CULTIVATED GRAINS AND GRASSES 247 



progenitor of Indian corn. All this strongly suggests that 

 the Indians themselves procured it from some former race like 

 the mound builders, which may not have been older than the 

 races from which the Aztecs developed. In any event the 

 origin of Indian corn is as much of a mystery as that of wheat, 

 except that we know precisely when and where it came into the 

 hands of the white man.^ 



This crop was the chief reliance of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, 

 of western New York. The squaws raised large crops of it, 

 which were stored in stockaded villages for protection against 

 thieves,^ and while the braves defended the stores and extermi- 

 nated their enemies, the squaws cleared more land and raised 

 more com and apples.*^ 



There are many evidences that corn is a comparatively new 

 species on the earth. One is the large number of giant grasses 

 found in the American tropics, many of which suggest a resem- 

 blance to maize, while others are clearly connected with hroom 

 com, which is a close relative. The other evidence of its newness 

 is its extreme variability not only in size but in the shape, location, 

 and character of the grain. 



^ The Aztecs and Toltecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru are not so very 

 old as we measure antiquity. They were in the bronze age of their develop- 

 ment at the time of the discovery of this continent by Europeans, as the North 

 American Indians were in the stone age ; but archeologists do not regard their 

 remains as running much, if any, back of the time of Christ, though what civili- 

 zation might have antedated them we have no means of knowing, except that 

 they left nothing behind that will compare in age with the lake dwellers of 

 Switzerland, the pyramid builders of Egypt, or the brickmakers of Babylon. 



2 To protect this store of food fierce wars were waged with their neighbors, 

 and as offensive measures are always better than defensive, it became the custom 

 to send out each summer one or more parties of young braves to wage wars 

 of extermination on surrounding tribes. Nothing could stand against this alli- 

 ance of the Six Nations and their methods, and they made themselves felt 

 throughout all of eastern Canada, as far west as Illinois and as far south as the 

 Carolinas. It was the beginning of what would undoubtedly in time have 

 developed an Indian civilization if it had not been interrupted by the coming 

 of the white man. In this way a cultivated crop is the beginning of civilization. 



" The farming of the Iroquois was not limited to corn. Remains of the old 

 Indian orchards may still be traced in the region of the lakes of western 

 New York. 



