Early American Agriculture




PLANT INTRODUCTION has played a significant role in the growth
of American agriculture. It has wrought tremendous changes in
the American landscape, and has added many new food elements to
our diet. As the dean of American plant explorers, Dr. David G.
Fairchild, once wrote: "The era of pork and hominy has passed for-
ever in this country, but so short a time ago that our fathers refer
to it as the time of plain living."
 The importation of new agricultural plants has been a constant
necessity in America, from the first attempt of the Europeans to
settle here until the present day. Although the colonies teemed
with plant life, the Indians cultivated few crops in comparison
with the wealth of plant life which the immigrants brought with
them. Even today it is estimated that we have in America only
a fourth of the plant resources of Europe and not more than a
tenth of those in Asia. This enormous reserve of plant life is a
challenge to those who hold that the diminishing food supply of
the world, in face of an increasing population, is a threat to our
survival.
 A list of the fruits, vegetables, and small grains brought to this
country from the Old World would include most of our familiar
market and garden varieties.1 Henry A. Wallace, as Secretary of
Agriculture, said that of our seventy-eight leading crops in 1937,
only about ten were native to the United States. Maize, or corn,
and the "Irish" potato are probably the outstanding contributions
of the Indians to American agriculture. The Indians used many
 SThe fruits include apple, pear, quince, loquat, peach, certain plums, apricot,
orange, grapefruit, lemon, lime, kumquat, fig, olive, pomegranate, mango, pineapple,
date, European grapes, currant, and the more important mulberries. The vegetable
crops would include onions, lettuce, cabbage, asparagus, eggplant, muskmelon, water-
melon, cucumber, okra, beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, celery, kale,
collard, kohlrabi, leek, parsley, parsnip, peas, radish, salsify, spinach, and turnips.