The Corn Mother tradition occupies an important place in Native American religion and culture. Generally, Native Americans speak of Corn Mothers as the original source of corn, and more generally the figures are associated with good harvests and the fertility of the soil. As James Frazer notes in The Golden Bough (1922), grain goddesses appear in ancient Greek religion and the pagan traditions of Northern European antiquity. In North America, Corn Mother myths appeared in a number of different settings and are known among such diverse tribes as the Penobscot of the eastern woodlands, the Creek of the southeast, and the Pawnee of the western plains.
Native American societies that relied on agriculture developed significant Corn Mother traditions in their beliefs and folkways, which attests to the importance of grain cultivation to their very survival. In the late 1880s, ethnographer James Mooney recorded a version of the Corn Mother myth during his field research among the Cherokee. In this version, Kana’ti (Lucky Hunter) and Selu (Corn) lived with their two sons at a place called Pilot Knob, not long after the world began. Once day while Kana’ti was hunting, the two boys complained to Selu that they were hungry. She replied, “There is no meat, but wait a little while and I’ll get you something” (Mooney 1900, 244). Selu then took a basket and went to the storehouse, a small structure built on poles to protect it from animals. Selu climbed the ladder and went in. Meanwhile, her two boys expressed curiosity about the storehouse and how she seemed always to be able to retrieve food from it, so they climbed up the back of the storehouse, removed a piece of clay from between the logs, and began to spy on their mother. Selu, unaware that she was being watched, placed the basket on the floor and began to rub her stomach. Kernels of corn fell from her body and filled the basket halfway. Then Selu rubbed her armpits and beans from her skin filled the basket to the top. This scene shocked her sons. They concluded that she was a witch and her food would poison them if they ate it.
When she returned from the storehouse, Selu could see the disgust on her boys’ faces and she surmised that they had seen how she produced the corn. The boys accused her of witchcraft and pledged to kill her, and so, resigned to her fate, she gave them the following instructions: “When you have killed me, clear a large piece of ground in front of the house and drag my body seven times around the circle. Then drag me seven times over the ground inside the circle” (Mooney 1900, 244). She continued by telling them to stand watch through the night and in the morning they would have plenty of corn to eat. Accordingly, the boys killed Selu and dragged her body over the ground; wherever Selu’s blood fell, corn grew. But the boys cleared only a few spots of ground and dragged her body over the ground only twice, not seven times. These departures from Selu’s instructions explain why corn grows in some places but not others, and why corn grows during a limited growing season. Mooney’s account of the story adds many more details and extends the narrative to account for the spread of corn cultivation to the wider community beyond Kana’ti and his sons.
In the Penobscot version, corn appeared in the world at a time of great famine when the people suffered greatly for lack of food. One day, the people received a visitor, a young and beautiful Indian girl, who quickly married into the tribe. Some time later she committed an act of infidelity with another, a figure in the form of a snake. As an act of contrition she prepared to sacrifice herself to provide corn to the people. She instructed her husband to kill her, drag her corpse through the woods until the ground pulled away her skin and tissues from her bones, and then bury her remains with a leaf of grass attached to her ankle. After her bones were buried in the forest clearing she manifested to her husband in a dream and taught him how to cultivate and prepare the corn. Thereafter, the corn continued to nourish the people and made the time of starvation a distant memory (Merchant 2010, 72).
According to Gene Weltfish’s The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture, the figure of Corn Mother went well beyond folklore and storytelling in Pawnee religious belief and practice. The Pawnee, who once inhabited the area surrounding the Platte River in what is now Nebraska and Kansas, appealed to Mother Corn for help in winning victories over their rivals and securing resources for their survival. Weltfish notes that the leader of a war party wore an ear of corn attached to his body to represent the party’s dependence on Mother Corn and to express their recognition of the figure’s spiritual power (Weltfish 1977, 254). Pawnee religious ceremonies featured Mother Corn in a progression of regular observances that corresponded to the growing season from planting to harvest. The observance most closely timed with harvest, which Weltfish called the “Mature Corn” ceremony, placed Mother Corn at the center of Pawnee ritualism and recognized the deity’s “full power to look after the people” (Weltfish 1977, 256). Pawnee priests used sacred bundles of corn in the performance of these rituals, which included sacrifices of buffalo tongue and heart meat to Mother Corn and the orchestration of rites to install Mother Corn in her elevated position as chief protector and provider.
The geographical extent of the Corn Mother figure in Native American folklore can be seen in its importance in the Pueblo cultures in present-day New Mexico and Arizona. In the creation myth of Acoma, often cited as the most well developed of the origin myths of the Puebloans, Corn Mothers appeared near the beginning, placed in the earth by the creator-god Utsiti and nursed to life by a divine figure known as Tsichtinako (“Thought Woman”). The Corn Mothers emerged from the earth with baskets of seed and planted corn, which they tended, harvested, and then ground into meal under the direction of Tsichtinako. The Corn Mothers then taught these techniques to the first humans, and corn cultivation subsequently became the foundation of the Southwestern Pueblo Indian diet. As with the Pawnee, this emphasis on the importance of corn expressed itself in many other dimensions of life in the Pueblo. Newborn babies were given small amulets in the shape of an ear of corn to wear over the course of their lifetimes. These amulets (called “Iatiku” at Acoma Pueblo) symbolized the Corn Mother and reminded the people of the spiritual force behind all living things.
According to many scholars, the Corn Mother myths and their associated rituals, sacred objects, and adornments illustrate the manner in which femininity and masculinity appear as coequal principles in Native American religious belief and practice. Various Native American cosmologies recognized dozens and even scores of deities that exercised control over the sun, moon, stars, weather, and earth’s plants and animals. These deities, including Corn Mothers, were honored and appeased to secure favorable conditions for hunting deer and buffalo, as well as growing the beans, squash, and corn that gave life to the people. The Corn Mother myths expressed the interdependence of men and women as well as the connections between people and the natural world. Just as Corn Mothers enabled the earth to reproduce corn with each new growing season, so too did corn enable the people to regenerate themselves and to maintain their strength in a sometimes difficult and challenging environment.
Jeffrey B. Webb
See also Corn Hero; Creation Stories of the Native Americans; Great Spirit
Further Reading
Merchant, Carolyn. 2010. Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, & Science in New England. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Mooney, James. 1900. Myths of the Cherokee. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
“Native American Maize (Corn) Mythology.” http://www.native-languages.org/legends-corn.htm. Accessed July 31, 2015.
Weltfish, Gene. 1977. The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books.
Corn Mother—Primary Document
Black Hawk on the Origins of Corn (1833)
In many Native American traditions, the importance of corn cultivation is signified by legends and folktales about corn’s primitive origins, often associated with a feminine spirit or deity. In this 1833 excerpt from the Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk (J. B. Patterson, 1882; Project Gutenberg eBook, 2009), the Sauk and Fox leader Black Hawk helps the reader to understand the folklore surrounding the Corn Mother within the broader context of Native American survival strategies and the rhythms of subsistence agriculture in the American Middle West.
When our national dance is over, our cornfields hoed, every weed dug up and our corn about knee high, all our young men start in a direction toward sundown, to hunt deer and buffalo and to kill Sioux if any are found on our hunting grounds. A part of our old men and women go to the lead mines to make lead, and the remainder of our people start to fish and get meat stuff. Every one leaves the village and remains away about forty days. They then return, the hunting party bringing in dried buffalo and deer meat, and sometimes Sioux scalps, when they are found trespassing on our hunting grounds. At other times they are met by a party of Sioux too strong for them and are driven in. If the Sioux have killed the Sacs last, they expect to be retaliated upon and will fly before them, and so with us. Each party knows that the other has a right to retaliate, which induces those who have killed last to give way before their enemy, as neither wishes to strike, except to avenge the death of relatives. All our wars are instigated by the relations of those killed, or by aggressions on our hunting grounds. The party from the lead mines brings lead, and the others dried fish, and mats for our lodges. Presents are now made by each party, the first giving to the others dried buffalo and deer, and they in return presenting them lead, dried fish and mats. This is a happy season of the year, having plenty of provisions, such as beans, squashes and other produce; with our dried meat and fish, we continue to make feasts and visit each other until our corn is ripe. Some lodge in the village and feast daily to the Great Spirit. I cannot explain this so that the white people will understand me, as we have no regular standard among us.
Every one makes his feast as he thinks best, to please the Great Spirit, who has the care of all beings created. Others believe in two Spirits, one good and one bad, and make feasts for the Bad Spirit, to keep him quiet. They think that if they can make peace with him, the Good Spirit will not hurt them. For my part I am of the opinion, that so far as we have reason, we have a right to use it in determining what is right or wrong, and we should always pursue that path which we believe to be right, believing that “whatsoever is, is right.” If the Great and Good Spirit wished us to believe and do as the whites, he could easily change our opinions, so that we could see, and think, and act as they do. We are nothing compared to his power, and we feel and know it. We have men among us, like the whites, who pretend to know the right path, but will not consent to show it without pay. I have no faith in their paths, but believe that every man must make his own path.
When our corn is getting ripe, our young people watch with anxiety for the signal to pull roasting ears, as none dare touch them until the proper time. When the corn is fit for use another great ceremony takes place, with feasting and returning thanks to the Great Spirit for giving us Corn.
I will relate the manner in which corn first came. According to tradition handed down to our people, a beautiful woman was seen to descend from the clouds, and alight upon the earth, by two of our ancestors who had killed a deer, and were sitting by a fire roasting a part of it to eat. They were astonished at seeing her, and concluded that she was hungry and had smelt the meat. They immediately went to her, taking with them a piece of the roasted venison. They presented it to her, she ate it, telling them to return to the spot where she was sitting at the end of one year, and they would find a reward for their kindness and generosity. She then ascended to the clouds and disappeared. The men returned to their village, and explained to the tribe what they had seen, done and heard, but were laughed at by their people. When the period had arrived for them to visit this consecrated ground, where they were to find a reward for their attention to the beautiful woman of the clouds, they went with a large party, and found where her right hand had rested on the ground corn growing, where the left hand had rested beans, and immediately where she had been seated, tobacco.
The two first have ever since been cultivated by our people as our principal provisions, and the last is used for smoking. The white people have since found out the latter, and seem to it relish it as much as we do, as they use it in different ways: Smoking, snuffing and chewing.
We thank the Great Spirit for all the good he has conferred upon us. For myself, I never take a drink of water from a spring without being mindful of his goodness.
Source: The Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk. Rock Island, IL: J. B. Patterson, 1882.