48 AGEICULTUKE AND EUEAL-LIFE DAY. 



HISTORY OF MAIZE. 



When Columbus landed in the new world he found the natives 

 eating a food made from a peculiar grain unlike any produced in 

 the Old World, and to distinguish it from the corn of Europe, we 

 have learned to call it Indian corn. In 1498 Columbus observed large 

 fields of this grain growing on the island of Haiti, and in writing 

 to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain he described an expanse of 18 

 miles of cornfields. A few years later, another Spaniard, Hernando 

 Cortez, in his march to the city of Mexico, wrote of passing through 

 great fields of corn; and nearly every other explorer of the New 

 World noticed this peculiar plant and the queer-shaped ears of corn. 

 It is little wonder that they took special notice of it, since all tlie 

 grain cultivated in Europe was similar to wheat, oats, or rye. The 

 corn of the Indians therefore was a curiosity. 



Early English explorers in writing of it described it as follows : 



The graine is about the bignesse of our ordinary English pease, and not much 

 different in form and shape, but of divers colours; some white, some red, and 

 some blue. All of these yielde a very white sweete flavoure and being used 

 according to its kind, it maketh a A-ery good bread. 



The inhabitants of Haiti called the grain mahiz, hence the name 

 maize, and Europeans in referring to it still call it maize. Many 

 authorities believe that the grain originated in Mexico and took its 

 name from a tribe of Indians living in southern Mexico. But when 

 Columbus discovered America it was the leading food of the Indians 

 from the Arctic Circle to the Torrid Zone. The gi-ain, however, was 

 so unlike the cereals of the Old World that the Europeans did not like 

 to use it as a food. They watched the Indians parch it or pound it 

 into meal, but the bread made from it was not so pleasant to their 

 taste as the European bread, and, as a rule, the early explorers ate 

 it only when necessary to prevent starvation. Over 100 years passed 

 after Columbus's great discovery before the settlers from Europe 

 learned its real value. This corn of the Indians was the one grain, 

 however, that was to make America prosperous and end the great 

 famines of the world. It was this grain that saved the first colonies 

 along the coast, and supported the pioneers as they pushed Avestward. 



AVhen the coastal plains Avere settled and all the river bottoms 

 were taken up, the population pushed westward, fighting the In- 

 dians and the wild beasts, until the fertile valle3^s of the Mississippi 

 and its tributaries were reached. It took nearly two centuries and a 

 i^alf for the white man to take full possession of that gi-eat river 

 valley and to send its products to the markets of the world. Noi 

 since the Nile Valley fed so many people has such a large part of the 

 inhabitants of the world been fed from one river valley. It was 

 maize — Indian corn — that gave strength to the settlers to make this 



