DELABARRE AND WILDER] INDIAN CORN-HILLS 2C>5
preface our own observations with quotations from them and others.
Although the cultivation of corn (maize) by the aborigines of the West Indies was observed and reported by the earliest of the discoverers, probably Samuel de Champlain was the first to give any account of this form of agriculture in New England. His first recorded observation was made during his voyage of the summer of 1605, at or near what is now Saco, Maine, his "Chotia-
��The next day [July 9, 1605] Sieur de Monts and I landed to observe their tillage on the bank of the river [Saco river]. We saw their Indian corn, which they raise in gardens. Planting three or four kernels in one place, they then heap about it a quantity of earth with shells of the signoc before mentioned [the horse- shoe crab, Limulus polyphemus]. Then three feet distant they plant as much more, and thus in succession. With this corn they put in each hill three or four Brazilian beans [the kidney bean, Phaseolus vulgaris], which are of different colors. When they grow up, they interlace with the corn, which reaches to the height of from five to six feet; and they keep the ground very free from weeds. We saw there many squashes, and pumpkins, and tobacco, 1 which they likewise cultivate. The Indian corn which we saw was at that time about two feet high, some of it as high as three. The beans were beginning to flower, as also the pumpkins and squashes. They plant their corn in May, and gather it in September 2 (p. 62).
When in Boston Bay, about the mouth of the Charles, he records that
they brought also some purslane, which grows in large quantities among the Indian corn, and of which they make no more account than of weeds. We saw here a great many little houses, scattered over the fields where they plant their Indian corn (p. 67).
Reaching the harbor of Nauset on Cape Cod he says that they
went about a league along the coast. Before reaching their cabins, we entered a field planted with Indian corn, in the manner before described. The corn was in flower, and five and a half feet high. There was some less advanced, which
��1 " The tobacco of the New England Indians was Nicotiana rustica, not N. tabacum. The former is inferior, and now grows wild in old fields in some parts of the north, a relic of cultivation by the Indians." Mourt's Relation, ed. Dexter, p. 36n.
2 These quotations from Champlain are taken from the recent translation made by W. L. Grant (Oxford), which appeared in 1907, as one of the series of Original Narratives, edited by J. Franklin Jameson, and published by Scribner's. The pages here given correspond to this first edition.
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