ABSTRACT
According to the National Corn Growers Association's January 2000 statistics, corn is grown in more countries in the world than any other crop, and the United States produces and exports more corn than any other country in the world. When the foreigners arrived and attempted to settle in the upper Northeast, they had nothing to eat, nothing to sustain them but their faith in biblical stories. Indigenous people told them new stories of how to live in the world. Thanksgiving is the holiday in which Americans give thanks to indigenous people for such extraordinary and versatile foods. From the hunters' initial gift of sacred food to the Unknown Woman, Choctaws and other south-eastern tribes received the gift of corn. Today people celebrate in midsummer Green Corn Ceremony to mark the coming of the future: corn, ancient food cache. Another version explains how a black bird brought corn, tanchi, to a Choctaw boy.
