1492 - Agriculture

Agriculture

Two members of the Columbus party return from the interior of Cuba November 5 without gold but with "a sort of grain they call maiz [Zea Mays], which was well tasted, bak'd, dry'd, and made into flour." Unknown to Columbus, at least 700 varieties of maize grow in the Western Hemisphere. He will bring maize seeds back to Spain, where they will be called "Indian corn" and grown in gardens as curiosities (see 1511; 1516).

"These fields are planted mostly with ajes [cassava]," Columbus writes in his log December 16. "The King [of Hispaniola] dined with me on the Niña and afterwards went ashore with me, where he paid me great honor," he writes December 26. "Later we had a meal with two or three kinds of ajes, served with shrimp, game, and other foods they have, including their [cassava] bread; which they call cazabe." The navigator and his men will discover foods unknown in the Old World: turtle meat, sweet potatoes, capsicums (peppers), plantain (Musa paradisica), and allspice (see 1494). The capsicums (peppers) found by Columbus are members of the Solanaceae family (see 1529). Chili peppers are mostly the fruit of capsicum annuum. Sweet potatoes that came originally from the Western Hemisphere have long been grown in the mid-Pacific and for a century or two have been cultivated as far west as the islands that will be called New Zealand, where Maori tribespeople have introduced the tuberous roots.

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