Anyone who has enjoyed a nice fall day with smoke-flavored, buttery, outdoor-roasted corn on the cob may appreciate how vitally important corn was to sustaining Western New York and, indeed, the whole nation.
It was corn, or maize, that kept the first inhabitants, the Native Americans, alive to thrive and prosper in a wilderness. And it was maize that kept the pioneer Europeans from being wiped off the face of North America by starvation.
Corn may seem an unlikely subject for a history article, but Arthur C. Parker, a grand nephew of Seneca Chief Ely S. Parker, wrote a definitive treatise on Iroquois uses of maize in 1910.
Maize was a development of a Mexican grass called teosinte and spread throughout North America and then throughout the world. Parker wrote, "There is no plant more vitally or more closely interwoven into the history of the New World than maize or Indian corn."
Parker said the early colonists were saved from starvation many times by corn cultivated by Indians and given to the white settlers. Parker wrote, "Had it not been for the corn of the Indians the stories of Jamestown and Plymouth instead of being stirring accounts of perseverance and endurance might have been brief and melancholy tragedies."
In a 1620 historical account, it is noted that the early pioneers received a gift of corn from the Indians. "And here is to be noted a special providence of God, that here they got seed to plant them corn the next year or else they might have starved for they had none, nor any likelihood to get any."
Capt. John Smith, in his "History of Virginia," wrote, "Such was the weakness of this poor commonwealth as had not the savages fed us we directly had starved." He credited Pocahontas with being "the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine and utter confusion."
Parker said, "And thus it is that the maize plant was the bridge over which English civilization crept, tremblingly and uncertainly at first, then boldly and surely to a foothold and a permanent occupation of America."
The Senecas at first cultivated maize in the forests, because it grew without much care. They would girdle trees, or cut bark away from all around the trunk, so that no leaves would grow and sunlight could reach corn stalks planted in the forest.
Later they would burn down the dead trees to create clearings where they could properly cultivate the land and plant corn so yields would be increased. They also planted pole beans with the corn so the bean plants would grow up the corn stalks.
Parker wrote, "Nearly every explorer who left a detailed record of his voyages recorded in a minute way his impressions of Indian agriculture and particularly of their cultivation of corn."
Maize was so important to the Iroquois that the European invaders, in efforts to subjugate the Native Americans, attacked their corn supplies in the various wars. It began with Champlain in 1615 and continued to the Revolutionary War, when Maj. Gen. John Sullivan made his infamous raid against the Senecas in the Genesee area.
Another French governor, Denonville (who first had a fort built at the site of Fort Niagara), was particularly destructive of corn in his campaign of 1687. He later wrote, "All that time was spent in destroying the corn which was in such great abundance that the loss including old corn which was in cache which we burnt and that which was standing was computed to be about 400,000 minots (about 1.2 million bushels)."
Next we will tell about the corn-eating habits of the Iroquois, including some old-time recipes.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2003 |