Fuchs called maize Frumentum Turcicum – Turkish corn. He wrote:
This grain, like many others, is one of those varieties which have been brought in to us from another place. Moreover, it came into Germany from Greece and Asia, whence it is called ‘Turkish corn,’ for today the huge mass of Turkey occupies the whole of Asia.
Maize wasn’t the only species whose origin was obscured by this tendency to regard and label anything new and exotic as ‘Turkish’. In some cases it’s stuck with us all the way to the present day. We still call the American bird Meleagris gallopavo a ‘turkey’.
In 1570, the penny dropped. The Italian herbalist Matthiolus had read Oviedo, and saw through that confusion between India and the Indies. He was brave enough to suggest that everybody else was wrong – and that maize really had come, across the Atlantic Ocean, from the West Indies. After this, it seems to have been fairly generally accepted that maize was a New World plant – or that at least one variety of it came from the Americas. Some herbalists differentiated between two distinct types of maize. One had yellow and purple kernels, an ear with eight to ten rows, and slender leaves, which was labelled Frumentum Turcicum. Another type is described as having some black and brown kernels, and broader leaves, called Frumentum Indicum. The implication was that Indicum had come from the West Indies, while Turcicum or Asiaticum came from Asia.
The differences between these two, apparently quite distinct, types of maize suggest an interesting possibility. The first type, Frumentum Turcicum, sounds much more like the type of maize now known as a ‘Northern Flint’. This variant has very hard kernels, and it doesn’t hail from the Caribbean at all. It comes from New England and the Great Plains of North America. Rather than being evidence of fast adaptation in maize brought over from the Caribbean, and spreading from Spain into the rest of Europe, the careful descriptions of Frumentum Turcicum in those sixteenth-century herbals suggests that there had already been a separate introduction of maize into Europe – this time, from North America.
Another clue appears in the English herbal of John Gerard, first published in 1597. Gerard writes that he has grown maize in his own garden, and that it’s called ‘Turkie corne’ or ‘Turkie wheat’. He adds some details about its provenance, and thinks – like many of his contemporaries – that one type came from the ‘Turkes Dominions’ of Asia. But of the New World sources of this grain, he writes that it comes ‘out of America and the Ilands adioyning … and Virginia and Norembega, when they use to sowe or set it, and to make bread of it’. The mention of both Virginia and Norembega flag up a potential North American source of maize.
Virginia is still familiar to us, as a modern state of the US. It’s said to have been named by Sir Walter Raleigh – possibly after his virgin Queen, possibly after an indigenous leader – in 1584, the year in which Raleigh sent his first colonisation and research mission to North America. But Norembega is an odd-sounding name; it starts to appear on sixteenth-century maps, in roughly the area of modern New England. The name also became attached variously to a legendary and fantastically wealthy city – an ‘El Dorado’ of the north; to a river in Maine; and to a putative Viking settlement – founded by Leif Eriksson, of course. In the nineteenth century, Boston’s elite found this last incarnation particularly alluring. They liked the idea that the Vikings had settled New England, and had effectively founded their nation. Eriksson was somehow the acceptable – even the heroic – face of European colonisation. And while Columbus was Catholic, Eriksson was – if not Protestant – then at least Nordic.
There’s that possible Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland – and this island may well have been the Vinland described in the sagas – but this didn’t develop into a European colonisation of the eastern seaboard of North America. There’s no evidence that the Viking presence in North America extended to New England, and on Newfoundland any early Viking settlements seem to have been very short-lived – and thoroughly extinct by the time the sixteenth-century European explorers arrived.
It seems likely, then, that the ‘Norembega’ that Gerard is vaguely referring to is not a Viking settlement or a mythical city, but simply the area which would later become known as New England. But the English presence there would only become firmly established in the early seventeenth century, decades after the publication of Gerard’s Herbal.
In 1606, James I issued a charter to the London and Plymouth Virginia Companies – effectively sponsoring them to form new trading connections and aggressively lay claim to land in North America. In 1607, the English explorer and ex-pirate John Smith, working for the Virginia Company of London, founded James Fort – which would become the first permanent British settlement in North America: Jamestown. John Smith was injured in a battle with Native Americans – being famously (and possibly apocryphally) saved by the chief’s daughter, Pocahontas – and returned to England. But he headed back over to North America in 1614, exploring and mapping the area which he would name ‘New England’. The Mayflower settlers arrived soon after, in 1620, leaving from Plymouth in England, and founding New Plymouth in Massachusetts. This is also recognised as a seminal moment in the history of colonisation, and for some marks the true beginning of the permanent settlement of New England.
So, by the time English settlers had put down these permanent roots in North America, what appears to have been North American – not Mexican – maize had been growing in English gardens for more than two decades. Had someone brought this domesticate over even before the Virginia Companies were granted their Royal Charter? Raleigh’s research mission to Virginia in 1584 is clearly too late. But the European presence in North America does go back a little earlier than that. Further north, the English colony in Newfoundland was officially recognised in 1610 – but it had been claimed for the English crown in 1583, by Raleigh’s half-brother and fellow adventurer, Humphrey Gilbert.
That’s surely still too late for the spread of maize through the gardens of England – just fourteen years before Gerard first published his Herbal. But Gilbert wasn’t the first European person to set foot on Newfoundland since the Vikings. The European discovery of the island predated Gilbert’s voyage by eighty-six years.
Cabot and the Matthew
Hanging in Bristol’s Museum and Art Gallery is a huge painting which has entranced me since I was a small child. It was painted by an artist called Ernest Board, who studied art in Bristol and seemed to enjoy historical subjects and large formats. The painting shows a grey-haired man, standing on a quayside, in splendid Medieval get-up, wearing a doublet of red and gold brocade, scarlet leggings and wonderfully long, pointed leather boots. He’s gesturing to the ship moored to a post at the quay, while at the same time shaking the hand of an older man in a long, dark robe, who’s wearing a mayoral chain of office. Half-hidden between these two is a younger man, with auburn hair, in a red doublet. Behind the mayor in his dark robe – and closer to us – is a bishop, dressed in an embroidered chasuble, his red-gloved hand grasping his golden crook. He’s flanked by two small, white-robed acolytes, one carrying a Bible, and the other a candle.
There’s a gaggle of other people in the background, all craning to get a better look. In the foreground, a pile of weapons and helmets lies on the cobbles, and a man in a crenellated white hood is picking up an armful of halberds or bills, presumably to load on to the ship. All that we can really see of the ship itself is its prow, but its billowing foresail forms the backdrop for the scene on the quay. Half-hoisted, the sail is painted with a castle and a mast in front – the coat of arms of Bristol. In the distance, we glimpse the Medieval skyline of the city. And, to the right, a tower stands on the horizon. It looks a lot like the Wills Memorial Building, which towers over the city today – but that was only built in 1925. It must be the spireless tower of St Mary Redcliffe. The painting is entitled The Departure of John and Sebastian Cabot on their First Voyage of Discovery, 1497. The grey-haired man at the centre of the painting must be John. Standing behind hi
m, in the red doublet, is his son, Sebastian.
Five years after Columbus set sail for the Indies, in a south-westerly direction, under the sponsorship of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, John Cabot left England to sail north-west. He was an Italian by birth, and became a citizen of Venice – so we should really call him Giovanni Caboto, or, for a Venetian twist, Zuan Chabotto. A maritime trader, Cabot (as I’ll persist in calling him) worked out of Venice and Valencia, and then turned up in London. He was planning a northerly exploratory voyage across the Atlantic – and this was diplomatically extremely sensitive. A papal bull, or decree, of 1493 had already granted Spain and Portugal exclusive permission to explore the non-European world. Cabot really needed royal support for what would undoubtedly be seen as an incursion into Spanish and Portuguese territory. The Spanish ambassador wrote to Ferdinand and Isabella to explicitly warn them that ‘uno como Colon’ – one like Columbus – was in London. But Cabot got the support he needed. Presumably Henry VII didn’t see why the Spanish and Portuguese should have it all stitched up, and in 1496 he granted Cabot a licence for exploration. The licence accorded Cabot the right to hold, in the king’s name, any land he took possession of, and to have a monopoly over any trade routes he forged. But Cabot still needed financial backing for the voyage. It seems he may have obtained some funds from Italian bankers in London, but also from wealthy Bristol merchants, willing to gamble on this venture. One merchant in particular, who was also a customs officer, has led to the formation of an alluring myth. His name was Richard ap Meryk, also known as Richard Ameryk.
It’s generally accepted that the ‘Americas’ are named after the Italian scholar and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who voyaged to South America between 1499 and 1502, and realised that those ‘West Indies’ weren’t part of Asia at all – but an entirely new land mass. But what about this Richard Ameryk? His surname has sparked a suggestion that the Americas were in fact named after him. It’s a popular explanation, in Bristol at least, but even Ameryk’s connection with Cabot is more than a little tenuous. While some have suggested that Ameryk was the principal backer of Cabot’s expeditions – and even the owner of the ship in which Cabot set sail, the Matthew – there’s unfortunately no documentary support for any of these speculations.
Still, the Bristol connection itself is secure. Cabot’s charter stipulated that he should sail from this maritime city, which already had some history of Atlantic exploration. A couple of expeditions in the early 1480s had aimed at finding new fishing grounds. But there were also stories of a mythological island called ‘Hy-Brasil’ that might have stimulated some adventures – and there were even rumours that Bristol sailors had found it. Perhaps some Bristolian really had already discovered North America – even before Columbus made his trip – but we’ll probably never know the truth of it.
Cabot set off in 1496, but short supplies and inclement weather forced him back. Undeterred, he got ready to have another go at it in 1497. He left Bristol on 2 May, and reached the other side of the Atlantic on 24 June. Various historians have suggested Nova Scotia, Labrador and Maine as the site of that landfall, but Cape Bonavista, on the east coast of Newfoundland, is thought by many to be the most likely landing place – and it was to there that a replica of Cabot’s ship, the Matthew, sailed from Bristol in 1997. Some five hundred years earlier, Cabot had been pretty sure that he’d been to the east coast of Asia. Back in England, Bristolians thought he’d probably found the mythical Isle of Brasil.
Cabot returned to the New World for further exploration, but his wanderings are imprecisely recorded. A historian who made some exciting but extraordinary claims about Cabot’s adventures, Alwyn Ruddock, died before publishing her research on the subject – and ordered her research notes to be destroyed as soon as possible after her death, which can hardly fail to raise suspicions. But Ruddock asserted that, in 1498, Cabot explored the entire east coast of North America, claiming it for England, and made an incursion into the Spanish territory in the Caribbean.
Amongst the documents that do survive, relating to Cabot’s voyages, there’s a disappointing dearth of information about the plants and animals he encountered. In stark contrast to the descriptions of Columbus’s voyage, no one seems to mention anything that Cabot brought back with him from the New World. After the first voyage, Henry VII gave Cabot a whole ten pounds for his trouble, but commercially the voyages had been a failure. Diplomatically, this venture was a bit of an embarrassment too. While Cabot had been away, Arthur, Prince of Wales, had become betrothed to Catherine of Aragon – daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. The marriage was intended to cement an Anglo-Spanish alliance. Better, then, not to tread on Spanish toes, and to sweep that less-than-entirely-successful voyage of exploration under the carpet. The royal marriage went ahead in 1501; Arthur died six months later. But there was still hope for the kingdom, in the form of Arthur’s brother. Eight years on, Catherine married that brother – becoming the first wife of Henry VIII.
Still, there was a whole New World out there, and English explorers and pioneers – including John Smith and Henry Gilbert – continued to investigate and lay claim to the northern continent. The names of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sailors and explorers would become stamped on the map of North America, from Henry Hudson to George Vancouver.
But it was the earlier pioneers who must have introduced the North American varieties of maize to northern Europe – in plenty of time for them to be recorded in Gerard’s Herbal. John Cabot’s son, Sebastian, pictured in that Ernest Board painting, reported that some Native American tribes lived off meat and fish, while others grew maize, squashes and beans. It’s impossible to imagine that – in the decades that followed John Cabot’s slightly hushed-up discovery of North America – none of these sixteenth-century English explorers brought the northern variant of maize back with them.
And maybe Cabot himself had brought a few grains with him; he would have needed supplies for the return journey, after all. So – imagine Cabot coming home, sailing up the Severn, then the Avon, back into port in August 1497, with not only a head full of new geographical knowledge, but his pockets full of maize kernels. This is a fiction, a figment – as fanciful and romantic as the Board painting – but I love to think that Cabot returned to Bristol and grew sweetcorn in his garden.
Genetic voyages
When history of the more traditional variety, laid out in ink on parchment, vellum and paper, runs out, we can turn to the genetic archive – the precious rolled-up scrolls contained in the nuclei of the cells of the organisms themselves. The nuclear narrative; the chromosome chronicles.
Back in 2003, a group of French plant geneticists published the results of their research into maize genetics. By looking at patterns of difference and similarity among 219 separate samples of maize, from the Americas and Europe, they had hoped to uncover some of that forgotten history. They used a technique which involved cutting up DNA with enzymes, then comparing the lengths of the fragments that had been produced – between different samples. It’s essentially the same technique that was developed for forensic purposes, which became known as ‘DNA fingerprinting’. It’s fairly crude, compared with modern DNA sequencing, but it does reveal patterns of similarities and differences between genomes – and, using it, the French geneticists gained some very clear insights into the saga of maize domestication and globalisation.
They found that maize was wonderfully diverse – much more than had been previously thought. The American populations – especially those from Central America – contained much more variation than the European ones. Maize was clearly, originally and entirely, an American plant – there was no hint of any Asian heritage. Within the Americas, Northern Flint maize, from the higher latitudes of North America, appeared genetically very similar to Chilean varieties. Both these types have long, cylindrical ears and long husk leaves, and hard-as-flint kernels. And genetic similarities between populations of maize on either side of the Atlantic preserved memories of voyages of
discovery. Closely related, genetically similar samples of maize would appear as tight clusters in the analysis. The geneticists found that six southern Spanish populations clustered with Caribbean populations – the two were clearly closely related. Presumably the southern Spanish maize varieties were the descendants of the first maize brought back from the New World. But this Spanish maize, quite obviously, had not spread into the rest of Europe. Even Italian maize was different to the Caribbean varieties – it was closest to South American types, from Argentina and Peru. And North European maize was genetically closest to the American Northern Flints. The hints in the herbals – of a separate introduction from North America – were borne out in the DNA of maize growing in northern Europe today. The sixteenth-century German botanist Fuchs was so sure of the Asian, or Turkish, origin of this grain. But his herbal of 1542, the first to contain an illustration of maize, depicted a plant with long ears – with eight to ten rows of kernels – and long husk leaves. It looks like a Northern Flint.
Historians have suggested that maize from North America was brought over to Europe in the seventeenth century, but the combination of evidence from genes and the great European herbals pushes the introduction right back into the first half of the sixteenth century – if not slightly earlier. And this isn’t at all far-fetched. Archaeological and genetic studies have shown that, by this time, Iroquoian populations were growing maize – as a staple food – across a great sweep of eastern North America – precisely the territory which was being thoroughly explored by English and French pioneers in the sixteenth century.
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