IROQUOIS USES OF MAIZE 1 7 



sons do even now, that the Indians were hunters only but his changed 

 opinion is recorded as follows: 



July the tenth, 1605. 

 They till and cultivate the soil, something which we have not 

 hitherto observed. In place of ploughs, they use an instrument of 

 hard wood, shaped like a spade. This river is called by the inhab- 

 itants of the country Chouacoet. The next day Sieur de Monts and 

 I landed to observe their tillage on the banks of the river. We saw 

 their Indian corn which they raise in gardens. Planting three or 

 four kernels in one place they then heap up about it a quantity of 

 earth with shells of the signoc before mentioned. Then three feet 

 distant they plant as much more, and this in succession. With this 

 corn they put in each hill three or four Brazilian beans which are 

 of different colours. When they grow up they interlace with the 

 corn which reaches to the height of from five to six feet; and they 

 keep the ground very free from weeds. We saw many, squashes and 

 pumpkins and tobacco which they likewise cultivate . . . The 

 Indian corn which we saw at that time was about two feet high and 

 some as high as three. The beans were beginning to flower as also 

 the pumpkins and squashes. They plant their corn in May and 

 gather it in September.^ 



When the Iroquois took possession of the territory which we now 

 know as New York State, they carried on corn culture on a large scale 

 and so important an article of food and commerce was it that most 

 of the European invaders of their territory burned their cornfields 

 and destroyed their corncribs instead of shooting the Iroquois 

 themselves but, as one writer says, the power of the Confederacy 

 remained unbroken.^ 



The French made a mistake fatal to French supremacy in the 

 middle Atlantic region. In 1609 under Champlain they fired upon 

 a small detachment of Iroquois at Ticonderoga and thereafter the 

 Iroquois were the bitter enemies of the French, while they espoused 

 the cause of the En^lish.'^ The French realized their error most 



1 Voyages of Samuel de Champlaiti, 2 ■.64-65. Prince Soc. Reprint 1878. 

 Cf. also p. 81-82. 



2 Carr. Mounds of the Mississippi Valley, p. 515. Smithsonian Report. 

 1891. 



3 The Iroquois, especially the Seneca, were not always uniformly con- 

 sistent in their alliances with the British, but in general their arms were 

 at the disposal of the English colonial authorities. The espousal of the 

 English cause by the Iroquois greatly strengthened the hold of the British 

 in eastern North America and led to the expulsion of French dornination 

 from the continent. 



In an address before the New York Historical Society in 1847, Dr Peter 

 Wilson, a Cayuga-Iroquois, reminded the society of this fact in the following 



