Corn Mother Myth Summary

Reading Reflection #2- Prompt Native Americans’ cosmology and mythology was a significant part of their culture and often revolved around corn. Most tribes in the eastern American woodlands believed that corn was a gift from the Corn Mother, described by Carolyn Merchant as a “mythical female from whose body had come the corn plant, maize.” The tale explained the origin of corn and tobacco. The Corn Mother was a young woman who committed adultery with a snake and sacrificed her body to her devastated husband, who dragged her through the forest and buried her in the woods. She then appeared to him in a dream and explained to him how to tend, harvest and cook corn and how to smoke tobacco. The Corn Mother myth rationalized an intersubjective relationship with nature by humanizing the origins of corn, affected their agricultural practices by instilling deep matrilineal and environmentally conscious values within them before contact with European settlers, but made them doubt their culture after contact with Europeans.

As the class discussed in lecture, the myth created a personalized connection between the Native Americans and the Earth and allowed the Native Americans to identify with their landscape. Because they believed that corn came from recycled human flesh, they could see it as an animate, personalized being, rather than just an object. Merchant explains how the Native Americans also believed, because of the Corn Mother, that “the Earth would continue to regenerate the human body through the corn plant.” This shows that rather than just seeing corn as an object to cultivate, it was a sacred gift given to them by the land. Because the land gave the gift of corn to them, they believed the land should be treated with