ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 349 



In the northern States, we find little difficulty in establish- 

 ing the identity of Phaseolus vulgaris with the beans culti- 

 vated by the Indians at the first coming of Europeans. These 

 were from the first distinguished as " Indian beans," from 

 the Garden beans ( Vicia Faba) introduced by the English. 

 In 1609, Hudson, exploring the river which bears his name, 

 saw at an Indian village — in the vicinity of Schodac and 

 Castleton, Rensselaer Coimty, N. Y. — "a great quantity of 

 maize or Indian corn, and beans of the last year's growth " 

 (Hudson's Journal, in De Laet, 1G25, b. iii. ch. 10, and 

 Juet's, in Purchas : N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 2 Ser., i. 300, 

 325). 



1631-42. The Indians of New Netherland " make use of 

 French beans of different colors, which they plant among 

 their Maize- . . . The Maize stalks serve, instead of the poles 

 which we use in our Fatherland, for the beans to grow upon " 

 (De Vries, Voyages, transl. in 2 N. Y. Hist. Soc, iii. 107). 



1653. Van der Donck, in his '' Description of the New 

 Netherlands," distinguishes the beans cultivated by the In- 

 dians before the coming of the Dutch, and the Turkish beans 

 which had been introduced : " Of Beans there are several 

 kinds ; but the large Windsor bean [ Vicia Faha'] . . . and 

 the Horse-bean will not fill out their pods. . . . The Turkish 

 beans which our people have introduced there grow wonder- 

 fully. . . . Before the arrival of the Netherlanders [1614] 

 the Indians raised beans of various kinds and colours, but gen- 

 erally too coarse to be eaten green or to be pickled, except 

 the blue sort, which are abundant," etc. He then describes 

 the Indian mode of planting beans with maize, ut sirpra 

 (N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 2 Ser., i. 188-9). This is the only 

 reference we have found to the introduction of any species of 

 Phaseolus into North America. Van der Donck's book was 

 written more than forty years after Hudson's coming, and the 

 author first arrived in New Netherland in 1642. His state- 

 ment as to the introduction by the Dutch of the best kind of 

 " Turkish beans " for " snaps," salad, or pickling, is not to 

 be accepted without reserve ; but the fact that Turkish beans 

 " grow wonderfully, fill out remarkably well, and are much 



