Many years ago a people lived at the foot of a very high, steep and rugged mountain heard the voice of a woman singing at the top of the mountain. In her singing she named a very old man saying, "Come up here, I desire to become your wife." But the old man did not pay any attention to the singer. Nevertheless the woman kept up her singing daily, and finally some of the people advised the old man to go up the mountain top and learn what were the designs of the persistent singer and he excused himself by saying "The mountain is so steep and I am so very old that I do not feel like attempting to climb its rugged sides."
The singing continuing day after day, the chiefs then in solemn council requested the aged man to go to the mountain's top and unravel the mystery, as it might in one way or another affect the welfare of the people. So the venerable old man said, "I shall go at your request," and after many trials he at length reached the mountain summit.
After reaching the top he saw a fine-looking woman not far away calling and beckoning him to come, saying, "Come to me, I desire tecum concubare." Drawing near to the woman the aged man replied saying, "I am past the age in which I could have complied with thy request," but the woman replied, "I will endow thee with the power and so thou shalt be able. Where I have lain a plant shall grow. Care well for it. It shall be called 'white corn.' In a few days from now thou must return to care for that which thou shall find sprung up, and I shall die."
Time passed and the aged man, when he had recovered his senses from a swoon, found that the woman had vanished and that he had embraced a vision, and then he arose and went back to his people. In a few days he returned to the top of the mountain and saw there the corn plant. So he pruned the weeds from it and placed rich, fine earth about the rootlets, and watered it from a neighboring pool. He cared for the corn plant until it grew to be a stalk and ripened bearing three full ears of white corn. These he husked and took back to his house. In the spring at planting time he assembled the people of his nation and divided the white corn among them by giving to each family a few grains apiece, and instructing how to raise it, and telling them that would be the staple of their food in after years.
This is the origin of white corn among the Tuscarora.
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