Early American Agriculture


some plants mistakenly considered native to America may have
been preserved by the Indians or may have grown wild until
"discovered" in later years.
 A variety of the common agricultural crops of Europe were
planted during the founding of the American colonies. Guinea
corn, a sorghum plant grown on plantations in the South prior
to the Civil War, was called "guine Corn" in the West Indies in
1601. It flourished in the summer of 1671 along with cotton
and indigo on the Ashley River in South Carolina. The common
use of Guinea corn in Africa, and as a food on slave ships,
makes it seem probable that it was brought in with slaves at an
early date.
 During their first two years at Jamestown, the colonists tried
planting European crops. The plants did not mature because
they were started too late in the season, and by 1609 most of the
colonists were concentrating on Indian methods of agriculture.
William Strachey, in writing of his travels through Virginia from
1610 to 1612, stated that the natural Virginia tobacco was inferior
to varieties brought in from the West Indies. (3) Carrier attri-
buted the importation of the improved tobacco seeds to Sir Walter
Raleigh who brought them from Trinidad via England in 1595.
John Rolfe first cultivated tobacco in Virginia in 1612.
 Silk production began its long, unavailing struggle for a place
in American agriculture in 1621, when England encouraged mul-
berry planting in Virginia in order to feed the silkworm. Five
years later, the Dutch West India Company was sending samples
of wheat, rye, barley, oats, buckwheat, beans, and flax back to the
West India Company in Holland. Three hundred trees were
shipped to Massachusetts Bay in 1630 to promote orcharding
there.4 Hemp was among the first plants, and was used along
with flax for sails and cordage for shipping. But there was no
surplus for export. Further efforts were made in 1658 to promote
silk production, and in 1661 the cultivation of flax and hemp was
stimulated as part of the colonial mercantilistic policy of encour-

 'In Massachusetts the Endicott expedition for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in
1628 was directed to take with it seeds of wheat, rye, barley, oats, beans, peas, stones
of peaches, plums, cherries, and seeds of filberts, pears, apples, quince, and pome-
granate, woad seed, saffron heads, licorice seed, madder roots, potatoes, hop roots,
hempseed, flaxseed, and currant plants. By 1630 such vegetables as cabbage, turnips,
lettuce, spinach, radishes, onions, peas, and beans had been introduced into the
gardens of Massachusetts.