Corn-Makers 221 



by the Norse evangelist Eric Jansen and four hundred fol- 

 lowers, was made rich by its broom corn. Four years after 

 founding, the colony numbered eleven hundred persons, and 

 they had put fifteen thousand dollars in circulation in the 

 county where trade until then had been entirely in mink and 

 beaver skins. They even sold their broom in Boston. When 

 the men turned out to do the spring plowing in 1855, they 

 ran furrows two miles long through fields of one thousand 

 acres. When the harvest was gathered, men, women and chil- 

 dren marched through the stubble hand in hand, singing 

 Norse folk songs before sitting down to a harvest feast and 

 an impassioned two-hour sermon by their leader. 



Thanks to its corn, Bishop Hill prospered mightily until 

 the members of the community became contaminated by the 

 heresy of the Shakers living across the river in Kentucky. The 

 Shaker doctrine of celibacy worked havoc in the corn-growing 

 foundation. The fields were wasted. Tumbleweed rolled 

 crazily down the two-mile furrows. Coatlicue claimed her re- 

 venge. The contrast between the latter days of Bishop Hill in 

 fertile Illinois and Brigham Young's settlement on the edge 

 of the alkaline Utah desert would seem to prove that the 

 Freudian theory of sex repression carries its significance even 

 into agriculture. 



The first settlers in this country knew four types of maize. 

 When Captain Richard Bagnall discovered the virtues of the 

 Iroquois' sweet corn he added a fifth corn family to the roll. 

 It stands at the same number today. 



The five first families of zea mays from which hundreds of 

 lines have sprung, and from both sides of the blanket, are 



zea mays everta popcorn 



zea mays indurata flint corn 



zea mays indentata dent corn 



zea mays amylacea soft corn 



zea mays saccharata sweet corn 



