, BREAD PLANTS 41 



surrounded them. Cortez was amazed at the 

 flourishing fields of corn growing in Mexico, and 

 the stores of this grain gathered as tribute by the 

 ruler. The Puritans were saved from starvation 

 during those first terrible winters by corn brought 

 them by the friendly Indians. Fifty years later 

 the same Puritans, or their sons, in the King 

 Philip's war, "took possession of one thousand 

 acres of corn, which was harvested by the English, 

 and disposed of according to their direction." 

 The Six Nations, the best-organized confederation 

 of American Indians, had cultivated apple orchards 

 and cornfields that the white settlers could not 

 match, in central New York. In the middle part 

 of the country other tribes raised corn for their 

 food supply. Indian mounds, of uncertain but 

 ancient date, contain corn, as did the tombs of 

 the Incas in Peru, where the maize plant was wor- 

 shipped as a divinity that had the life of the people 

 in its hand. Far back to the earliest times goes 

 this reverence for the plant that feeds the race. 



No wild plant that looks at all like corn has 

 been found in foreign countries, though a thorough 

 search has been made in all likely places by scien- 

 tists. The best authorities agree that if the plant 

 had been grown in Europe or Asia before it was 

 taken there from America it would have been 



