CHAPTER VII. Corn bought from the Indians. Its Uses as Food and as a Medium of Exchange. Prices of Corn from 1751 to 1784. Its Grinding. The Men who worked at Husbandry. Difficulties of the Currency. WHO that has seen a great field of corn waving in the summer sunshine can fail to be impressed with its beauty? When it is in tassel, and the tufted plumes nod and bow to their neighbors, as the light breeze rustles through the leaves, it is indeed a fair and stately sight. The year is at its prime during the hot August days that bring its perfection. Beautiful as a great field of wheat or barley is, with its ripples of light and shade, like the play of an inland sea, yet the corn, with its stately height, its luxuriant sabre-like leaves, its blossoms fringed with pendulous anthers, and its silky tassels sheathed in satin wrappings, has an individuality of its own, a pride and dignity of growth befitting the native of a new world. From the time when Squanto taught the early Plymouth colonists to cultivate it, this stately plant, so bountiful and so beautiful, played an important part in the history of New England, and often furnished both food and a medium of exchange. Narragansett from times immemorial was celebrated for its corn. John Oldham brought five hundred bushels from there to Boston in the Rebecca in 1634. "The Indians had promised him one thousand bushels, but their store fell out less than they expected."1 A couple of years later this hardy trader was killed on Block Island, and an embassy was sent to Canonicus to treat about the murder. They were "entertained royally," the old account says, and the first huckleberry pudding on record was made for their feast. The Indians boiled "pudding made of beaten corn," we read, "putting therein great store of blackberries, something like currants." » 2 If for blackberries we read "black berries, something like currants" we have a good description of the huckleberries which still abound in Narragansett as they did in this late July or August of 1636. 1 Winthrop's Journal. Quoted in Potter, Early History of Narragansett, p. 16. Johnson, Wonder Working Providence. Quoted by Potter, p. 18. INDIAN CORN III On Broad Rock Farm, some of the land owned by College Tom, and still in his family, two of the Indian caches for corn can still be seen. They were small hollows in the ground roughly lined with stone, not more than a foot deep at present; perhaps three feet long and two wide. Here the stores of corn were buried, or as in the Great Swamp fight, put in baskets and tubs and set in the wigwams. The destruction of this supply in the fight was one of the severest blows to the Indians. During this very summer parched corn has been picked up on the site of this battle, now more than two hundred years gone by. The fire, which destroyed so remorselessly, charred these tiny grains, which are preserved just as they were when it smouldered and died so long ago. The virtues of Rhode Island jonnycake have been celebrated by College Tom's grandson, Shepherd Tom,' as he delighted to call himself, and when he says Rhode Island, it is usually Narragansett he means. The reader is instructed just how the corn should be ground, at what rate the stones 1 The Jonny-Cake Papers, by Shepherd Tom. Published by S. S. Rider, 1882. should revolve, and what kind of stones they should be. The baking is seriously considered; the middle board of red oak from the head of a flour-barrel is indispensable to bake it on, and the fire before which it bakes must be of walnut logs. Hasty pudding, porridge so good that it was respectfully mentioned in the plural as "them porridge," dumplings, and a store of other dainties, all excellent and wholesome, are treated of with the romantic remembrance of a joyous youth full of health and high spirit. The corn that furnishes these homely dishes has its own history. There is something fine in its stability, while financiers and legislators experimented with the cur rency and ran through the whole period of inflation with its worthless fiat money. A bushel of corn still furnished just so much. food, and instead of being measured in value by the money of the day, often became itself the measure of the value of the currency. As early as 1630 efforts were made to regulate the price by arbitrary methods. It was at that time twenty shillings a bushel.1 The following year it was made receivable for debts in the Plymouth Colony unless 1 Weeden, Economic and Social History of N. E., p. 98. PRICE OF corn 113 beaver or money were mentioned.1 From 1637 each year for several years the rate was fixed at which taxes were to be paid in it. Three shillings was about the normal rate, with variations either up or down according to the season, until the period of inflation began. Indeed it had already begun, as the Spanish piece of eight, the Spanish milled dollar of our acquaintance, was set at the same time at five shillings.2 A century later the colonies were all suffering from a debased currency. Massachusetts, as we have noticed, received "country pay" again for taxes, in which corn was received in lieu of money. Rhode Island was issuing one bank after another, and the currency steadily depreciated as the credit of the colony declined. In 1751 a Spanish milled dollar cost £2 16s. in old tenor bills, and College Tom sold his corn at 25 shillings a bushel. Then it steadily rises. Six years later it was 35 shillings, and in 1759 had reached 60 shillings, touching 100 shillings in 1762 — the highest price mentioned at all. The next two years must 1 Weeden, Economic and Social History of N. E., p. 101. 2 Ibid., p. 142. |