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THE ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF CUBA 7 varieties of corn. Loven ( 31 ) believed that the metates found in the Greater Antilles might be post-Columbian introductions. If they were in fact pre-Columbian, however, Loven concluded that both metates and hard varieties of maize must have come to the Greater Antilles from Yucatan. Such arguments assume that hard corns are virtually inedible unless ground to a meal. Immature kernels, however, are used in most Cuban country dishes prepared from corn. The only variety generally available is Mafz Criollo, a hard (semi-Hint) variety. Many dishes of today are suggestive of those described over four hundred years ago by Oviedo and Las Casas. Thus there is no good reason, botani- cal, ethnological, or culinary, to believe that the Taino Arawak had only soft corn. In fact, the botanical and historical evidence presented below suggests that the Sub-Taino group possessed only hard corn, and that the Taino had both hard and dent varieties. Oviedo and Las Casas agree that the word used by the Indians of Hispaniola was "mahiz'' or "maiz." Birket-Smith ( 6) has compiled an interesting list of words for corn used by Indians of South America. Among those used by the South American Arawak tribes are "maritchi," "marisi," "mariki," "maik," "maiki," "mai," "mahiki," and "makanatsi." Although it is often cynically concluded that anything can be proved by linguistics, the West Indian and South American Arawak names for maize are clearly cognates. This in turn suggests that the West Indian Arawaks must have introduced at least one variety of maize into the Greater Antilles. As is shown below, the botanical evidence supports this conclusion. The post-conquest history of the Indians of the Greater An- tilles is an unhappy one. The Spanish very early instituted the system of "repartimientos" in which the Indian population was divided up and assigned to "encomenderos," or estate-holders who were charged with providing for their welfare and religious instruction. The Indians, as is well known, were forced to work in the Spanish gold mines and on plantations under difficult conditions and frequently were not allowed sufficient time to sow and harvest their own crops. Many are said to have died from starvation, and suicide seems to have been not uncommon.
8 RACES OF MAIZE Oviedo, however, is probably correct in attaching considerable importance to "viruelas" ( H istoria, Lib. XVII, Cap. IV) as a primary cause for the decimation of the Cuban Indian populations. Smallpox probably caused many more deaths than the system of repartimientos, however brutal the latter may have been. Rouse ( 39) states that over 2,000 Indians remained in Cuba in 1550, after the system of repartimientos was abolished. There- after they prospered in farming and trade. Gradually, however, the Cuban Indians intermarried with the Spanish and abandoned their old modes of life. Culin ( 13) has well described the Indians of modern Cuba. At El Caney, supposedly a flourishing Indian village not many years ago, he found one man 112 years old who claimed Indian ancestry. The well known Indians of Yateras were found to have come there about 1840 from Santo Domingo. At Yara, near Baracoa, Culin interviewed several families of mixed Indian ancestry who were growing coconuts and bananas for the city markets. Culin's report on items of material culture obtained from the Indians at Yara well summarizes the situation as it existed in 1901: I had secured a representative collection of the objects used by the existing Indians of Cuba. Reviewing them carefully, I can see nothing among them that is not equally the property of Cubans generally in the province of Santiago. The same is true of the Indian words, which were long since incorporated into the everyday speech of the people. The experience of the present author was no different. A few people in the hills of Oriente province claimed Indian ancestry, but their houses, clothes, and corn were no different from those of their neighbors, who were mostly of European or African descent. HISTORY OF CUBAN CORN The history of Cuban corn begins in 1492 with Columbus' first voyage to the New World. Morison ( 33), who carefully retraced Columbus' route in a 45-foot ketch, has made it possible accu- rately to determine the place where Cuban corn, misidentified in the admiral's journal as millet, was first discovered. Columbus arrived at Puerto Gibara, on the north coast of Oriente province,
HISTORY OF CUBAN CORN 9 about dawn on November 1, 1492. Convinced that Cuba was the mainland of Asia, he sent an embassy up the Cacoyuguin valley to Holguin to pay his respects to the Emperor of China. The Spanish ambassadors, disappointed at finding only a small Indian village, returned to Gibara on the night of November 5. They reported to the admiral that they had been received with great dignity by the inhabitants, who believed that they had come from Heaven, that the land was very fertile and well sown with root crops and beans as well as millet, and that they had seen large quantities of harvested cotton. Several editions of Columbus' Journal have been published which differ in important respects. The original manuscript was sent to the Catholic Sovereigns of Castile at Barcelona, where one or more fair copies were made. The priest Las Casas and Colum- bus' son Fernando in turn copied or made abstracts of these official copies. The original manuscript and the official copies of Columbus' Journal have unfortunately disappeared. Since both Las Casas and Fernando wrote histories of the voyages of exploration, however, it is possible to check their authenticity by comparing one with the other. Morison ( 33, Vol. I, p. 205) states that such checks "prove that the Bishop [Las Casas] did his work honestly and well. Las Casas' abstract of the Journal, in his own hand, is still preserved at the National Library at Madrid; and that is the text we have today." According to Morison, the most accurate publication of Las Casas' abstract of the Journal is the monumental Raccolta di Documenti e Studi pubblicati dalla R. Commissione Colombiana (Rome, 1892). The Raccolta (10) was used in the present study. Las Casas' account of the embassy to Holguin is, unfortunately, abstracted. The part concerning the discovery of millet is as follows: La tierra muy fertil y muy labrada de aquellas mames y fexoes y habas muy diversas de las nuestras, eso mismo panizo, y mucha cantidad de algodon cogido. ( Raccolta, Part I, Vol. I, p. 37). The word panizo, as Weatherwax ( 44) points out, was probably used by Columbus in a generic seme to include millets and grain sorghums. There seems to be little doubt that the
10 RACES OF MAIZE ambassadors, who were not botanists, reported a cultivated plant which looked to them like millet or sorghum, which, of course, are Old World plants not known in the West Indies before the European discovery. The ambiguity is cleared up in Las Casas' H istoria de las Indias, where the bishop expands the account given in his abstract of Columbus' Journal. He writes of the ambassadors' discoveries (Lib. I, Cap. XLVI): "y del grano que Haman los indios maiz, que ellos llamaban panizo, hallaban mucha cantidad." Since Las Casas lived in Cuba from 1512 to 1514, his identification of "panizo" with "maiz" would not have been made with such assurance if he had not seen maize in Cuba. Corn seems to have been discovered for the first time about three weeks earlier in the Bahamas. Morison identifies the place as "a village somewhere near the present Burnt Ground" on the island now called Long Island and the date as October 17, 1492. Las Casas quotes Columbus' Journal: Martes y miercoles. 16 de Octubre. . . . Ella es isla muy verde y llana y fertilissima, y no pongo duda que todo el ano siembran panizo y cogen, y asi todas otras cosas. ( Raccolta, Part I, Vol. I, pp. 22-23 ). (Tuesday and Wednesday, 16 October .... It is a ver)' green and flat and extremely fertile island, and I have no doubt that they sow and harvest "millets" all year long, and similarly all other crops.) Weatherwax ( 44: p. 29) is clearly in error in identifying the place as "Haiti," for Columbus did not arrive at Hispaniola until December 5, 1492. The best early description of maize is that of Oviedo, who sowed it for twenty-eight years before 1541 for his own house on Hispaniola. He wrote ( H istoria, Lib. VII, Cap. I) that the stalk was as thick as a lance or staff and commonly taller than a man. The leaf was longer, broader, and more flexible than that of the common cane of Castile. Each stalk was said to produce one to three ears containing two to three hundred grains; some large ears produced up to five hundred grains. The ears were wrapped tightly in three to four (sic) husks, which were believed to protect the ripening grains from sun and air. This description, unfortunately not sufficiently detailed to permit the identification
