l6 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



September 13, 1609, and giving the latitude ^ as 42° 18', Hudson 

 wrote : - 



I saw there a house well constructed of oak bark ... a great 

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

 and there lay near the house for the purpose of drying enough to 

 load three ships, besides what was growing in the fields. 



In the journal of Robert Juet,^ mate on the Half Moon, is a 

 statement under date of September 4, 1609, that "... they 

 have a great store of corn whereof they make good bread." This 

 corn was undoubtedly maize, if we are to judge by contemporary 

 descriptions that name the corn specifically. 



Sagard has left us a good description of corn cultivation among 

 the Huron, and his account being one of the earliest and most de- 

 tailed, we quote it in full. 



The wheat (Indian corn) being thus sown in the imanner that we 

 do beans, of a grain obtained only from a stalk or cane, the cane 

 bears two or three spikes, and each spike yields a hundred, two hun- 

 dred, sometimes 400 grains, and some yield even more. The cane 

 grows to the height of a man and more, and is very large, (it does 

 not grow so well or so high, nor the spike as large nor the grain so 

 good in Canada nor in France, as there) in the Huron country. The 

 grain ripens in four month's and in some places three. After this 

 they gather and bind the leaves (husks), turned up at the top and 

 arrange it in sheaves (braids), which they hang* all along the length 

 of the cabin from top to bottom on poles, which they arrange in the 

 form of a rack descending to the front edge of the bench. All this 

 is so nicely done that it seems like a tapestry hung the whole' length 

 of the cabins. The grain being well dried and suitable to press (or 

 pound) the women and girls take out the grains, clean them and put 

 them in their large tubs (tonnes) made for this purpose, and placed 

 in their porch or in one corner of the cabins.* 



It, however, remained for Champlain to give us the first detailed 

 accounts of the cornfields and the methods of cultivation by the 

 Indians in the region of the St Lawrence and lower lake district. 

 Champlain in the beginning probably believed much as many per- 



1 The present city of Hudson lies in latitude 42° 14'. 



2De Laet. New Netherlands. N. Y. Hist. Soc. Col. Sef. 2. N. Y. 1841. 

 1 :300. 



3 Extract from the Journal of the Voyage of the Half Moon, Henry 

 Hudson, Master, From the Netherlands to the coast of North- America in 

 the Year 1609 by Robert Juet, Mate. Republished by the N. Y. Hist. Soc. 

 Col. Ser. 2. N.-Y. 1841. 1:323. 



* Sagard. Voyage to the Hurons. (Le Grand Voyage du pays des 

 Hurons, 1632). Tross ed. Paris, 1865. 1:135. 



