386 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



every few years, required a cereal giving maximum returns for the 

 land used. And ia maize the American Indian developed a food 

 plant capable of supporting a family of five for an entire year on the 

 production from 4 acres. 



Not only are the seeds of corn edible scarcely 3 weeks after fertili- 

 zation, but other parts of this plant were eaten. The Indians made a 

 palatable soup from the corn pollen which is produced in such great 

 abundance, and they also prepared a food from the tassels. Even 

 the fungus parasite — the common smut — furnishes a food highly 

 appreciated by certain Indian tribes of Mexico, much as the Chinese 

 value the smutted shoots of wild rice. Maize, however, supplied 

 more than mere food to the Indian. It was an important part of 

 his religious life, and quite early the element of art entered his breeding 

 of this grass, for in no other way can we account for the highly decora- 

 tive features of this majestic plant. The seeds run almost the entire 

 gamut of colors, and red, blue, black, brown, pink, yellow, striped, 

 banded, and spotted are common among the corns of the Indians. 

 The various combinations of colors and patterns and of seeds upon 

 the ear aflFord an almost endless variety of arrangement. 



Although we have settled largely on yellow and white seeds in our 

 commercial varieties, the rejected colors are still appreciated for their 

 ornamental qualities, and the Indians retain a preference for the blue 

 seeds in the preparation of their com cakes or tortillas. 



In addition to seed colors there is a great variety of seed shapes and 

 sizes, ranging from the diminutive pointed popcorn seeds, some smaller 

 than a kernel of wheat, to the giant disk-shaped seeds of the Cuzco 

 corn. These latter are so large, often approximating the diameter 

 of a quarter, that after being boiled they are eaten singly like grapes, 

 the endosperm being squeezed out of the outer skin or pericarp, which 

 is then discarded (pi. 1). 



Aside from the seeds there is a great range of plant colors. In our 

 conmiercial fields of com we are accustomed only to green plants but 

 there are various kinds of red, purple, and variegated com plants, 

 some of which at one time were listed in the flower catalogs and were 

 used as ornamentals in the circular flower beds common during the 

 cast-iron deer era. 



Com was an object of veneration to the Indians and figured in their 

 art no less than in their diet. The plant was skillfully formalized 

 for pottery decoration without sacrificing its distinctive characteris- 

 tics (fig. 1). This feeling for the decorative possibilities of the corn 

 plant was shared by the peoples of the Old World. In far Nippon 

 where the arts are close to the land, the immigrant com plant was used 

 as earl}- as the seventeenth century to achieve a strikingly beautiful 

 effect as is shown by the handsome screen now in the Freer Gallery of 

 Art. 



