Week 29: Corn, Haudenosaunee Storytellers, Emily Pauline Johnson

Cover Figure. Nasca artist(s), Corn Stalk-Shaped Vessel (c. 1-600 CE).

Waxing Crescent Moon; 13 Days to August Cross-Quarter

Headnote

In my personal opinion, much resisted by the chatbots I consulted, corn is the berries of the vegetable world. Indeed, corn—specifically, sweet corn—is unique among commonly eaten plants in that it spans the typically distinct categories of fruit, vegetable, and grain. In other words, it’s a grass that produces sweet clusters that you eat like a carrot. The chatbots don’t know everything yet.

Unlike the relatively simple histories of serviceberries and redcurrants, the story of corn may be one of the more beautiful and harrowing tales you haven’t heard. Indeed, even the long series of events through which archaeologists, geneticists, and other researchers reconstructed this tangled story is itself fascinating. Originating in Mexico some 9,000 years ago and eventually reaching fields, laboratories, and kitchens around the world, corn has powered civilizations and modernization while also, due to a mix of ignorance and greed, occasionally plaguing human health.

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You may have noticed that corn does not exist in the wild; you can’t pluck an ear from your nearby nature trail. That absence generated nearly a century of academic controversy, as researchers scoured ancient caves and thousands of genetic sequences to determine whence this now-ubiquitous plant came. They eventually determined that modern maize originated from a subspecies of an unassuming, bushy grass called teosinte that grew in the Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico. Through generations upon generations, indigenous growers and seed keepers up and down the Americas tended and selected plants to create much of the abundance and variety we know today. Through these changes, the plant came to depend on humans, to the extent that it cannot exist without human attention and interaction: for although corn can be fertilized by the wind, its densely packed and sheathed cobs will fall to the ground and decay if our hands (or machines) do not husk and separate the kernels.

The relationship is symbiotic. The expertise of corn’s indigenous stewards was proved in the decades following European contact with the Americas, as the crop spread rapidly around the world. Its productivity, adaptability, and caloric richness made it popular across southern Europe, western and central Africa, and eastern Asia. Many peasant cultures across these regions embraced corn as a daily staple or life-saving supplement. The stuff could grow at elevations low or high, in conditions hot or wet, and in growing seasons short or long—thank you, C4 photosynthesis!

However, indigenous knowledge about how to prepare corn did not spread with the plant itself. Although corn is rich in niacin and tryptophan, these vital nutrients only become digestible for humans if the corn is treated with an alkaline solution, such as wood ash or limestone water. This process of nixtamalization was not included in the so-called Columbian Exchange, leading to widespread nutrient deficiencies and countless deaths, as the four Ds of pellagra—diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death—ravaged southern Europe, the U.S. South, and regions of Asia and Africa over several centuries. The health risks continued even after corn’s relationship to niacin deficiency was understood and remedied. Though long stigmatized as a poor, rural, or fodder crop, corn eventually saturated the modern diet through indirect channels, including grain-fed meat and eggs, a multitude of processed foods, and various sweeteners. By some estimates, up to 70% of processed foods in a modern grocery store contain some form of corn product; likewise, as depicted in the 2007 documentary King Corn, hair tests reveal that up to 70% of the carbon in a modern American body can come from corn. The effects of this new-and-improved, supermarket version of a monotrophic diet may not be as gruesome as pellagra, but they are just as pernicious.

There’s much more that one could say about corn: about what is universal and what is distinctive in its mythological origins; about how it inspired winsome poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Carl Sandburg; about the beverages and biofuels made out of it; about its place in the broader Andropogoneae, or sorghum, tribe; or about how it typically has an even number of rows and its kernels embody a variety of mathematical and statistical principles.

Even within the typically tedious realms of taxonomy and genetics, maize (Zea mays) is a wild, wild bunch. Its many subspecies or cultivars include the four most widely cultivated varieties: dent or field corn (var. indentata), flint corn (var. indurata), sweet corn (var. saccharata), and popcorn (var. everta). But many other varieties exist. The visually stunning glass gem corn, which went viral in the early 2010s, was produced—or perhaps recovered—in the 1980s, when an Oklahoma plant breeder crossed heirloom varieties of flint, flour, and popcorn. One rare variety, known as pod corn, has a husk on each individual kernel (rather than the overall cob), which makes it interesting for scientists to study but not very practical for eating. Each subspecies has distinctive qualities and applications, based on the amount of starch it contains and the texture or composition of its kernel. For example, the ever-popular sweet corn is the result of one or more genetic mutations that stop the plant’s sugars from converting into starch.

Need I continue? Or have you accepted my premise that corn is one wonderful berry?

Fig. 2. C. Mir, et al. “Out of America: Tracing the Genetic Footprints of the Global Diffusion of Maize.” Theoretical and Applied Genetics [Berlin/Heidelberg] 126.11 (November 2013: 2671–2682), p. 2679.

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Readings

1. “The twin brothers were nurtured and raised by their Grandmother; the eldest was named Teharonghyawago, or the Holder of Heaven; the youngest was called Tawiskaron, or Flinty rock, from his body being entirely covered with such a substance. They grew up, and with their bows and arrows, amused themselves throughout the island, which encreased in extent, and they were favoured with various animals of Chace. Tawiskaron was the most fortunate hunter, and enjoyed the favour of his Grandmother. Teharonghyawago was not so successful in the Chace, and suffered from their unkindness. When he was a youth, and roaming alone, in melancholy mood, through the island, a human figure, of noble aspect, appearing to him, addressed him thus ‘My son, I have seen your distress, and heard your solitary lamentations; you are unhappy in the loss of a mother, in the unkindness of your Grandmother and brother. I now come to comfort you, I am your father, and will be you Protector; therefore take courage, and suffer not your spirit to sink. Take this (giving him an ear of maize) plant it, and attend it in the manner, I shall direct; it will yield you a certain support, independent of the Chace, at the same time that it will render more palatable the viands, which you may thereby obtain. I am the Great Turtle which supports the earth, on which you move. Your brother’s ill treatment will increase with his years; bear it with patience till the time appointed, before which you shall hear further.’
   
   “After saying this, and directing him how to plant the corn, he disappeared. Teharonghyawago planted the corn, and returned home. When its verdant sprouts began to flourish above the ground, he spent his time in clearing from all growth of grass and weeds, which might smother it or retard its advancement while yet in its tender state, before it had acquired sufficient grandeur to shade the ground.”

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Creation Myth, 1816. From Carl F. Klinck and James J. Talman, Eds. The Journal of Major John Norton, 1816. Toronto: Champlain Society, 1970. 88-91.

So goes he forth beneath the planter’s moon
    With sack of seed that pledges large increase, 
His simple pagan faith knows night and noon, 
    Heat, cold, seedtime and harvest shall not cease.

And yielding to his needs, this honest sod, 
    Brown as the hand that tills it, moist with rain, 
Teeming with ripe fulfillment, true as God, 
    With fostering richness, mothers every grain.

Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake). “The Indian Corn Planter.” Flint and Feather: The Complete Poems of Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake). 1912. Toronton, Ontario: The Musson Book Company Limited, 1917. 137.

Fig. 3. Zea Mays L (1892/1893), from Atlas des plantes de France, Royal Botanic Garden of Madrid.

Supplementum

• Robin Wall Kimmerer. “Corn Tastes Better on the Honor System.” Emergence Magazine (October 31, 2018).

• Kimi Eisele. “Artists del Maíz and Maguey.” Border Lore: Heritage and Culture of the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico (October 2, 2023).

• James Doyle. “Giving Thanks before the Pilgrims: The Art of Feasting in the Ancient Americas.” Perspectives: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (November 25, 2015).

• Brian Krueger. “The weird color patterns of corn kernels led to a major genetic discovery in 1950.” Omic.ly (January 20, 2025).

• “Ancient DNA Continues to Rewrite Corn’s 9,000-Year Society-Shaping History.” Smithsonian (December 14, 2020).

Fig. 4. “Plate XIV,” from George Ashley Crosthwait, Indian Corn (Zea mays): Production, Selection, Preservation, and Germination of Its Seed, and General Principles of Planting (Urbana-Champaign, Illinois: University of Illinois College of Agriculture, 1903).

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✦ From the Earthly Book of Hours ✦

• New readings this week from two figures whose abbreviated lives bear some striking similarities: Simone Weil (1909-1943) at midday, and Novalis (1772-1801) in the wee morning.

• An early color wheel by Moses Harris (1730-1787).

• Since the images and readings for each hour alternate randomly, I’m trying to make a little keepsake feature to save/print/share a pairing of picture and text; but the results so far leave something to be desired.

Fig. 5. Screenshot of Fulcrum (noon through 3pm), from The Earthly Book of Hours (July 13, 2026).