Southwest J^/useum Leaflets 



to win wars, it would be difficult to exaggerate the im- 

 portance of rubber as a crop, as we learned during the re- 

 cent war. 



Beaxs — Not all beans came from the Indians. The broad- 

 bean of Europe, Asia, and Africa is featured in the old 

 fable of Jack-the-Giant-Killer. This is the only bean that 

 the early Anglo-Saxons knew, and it is what the word bean 

 really means. 



Soy beans came from China. The Persians and some of 

 the Orientals had small-seeded beans from time immemorial; 

 but most beans as they are known today in the Americas 

 and in many other parts of the world were developed by 

 prehistoric Indians. 



Lima beans carry the name (mispronounced with a broad /) 

 of the city in Peru founded by Pizarro, from which they 

 were shipped. Frijoles (free-ho'-laze) still have the name for 

 the common Indian beans given them by the Spaniards. In 

 France, American Indian beans are grown extensively and 

 are called haricot (ar'-e-ko) from the Nahuatl (Nah'-wah-tl) 

 language, the tongue of the Aztecs, with whom the word is 

 ayecotli. 



Kidney beans are a variety of field beans. The kind of 

 field bean known as "navy" has a seed coat which does not 

 absord moisture readily, hence its traditional use by ocean- 

 going ships before the days of canning. Pole, dwarf (usually 

 referred to as "bush"), wax, and string are types of garden 

 beans. All these carry modern names for the beans the early 

 Indians developed from the wild growths they discovered 

 probably in Middle America and South America. 



The pre-Columbian distribution of beans covered most of 

 the tropic and temperate zone regions of North and South 

 America. 



Squashes and Pumpkins — Squashes and pumpkins are 

 classified by botanists as belonging to the gourd family, of 

 which there are representatives in the Old World as well as 

 in the New World. 



The English colonists, on seeing a yellow vegetable growing 

 in the cornfields of the Indian farmers, gave it the name 

 pumpkin, a word from the Greek pepon, meaning mellow, 

 ripe. However, the word squash is thoroughly Indian, being 

 an abbreviation of one of those long Massachusetts Indian 

 words, askut as quash, meaning "eaten while green". 



American pumpkins and squash occasionally were referred 



