The Green Forest tribune., 1909-10-29

able, in the conditions under which they were forced to land upon the western shores, to effect a permanent settlement on the Amerl- continent
 Maize was the only healthsustaining food which the Indians could supply to those who attempted to make a home in New England; it sustained the adventures who traversed the valleys of the James, of the St. Johns and of the Mississippi; it provided the Spaniards ln Mexico with nourishment during the reckless march from Vera Cruz to the plateau of Mex ieo, and this same maize found by PiZar- ro's small army of conquerors when the sub- jugated the innumerable hosts of the Incas of Peru.
 Yet up to the time of the landing of Co., lumbus in America maize was absolutely un- known to the inhabitants of the old world, The few kernels of the new food bought to Queen Isabella by Columbus were classed gen. orally as grains cereals. The Norsemen, who landed near Cape Cod in 1902 A. D.. found grain previously unknown to them and this they called corn attempting to identify it with wheat and other grains to which they were already accustomed. The English Puri- tans also were astonished on landing to find new corn; but as they had at home grouped all grains under the name they therefore ap- piled to it the same term, definitely distin- gushing it from the others by the specific phrase of Indian corn.
  speaking countries outside of the United States it is called maize and in all Spanish countries ''mais" is the word employed; in Portuguese 'milho," and French again "mais" indicate it's origin. Maize is altogether an American word, coming directly from the primitive Arawak, the most widely disseml- mated Indian stock in South America. It orig mated in the south with the Guanas, on the headwaters of the river Paraguay, and braced tribes on the highlands of Bolivia, ex- tending finally to the Goajiros peninsula, the most northern land of the continent. They were the first therefore, to welcome Coum- bus to the Bahamas, Cuba and Haiti. Though the Arawaks were practically in a state of savagery, they cultivated maize. The Arawak word for maize is "marisi' and this they had handed over to the Carlos who inhabited many of the West Indian islands. It was of the nfirst words Columbus heard, and through him it became general in Europe. In Guiana and further south on the Atlantic coast of South America "manioc" took the place of maize as food.
 North American Indians had other expres sions for their grain. The grain itself had come to them partly through the Carlos, but chiefly through the tribes of northern Mexico which shows that there were two channels of communication, even in pre-Columbian times to the land on the north Atlantic. These North American Indians seem not to have used the word maize; it had been lost in crossing the Gulf of Mexico, and whatever term employed by them is only philologic curiosity. Neither does the ancient word of the Aztecs, of the Mayas, the Chib chas or the 1ncas correspond to maize, so that it seems certain that maize was confined to that extensive inhabiting regions far to the east and south of the original home of Indian corn.
 The spot from which this purely American grain spread, even before it's discovery by Europeans, to the extreme confines of the western hemisphere has been accurately To- cated History philology, ethnology we'll as tradition have all been factors in this result. Indefinite claims have been advanced by Asia