HISTORICAL. 9) 
Mass., botanical gardens, at Philadelphia and 
at Ithaca, N. Y. 
The Indians of Mexico and the southwestern 
United States have for centuries grown corn 
very similar in general conformation to that 
found in the mounds of ancient times, which is 
quite unlike that grown in the northern corn 
belt. This corn is soft or starchy, of color rang- 
ing from white to pink, blue and other shades, 
has a large cob, and round, smooth topped 
kernels of fair size. Says Sturtevant:* 
‘‘Centeotl, in Mexico, was goddess of maize, and hence of 
agriculture, and was known, according to Clavigero, by the 
title, among others, of Tonacajohua, ‘she who sustains us.’ 
Sahagrun writes of the seventy-eight chapels of the great 
Temple of Mexico, that the forty-fifth edifice was called 
Cinteupan, and therein was a statue of the god of maize.” 
Indians as corn-growers.— The early Amer- 
ican explorers discovered the Indians cultivat- 
ing fields of maize. Delafield tells usy that 
“when Cartier visited Hochelaga, now called 
Montreal, in 1535, that town was situated in 
the midst of extensive cornfields.” Champlain 
in 1603 found cornfields eastward from the 
Kennebec river. In 1621, Squanto, an Indian, 
showed the Puritans how to plant and care for 
maize, and some twenty acres were planted and 
successfully grown.t At the time of the Pequot 
* American Naturalist, March, 1885, p. 226. 
} Transactions New York State agricultural society, 1850, 
p. 386. 
t Harshberger; Maize: A botanical study, etc., p. 131. 
