SECRETARY'S REPORT. 57 



cultivated by the Turks, how could all these things have hap- 

 pened ? Why was not so useful a grain introduced into Europe 

 before, or why did it spread so rapidly when it was introduced ? 

 A somewhat extensive trade was carried on between Europe 

 and some of the Asiatic Isles, long before the sixteenth century, 

 so that if Indian corn had been known or cultivated in Asia, 

 there is every probability that it would have found its way into 

 Europe. The plant called sorglLum was known and cultivated 

 in Europe and somewhat in Asia and Africa, and tliis it was 

 with which maize was so often confounded. This, however, 

 was not a species of Indian corn. In Germany, in 1532, forty 

 years after the discovery of America, Indian corn had the name 

 sometimes of Asia wheat, grand grain, and giant reed, and 

 Turkish corn of Asia, which it actually keeps now, and grain of 

 India, confounding it with what they had before known. In 

 the Indian Archipelago it is called the Yagoong, or the native, 

 as the Lenni Lennape in America called the true maizo. But 

 this Yagoong, and the meliga of Asia Minor and Italy, in 120-1, 

 and the milhom of Portugal, in 1259, the picture of the 

 Chinese Li-ti-chin in 1578, the stalk eighteen inches long with 

 its leaves a«[id tlie "grains of maize " in a little earthen cup 

 found in the Tlieban mummy, by M. Rifaud in 1819, and the 

 notions of an origin for Indian corn different from America, 

 all arose from mistaking it for the sorghum, that is just now 

 exciting so much attention with us, and to which is often 

 applied at this day, the name of small maize. 



But the strongest evidence of its American origin is, it seems 

 to us, that it has been found growing wild in some parts of the 

 western continent, wliich is not the case in any other part of 

 the world. This alone would seem to prove it to be indigenous 

 to America. We need say nothing of the fact that grains of 

 Indian corn have been found in the graves and mounds of Peru 

 and of Mexico. These mounds were probably built three or 

 four hundred years before the conquest. There can be no 

 doubt, therefore, that it v^as cultivated on this continent from 

 time immemorial. For we have now, in the discovery of the 

 Indian corn wild in Paraguay, and elsewhere in South America, 

 the proof which M. Bonafous required after an examination of 

 all that had been written and said upon the subject. " La 



premiere habitation du mdis restera in'certaine, jusqu'a ce qu'on 

 8* 



