Mondamin

THE original habitat of maize, or Indian corn, was long a vexed question among naturalists, many of whom regarded this useful cereal as the gift of the Orient. Some maintained that it is identical with the corn of the Scriptures; others, relying on the testimony afforded by some drawings in an ancient Chinese work on natural history, inferred that the plant is of Chinese origin ; still others were deceived by an ingenious forgery purporting to be a thirteenth-century document, the so-called Charter of Incisa, in which mention is made of a “ kind of seed of a golden color and partly white,” brought from Anatolia by crusaders. The theory of an Egyptian origin was fortified by the finding of an ear of maize in a Theban sarcophagus (since ascertained to have been surreptitiously placed there by an Arab). The dis-

tinguished naturalist, Alphonse de Candolle, reviewing the subject in his Origin of Cultivated Plants, is satisfied that maize did not proceed from the East. On the confusion of names which have been applied to this plant, he observes that “ maize is Called in Lorraine and in the Vosges Roman corn ; in Tuscany, Sicilian corn; in Sicily, Indian corn ; in the Pyrenees, Spanish corn ; in Provence, Barbary or Guinea corn. The Turks call it Egyptian corn, and the Egyptians Syrian dourra,” The French name, Turkish wheat, he supposes to have been fostered by the fancied resemblance of the tufted ears to the beard of the Turk, or “ by the vigor of the plant, which may have given rise to an expression similar to the French fort comme un turc.” He is convinced that maize is of American origin, and assigns, as its possible earliest home, the tableland of Bogota, anciently inhabited by a people of considerable agricultural civilization, from whom the plant may have been derived by both Peruvian and Mexican. Certain it is that the tombs of these people frequently contain ears of maize, a fact which indicates that the plant was closely connected with the religious ceremonials of ancient America. Added to this evidence, Darwin found ears of Indian corn buried in the sand of the Peruvian coast eighty-five feet above sea-level.

Our national escutcheon displays an eagle. Now, if it were required to choose an emblem from the vegetable kingdom to bespeak the hope and hardihood of the New World, where would the selection fall ? The plant to be promoted to the place of honor must possess the virtue of accommodation, growing readily north, south, east, and west; be notable for its fruitfulness ; a righthand reliance of the pioneer ; above all, it must be an immemorial occupant of the soil. The Western continent has produced the potato, the pumpkin, and the tobacco plant; also maize. The first, prone in its ways, and fruiting subterraneously, would do wrong to our national genius ; the second, a golden braggart, with its earth-embracing habits,— afar be its suggestion ! The third would but conjure up a vision of Columbia, lapped in nicotian haze and vagaries, inviting the nations to smoke with her ! There remains only the maize, and how can we do better than to adopt as our armorial device the Indian’s own plant ? Behold the blonde plume-waving stranger, whom first the fasting Hiawatha wrestled with, overcame, and gave due rites of burial, — Mondamin, fort comme un turc, yet noble in his bearing; urbane and gentle, though a savage! No other species in the list of cultivated cereals appears to such good advantage, in the isolated individual. A single full-grown plant of Indian corn, though but a fleeting, annual growth, possesses presence and dignity no less than does the oak itself. It stands erect, poised, sufficient, its green blades sweeping right and left in the curve of beauty, and ready at the wind’s excitation to engage in a mock battle of scythes with its neighbors.

But we are over-hasty. Mondamin must first be laid under ground. Yearly we bury the handsome youth, who soon springs up and helps to make the yet unwritten history of the rural summer. Though we have made undoubted improvements in this direction, it is not uninteresting to learn how his obsequies were conducted in remote times. “ The Indian method of planting corn was to make a conical hillock, in the top of which the corn was placed ; and being used repeatedly for the same purpose, these hills became so hard that they have, in some old fields, lasted till today. In some places in Michigan a heavy growth of maple has sprung up since, and yet the old corn-hills are clearly marked.” Still Mondamin enjoins it upon his conquerors to watch his grave. As of old, the body-snatchers are abroad, — “ Kahgahgee, the King of Ravens,” and his “ black marauders ! ” Nor does that connecting link between genus homo and hobgoblin, the scarecrow, avail to stay the miscreants ; even making an example of Kahgahgee, by suspending his dead body from a pole in the midst of the field, scarcely checks the pillage. That which was planted one day frequently comes up by the next. Nor are the crow and the blackbird alone in evil-doing, but are reinforced by the chipmunk, a brownie that harvests untimely. Tame ducks, also, have been known to exercise a stealthy ingenuity, with their bills probing the ground diagonally until the kernel was reached and snapped off, leaving the tender shoot above ground to wither without apparent cause. The farmer’s best resort against the horde of feathered trespassers seems to be a boy with a shot-gun. Unless it were Minnehaha’s magic circle, no way of blessing the cornfields so effectual as this !

First the blade. It must be an eye indifferent to contrast in color that will not take distinct delight in those little pennons of sunshiny green, fluttering above the rich umber of the soil, and signaling the welcome intelligence, “ Corn is up.” Every stage of its growth, as in the life of some lovely child, is interesting and repays attention, from the time when its blades, clasping the stalk, first form chalices to hold the rain, to its midsummer pride of twofold flowerage, yellow or brownish tassel above, and flowing silk below. What strides of growth it makes from evening to the next day’s light! A sly, silent bacchanal, it gets drunk upon the dew every blessed night. By and by, it is seen standing on tiptoe ; toes white, or, sometimes, prettily roseate. (The farmer, I am bound to say, sees only “ brace-roots,” the botanist only “aerial roots,” extending from the first joint of the stalk downward until they fasten themselves in the soil : yet it will be evident to one who makes corn a sympathetic study that it stands a-tiptoe, out of pure good spirits and valiance.) Its leaf, closely scanned, shows, not one uniform green, but streakings of paler and deeper color. Hold the blade between you and the light, and you will see on each side of the strong, straight midrib an equal number of lucid hair-line channelings. The upper surface is roughish, being set with minute hairs ; the under surface is of a cool smoothness. A day of “ ninety in the shade ” tells upon the leaves, causing them to curl their margins upward, as though to shut out the glare of the sun ; but the night does not fail to bring restoration.

I listen to the whisper of corn-blades, and seem to receive hint of a mysterious council held by Mondamin and his fellow-braves. In what idiom of Cherokee, or Chippeway, or Sioux, do they converse ? Or, for utmost secrecy, do

they employ some one of the Indian dead languages? If we studiously attend to their conversation, we shall perhaps learn some word or phrase to which even the learned Eliot did not possess the key. On still, hot days, when not a lisp of sound proceeds from these balanced sickle blades, a musical contralto murmur goes through the field, reminding one of the orchard’s audible reverie in May. The bees are bumming at their work among the tassels, or staminate flowers, of the corn. Each laborer flies away with a good packful of yellow pollen, the substance of bee-bread, or, more properly speaking, of bee johnny-cake, sweet and wholesome, made from the fine bolted meal of the flower, whereas, later on, our own cake will be made of the coarser grist of the kernel. Perhaps it is the scent of the blossoms which attracts the bees, for the cornblossom possesses a fragrance as characteristic as that of the clover-bloom, — a homely, hearty sweetness, foodpromising.

We shall scarcely find a fairer midsummer picture, more of the spirit which broods in the midsummer fields, or more of the temper which contemplation of their tranquil beauty inspires, than in Sidney Lanier’s poem, The Waving of the Corn, from which I quote the last stanza : —

It is noticeable that the primitive significance of the word corn, still retained in Great Britain, is almost entirely lost in this country. Here, wheat is not corn, but “ wheat ” or “grain,” and your farmer would stare at a proposition so absurd as that of “reaping the corn.” It is too late in the day to recover the word to its original wider use, and substitute for its present application the term Indian corn, or simply maize ; but since maize was the earliest corn of America, why object to its carrying off the titulary honors ? It is no mean victor. If the dusky planter of old time could revisit the site of his corn-hills, he might well start in amazement at the stature which his favorite plant has reached under the pale-face’s persuasive treatment. In the centre and raciest soil of the “ corn belt,” it is not uncommon for corn to stand at more than twice a tall man’s height; at fifteen feet or more, in some instances. Like Cotton Mather, in some matter of information regarding the workings of witchcraft, I am the ear-witness of one who was an eye-witness in the measuring of a stalk of maize which fell no inch short of nineteen feet! The farmer of such rich fields, when he goes through the corn, is scarcely able to touch the ear with his upreached hand. Beside these Brobdingnagian legions wearing the green, how squat and insignificant had appeared the Prussian Emperor’s famous tall regiment ! From forty to fifty bushels (shelled corn) is the common production to the acre, while eighty and even one hundred bushels are the rate of return from most favorable soils, the aggregate corn crop of the United States yearly mounting into the hundred million bushels. We may be pardoned some “ tall talk ” about that which has to commend it not only tallness, but a generous amplitude as well. At the New Orleans Exposition it was Nebraska’s emblazoned boast, “ Corn is King,” — a boast which wins ready consent when one reflects upon the royal beneficence of maize. On the occasion of the last great freshets of the Ohio River, two counties in the State of Kansas (mindful of a good turn they had received after a scourge of grasshoppers) freighted a long train of cars with corn, and forwarded golden plenty to their needy neighbors in the East.

When we go to Sybaris, if the time be midsummer, I know not how they can entertain us better than to set before us dishes of boiled corn, — ay, sweet corn, tender, milky, — the full corn in the ear, requiring nothing more than the grace of a little salt. And if we go to Sparta, and their storehouse happens to afford only some ears of field corn, cannot we manage to do with these, provided the grinders are not too few, or our hardy friends have a little fire, so that they can serve us the kernels parched ? But we are forgetting that Indian corn, Zea Mays, was not known to Sybaris and Sparta.

An expression of a somewhat scurrilous import is current. We have heard of “corn-fed Westerners.” But why resent an epithet which has an Homeric breadth of suggestion in it, as when, in the Iliad, we read of

Milk-nourished are they who make their repasts off sweet corn.

From 54° north to 40° south latitude, inclusive, should not be thought a meagre garden-plot. Such, at all events, Indian corn enjoys in the Western continent. If the various peoples inhabiting between the two oceans should determine to celebrate, on a certain day, a feast of brotherly love, some preparation of maize, as being most convenient to all, would probably be fixed upon as the symbolic comestible. So, in typical America, the inhabitants would observe the rite by partaking of tortilla and pinole ; in our own South pone and hoecake, in the North brown bread and johnny-cake, would occupy the pious consideration of the celebrants, while here and there would rise the steam of various polentas of savory name, hominy, samp, mush, or hasty-pudding, — the last duly honored in song by a warm-hearted muse of New England yore.

In some parts of the West, where wood is scarce and corn most abundant, the latter is sometimes used to feed the hearth-fire. Diligent creature of the earth, and servant of man’s comfort, furnishing both food and the fagot with which to cook it! A novel idea this, — to provide one’s fuel by annual springtime plantings, gathering the thrift thereof each autumn. Every last fibre of the maize has its use, as becomes a native plant. If the ear gives food, the stalk furnishes fodder for the keeping of our domestic animals. Baskets may be made of the stalks, and mats braided of the husks, of which, also, a very good quality of paper has been made. Many a “ corn-fed Westerner,” though he may not indulge in sleep upon the sheaves, in after-harvest idleness, does not scorn a couch of husks, even preferring it to the ancestral feather-bed. I have lost the ear, with other zests, of childhood, so that I cannot now decide which of three, dandelion pipe, basswood whistle, corn-stalk fiddle, make the best music. I incline to think that the last-named instrument requires a degree of skill in its construction not less than that which went to the notching of a reed by the streams of Arcady, since our rustic violin must be fashioned entire from one piece of stalk, the golden strings thereof subtly carven from the body of the instrument, then critically raised upon a bridge ; in which delicate operations much choice material has been spoiled.

But the corn-husking should not pass unmentioned, whether this merry rite be accomplished under barn-roof or in the open field. Afield, poetic suggestion is more rife. How is it that, surveying the long lines of autumnal shocks, we are reminded of the aboriginal no less than when the summer field asserted its plumed chieftaincy ? The Indian’s corn and the Indian’s summer ! In this fine brief season named for him, his wigwam villages dot many a sunny field, dwelt in by what friendly tribe, plying, if invisibly, such arts of peace as a savage may. With half-shut eyes looking through the quivering hazy air upon the further fields, fancy helping, you seem to receive intimations of their village fires; almost, a slight film of smoke can be detected stealing upward from the tufted tops of the wigwams. No sooner are the shocks disturbed

than the humble lodgers-not Indians,

but a race whose ancestors were probably here contemporaneous with the Indian — scatter, panic-stricken, leaving their ruined granaries behind them. Usually, there is not wanting some Northern farmhouse dog, some Skip, or Bounce, or Towser, who, animated by the prospect of a cheap hunt, stands by when the shock is thrown down, ready to give the miserable fugitives deathgripe. I own to small compassion for a bread-and-eheese-fed rodent in the cat’s clutches, but I have a tender interest for the wild mice of the shock, in their hour of peril. Taken into the hand, they remain quite motionless, only the small warm body throbbing with its volume of fear. The physiognomy of the field-mouse lacks the sophistry which characterizes the expression of the domestic species, and its thick, soft fur is as agreeable to the touch as that of the other is repugnant.

This maizy text has for punctuation marks the fruit of the pumpkin distributed here and there as colons and periods. Very likely the goldfinches are gathering seed-harvest in the weedy purlieus of the field, keeping up the while a constant flow of silvery “small talk.” At this time of the year all toil has a flavor of indolence, is half play. So, as we sit among the corn shocks, in the tempered warmth of the soath-going sun, we find something very pleasant in this task of removing garment after garment of the elaborate suit in which nature has chosen to clothe the ear of the maize. Off come the sunburnt and rusty outer husks, which are as a sort of rough-and-ready great-coat; under this the vesture is of increasing fineness until the innermost husk is reached; this is of a tissuey or crape-like delicacy, the edges minutely hirsute or downy. Methinks when the stout husks are parted, the ear, with all its ivory well-set kernels, smiles broadly, declaring there’s luck in even numbers, if you will believe its testimony, since the number of rows on all the ears in all the cornfields of the land is, invariably, some multiple of the number two, as eight and twelve, and even as high as twenty-four and thirty-two, or more.

Rarely, the busker finds an ear which has the blush of the peach or the crimson of the bright maple leaf. Has the botanist an explanation of this anomaly ? “We might imagine that maize had, far back in its history, an erubescent ancestor, or that the maize-ear of the future will wear brighter colors than at present; or we might suspect that this familiar crop unconsciously emulates the chromatic splendors of the season, and so occasionally produces a red ear. To whatever conclusion we come, the rustic lovers of the old - time husking doubtless knew more than do we about the matter.

Edith M. Thomas.