“And here, at the outset of our investigation, we are met by the fact that modern research has failed to throw a positive light upon the question of its origin. That it was indigenous to America is generally believed, and so, also, the statement that it was first cultivated at some point between the tropics is accepted. Beyond this we have not been able to go; and without entering into a discussion of the subject, it is probably safe to assume that this is as near the truth as we can hope to get. However, be this as it may, there seems to be no doubt that its domestication took place ages ago, for in no other way is it thought possible to account for the vast extent of country over which its use had spread, and for the number of varieties to which it had given rise. Take our own country, for example, and when the whites first landed here, there were found growing, within certain limited areas, a number of different kinds, distinguished one from another, by the length of time they took to ripen, by the size of the ear, by the shape and hardness of the grain, and by the color, though this is said to be accidental. [Illustration: FIG. 503. (S. 1–4.) Pestles, Class “C.” Collection of J. A. Rayner, Piqua, Ohio. ] [Illustration: FIG. 504. (S. 1–5.) Collection of W. A. Holmes, Chicago, Illinois. ] “In addition to these, which were known to the whites as hominy corn, bread corn, and six-weeks corn, there was still another sort, called by the French _blé fleuri_, and by ourselves popcorn, of which the Indians were very fond, and which they served up to those of their guests whom they wished to honor. With so many kinds, and planting them at different times during the spring and early summer, they not only had successive crops, which they ate green as long as the season lasted, but they also raised enough for winter use, and, not unfrequently, had some to spare to their needy neighbors, white as well as red. Indeed, their pedlers made long trips for the purpose of exchanging their surplus corn for skins and anything else that they needed; and but for the supplies which the Pilgrim fathers, and we may add the settlers at Jamestown and New Orleans, ‘obtained from the Indians willingly or through force,’ it is probable, as a recent writer suggests,’that there would have been but few if any of their descendants left to write their histories and sing their praises.’” The cultivation of corn in the United States was widespread. De Soto, Coronado, and other early explorers in their wanderings, as well as our military expeditions of the French and Indian War, the wars of the Revolution and of 1812, found large corn-fields wherever the Indian population was thickest.