Corn

That “corn” originally referred in English to every grain suggests the importance of the maize plant, or “Indian corn,” to colonial Americans. Domesticated in what is now Mexico some 10,000 years ago, corn (Zea mays) is unable to reproduce without human intervention. Native Americans selected plants that could grow in a wide array of environments. Corn produces higher yields than any other grain and is edible when green, ripe, fermented, or dried for storage. Native Americans often treated it with wood ash or lye, which improved the nutritional content of this FOOD.

Corn was fundamental to the social order as well as to diet for Native American cultures across the Americas. Mesoamerican techniques for preparing maize were exceptionally labor-intensive and formed the basis of a strict gender hierarchy. For eastern tribes such as the Iroquois, however, women’s importance in tending corn crops tended to bolster gender equality, since female agriculture and male hunting were equal in sustaining the group. Many tribes held seasonal festivals celebrating planting, harvesting, and processing corn, and corn spirits were often central to Native American religions.

Corn arrived in Spain in 1493, a major component of the Columbian exchange. While Europeans primarily used it to feed livestock, Euro-Americans more readily accepted corn, especially where wheat refused to grow. Hominy (Algonquin), Succotash (Narragansett), popcorn, hush

See Hyde, Edward, Viscount

Puppies, and Johnnycakes (from “Shawnee-cakes”) were just a few Native American dishes that colonists adopted. Unlike Native Americans, Euro-Americans distilled corn beer into stronger forms of alcohol, and they manufactured corn syrup (a molasses substitute in the wake of the Molasses Act of 1733). Finally, cornmeal mush was often the only food slaves received during the Middle Passage.

Further reading: Betty Fussel, The Story of Corn (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).

—Megan Raby