HISTORY OF MAIZE, OR INDIAN CORN. 79 



The Indian made his conquest the more easy by feeding 

 his invaders from the produce of his corn-field, and the 

 parched grain supported him again in his defence. 

 Among the more imaginative Indians of the South, 

 maize became an object of worship, and a means of 

 conferring honor : it formed portions for gifts, and in 

 one instance was poured upon the ground for the 

 trampling of the horses, as an earnest of welcome to 

 the Spaniard. Everywhere the grain supplied food, in 

 many places was parted into a drink, and the leaves and 

 stalks were crushed to secure the juice to be boiled into 

 a sirup or sugar, and the stalks were used to form bags 

 and other material of wigwam use. It is passing strange 

 that the corn-plant does not appear upon the coat .of 

 arms of any of the States whose early necessities it 

 relieved. 



In all the references to corn that we find for North 

 America, we find no reference to the amount of crop 

 harvested from a given area ; and this seems at first sur- 

 prising. We read of manuring and fallowing, of the 

 preparation of the ground, of the planting, of the cul- 

 ture, and the storing of the crop. We have some few 

 accounts of varieties, and frequent mention of the uses 

 and modes of preparation. In 1608 the settlers of 

 Jamestown were taught the manner of grqwing it by 

 the Indians; and in 1621 Squanto, the good-natured 

 Indian friend of the Pilgrims, taught them ; and, strange- 

 ly enough, until quite recently there has been but little 

 change from the Indian methods ; and throughout New 

 England generally the cultivation which sufficed the 

 barbarous Indian and the colonist of limited means is 

 deemed by many to be proper now, except the plough 

 has taken the place of the sharpened bough or the 

 shoulder-blade of the moose, the hoe has replaced the 



