parts of America, " in the beginning," names 

 " Fesoles, called in Aragon ' Judias,' and in my country [Cas- 

 tile] ' Arvejas luengas ' : '' but " of these, there is no need of 

 bringing more seed, for in this island and on the main many 

 bushels are harvested every year, and in the province of Ni- 

 caragua they are indigenous (naturales de la misma tierra), 

 and a great number of bushels are produced yearly of these 

 and of other fesoles of other sorts and different colors," etc. 



From this time (1535) onward, nearly every writer who 

 mentioned plants cultivated by the Indians named, together 

 or in close connection, maize, beans, and pumpkins. Refer- 

 ence to several of these writers has been made in our notes on 

 Cuctirhitm. Cabe^a de Vaca found beans cultivated by the 

 Indians of Florida in 1528, and again near the western limit 

 of his wanderings (in New Mexico or Sonora) in 1535. De 

 Soto, at his landing in 1539, found " fields of maize, beans, 

 and pumpkins," near Tampa Bay ; and at Coligoa (west of 

 the Mississippi) " beans and pumpkins were in great plenty ; 

 both were larger and better than those of Spain ; " and so, at 

 other places, on his travels to the west and north. 



Jacques Cartier, the discoverer of the St. Lawrence, on his 



