HISTORICAL. y 



Mass., botanical gardens, at Philadelphia and 

 at Ithaca, N. Y. 



The Indians of Mexico and the southwestern 

 United States have for centuries grown corn 

 very similar in general conformation to that 

 found in the mounds of ancient times, which is 

 quite unlike that grown in the northern corn 

 belt. This corn is soft or starchy, of color rang- 

 ing from white to pink, blue and other shades, 

 has a large cob, and round, smooth topped 

 kernels of fair size. Says Sturtevant:* 



"Centeotl, in Mexico, was goddess of maize, aad hence of 

 agriculture, and was known, according to Clavigero, by the 

 title, among others, of Tonacajohua, 'she who sustains us.' 

 Sahagrun writes of the seventy-eight chapels of the great 

 Temple of Mexico, that the forty-flfth edifice was called 

 Cinteupan, and therein was a statue of the god of maize." 



Indians as corn-growers-^The early Amer- 

 ican explorers discovered the Indians cultivat- 

 ing fields of maize. Delafleld tells usf that 

 "when Cartier visited Hochelaga, now called 

 Montreal, in 1535, that town was situated in 

 the midst of extensive cornfields." Champlain 

 in .1603 found cornfields eastward from the 

 Kennebec river. In 1621, Squanto, an Indian, 

 showed the Puritans how to plant and care for 

 maize, and some twenty acres were planted and 

 successfully grown.J At the time of the Pequot 



* American Naturalist, March, 1885, p. 226. 

 t Transactions New York State agricultural society, 1850, 

 p. 386. 



t Harshberger; Maize: A botanical study, etc., p. 131. 



