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Hi and welcome to the first gallery of our Story of Virginia exhibit titled
"Becoming a Homeplace."
Here we look at the lives of people who were living in a land that was
not yet called Virginia.
They possess a history that extends back thousands of years, but without written records,
there's more that we don't know about their lives than that which we do.
To study this history we must rely on other disciplines, such as archaeology,
to provide answers.
That brings us to this intriguing artifact: a charred piece of corn cob
with the kernels still attached.
Archaeologists, using a technique called radiocarbon dating, estimate this piece of corn
to be approximately 995 years old, placing it in a time known as
the Middle Woodland Period.
Originally cultivated in Mexico, recent scholarship indicates that corn
started to be grown heavily in Virginia about a thousand years ago,
and the discovery of different kinds of cobs indicates that it was a hearty crop
that grew well in this environment.
As the production of corn increased, so did the population of Virginia Indians,
for whom corn became a vital part of their diet.
In the Virginia Algonquin language, much of which has been lost,
the word "hominy" meant corn, with "rocka homin" meaning parched ground corn.
One of Virginia's still-existing tribes, the Chickahominy, when translated
means "coarse-ground corn people."
Much of the corn harvested by Virginia Indians was pounded into meal to make bread,
which was cooked directly in the ashes of the fire or on flat rocks beside it.
Other times it was mixed with meat to make a stew, or it could be mixed with beans
to make "succatash," another Virginia Algonquin word.
Fresh green corn was especially popular with Indian farmers, who preferred
its taste to that of fully ripened corn.
The corn stalks could be used as poles for the next year's crop,
and when they were fresh provided a sweet juice.
The corn cobs themselves could actually be used to press patterns into wet ceramic,
or often were simply used as kindling for fires.
So remember, sometimes we can learn more from something like this charred cob
than we can from a flashier artifact or one that was owned by someone famous.
To highlight its importance, it's worth remembering that in the years following
the arrival of English it wasn't land or gold over which they fought
with the Powhatans--it was corn.