410 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
~ I should also like to mention that it was the American Indians 
who discovered the properties of rubber and were the first to utilize 
it. The first conguistadores of Mexico noticed that the inhabitants 
employed a large elastic ball for playing certain games. In some 
places there were huge courts surrounded by high walls in which 
were fixed large rings through which the ball was thrown. The 
elastic substance from which the ball was made came from the latex 
of a tree bearing the technical name of Castilla elastica. But the 
most important source of rubber at the present day is Hevea brasi- 
liensis, from whose latex certain tribes used to make elastic syringe- 
like bottles. The trees are known to-day in Brazil under the name 
of seringueiras. Pear-shaped bottles made of this substance by 
certain Indian tribes of South America were described by the ex- 
plorer, Condamine, in his interesting report published in 1745 in the 
Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences. 
It is impossible within the limits of this paper to enumerate all the 
important plants used as food, medicine, and dyes, and the textile 
and other economic plants discovered and introduced into cultivation 
by the American aborigines before the time of Columbus. Some 
have proved to be of great benefit to humanity. The cultivation of 
maize, beans, tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cayenne pepper, 
squashes, manioc, and pineapples is to-day widely spread. The 
Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus), noticed by Champlain 
in the gardens of the New England Indians before the arrival of the 
English, is grown to-day in France; and sunflower seeds (Helianthus 
annuus), from which our Indians extracted an excellent oil, are pro- 
duced in large quantities in Russia. The yellow-flowered Vicotiana 
rustica of the Aztecs and North American Indians also is cultivated 
in Russia, where it is known under the name of “ peasants’ tobacco.” 
The pink-flowered Nicotiana tabacum, which has replaced it in our 
own country, has penetrated to the most remote regions of the earth. 
Cacao, from which the ancient inhabitants of Mexico prepared their 
chocolate, is one of the most important plants cultivated in all 
tropical countries 
During the late war some of the greatest comforts supplied to our 
soldiers in the trenches came from vegetable products which are a 
heritage from the American Indians—cigars, cigarettes, chocolate, 
cocoa, peanuts, preserved pineapples, maple sugar; some of the most 
nourishing foods, such as potatoes, maize in the form of popcorn, 
canned corn, corn bread, corn cakes, dried and canned _ beans, 
sweet potatoes, and tapioca. We owe all these products and many 
others to the American Indians. In the hospitals the elastic tubes of 
the surgical instruments were made of rubber; but the greatest 
blessing of all was the cocaine, which permitted the performance of 
surgical operations without pain, and this is a direct heritage from 
the Indians of Peru. 
