Maize or corn was first cultivated in what is now Mexico about 5,000 years ago, and spread rapidly to became the most important food crop in Central and North America. Throughout the continent, indigenous Americans told stories about how corn originated, why it is planted the way it is, and how honor can be given to this important crop.
While dominant culture academics have interpreted the characters in these stories as gods and goddesses, most Indians find this understanding of their stories offensive. The majority of stories told by different American Indian nations have a character whose name is the same as that peoples word for corn and often this character is depicted as woman. Corn dances are held to raise the corn, but the Corn Mother is not worshipped in the sense that a god or goddess is worshipped.
The Cherokee story of Selu or the Corn Motherm and the story of Ilyatiku of the Keresan people of the American Southwest function differently than Chicomecoatl, the female symbol of maize who was worshiped by the Aztecs of Mexico and her male consort Centeotl, to whom they offered their blood each year.
The Seminole tell have a story of Fas-ta-chee, a male dwarf whose hair and body were made of corn. He carried a bag of corn and taught the people how to grow, grind, and store corn for food.
The Zunis tell a story about eight corn maidens. The young women are invisible, but their beautiful dancing movements can be seen when they dance with the growing corn as it waves in the wind. One day a young man Paiyatemu fales in love with the maidens, and they fled from him. While they were gone, a terrible famine spread across the land. Paiyatemu begged the maidens to turn back, and they returned to the Zuni and resumed their dance. As a result, the corn started to grow again.
In a story, told by the Creeks and other tribes of the southeastern United States, the Corn Woman is an old woman living with a family that does not know who she is. Every day she feeds the family corn dishes, but the members of the family cannot figure out where she gets the food.
One day, wanting to discover where the old woman gets the corn, the sons spy on her. Depending on the version of the story, the corn is either scabs or sores that she rubs off her body, washings from her feet, nail clippings, or even her feces. In all versions, the origin of the corn is disgusting, and once the family members know its origin, they refuse to eat it.
The Corn Mother wins over the disgusted sons in all the stories, but each story has a variation of how she does it. In the Cherokee story, Selu tells the sons to clear a large piece of ground, kill her, and drag her body around the clearing seven times. However, the sons clear only seven small spaces, cut off her head, and drag it around the seven spots. Wherever her blood fell, corn grew. According to the story, this is why corn only grows in some places and not all over the world.
In another account, the Corn Woman tells the boys to build a corn crib and lock her inside it for four days. At the end of that time, they open the crib and find it filled with corn. The Corn Woman then shows them how to use the corn.
Other stories of the origin of corn involve goddesses who choose men to teach the uses of corn and to spread the knowledge to their people. The Seneca Indians of the Northeast tell of a beautiful woman who lived on a cliff and sang to the village below. Her song told an old man to climb to the top and be her husband. At first, he refused because the climb was so steep, but the villagers persuaded him to go.
When the old man reached the top, the woman asked him to make love to her. She also taught him how to care for a young plant that would grow on the spot where they made love. The old man fainted as he embraced the woman, and when he awoke, the woman was gone. Five days later, he returned to the spot to find a corn plant. He husked the corn and gave some grains to each member of the tribe. The Seneca then shared their knowledge with other tribes, spreading corn around the world.
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