Corn among the Indians of the Upper Missouri

Abstract

With the first knowledge of corn and its culture received from the tribes near the coast from New England to Virginia and Carolina, however, the American farmer has felt, generally, that there was nothing further to be learned from the In- dians about corn. The pioneer too often failed to realize that each new region settled presented new conditions of soil and climate and that the best way to learn how to meet and overcome these conditions was to study the methods of the local tribes, who often had been growing corn in that particular region for two or three hundred years, and who during this long period of time had learned from hard experience the varieties of corn and the cultural methods best suited to the local conditions.