CORN MOTHER

also called Corn Maiden, mythological figure believed, among agricultural tribes in North America, to be responsible for the origin of maize. The story of the Corn Mother is related in two main versions with many variations. In the first version (the immolation version), the Corn Mother is depicted as an old woman who succours a hungry tribe, frequently adopting an orphan as a foster child. She secretly produces grains of corn by rubbing her body. When her secret is discovered, the tribe, disgusted by her means of producing the food, accuses her of witchcraft. Before being killed by the tribeby some accounts with her consentshe gives careful instructions about how to treat her corpse. Corn sprouts from the places over which her body was dragged or, by other accounts, from her corpse or burial site. In the second version (the flight version), she is depicted as a young, beautiful woman who marries a man whose tribe is suffering from hunger. She secretly produces corn, also, in this version, by means that are considered to be disgusting; she is discovered and insulted by her in-laws. Fleeing the tribe, she returns to her divine home, but her husband follows her, and she gives him seed corn and detailed instructions for its cultivation. Similar stories of the immolation of a maternal figure or the insult to and flight of a beautiful maiden are told by the Indians in accounting for the origin of the buffalo, peyote, certain medicinal herbs, and the sacred pipe.