Although Columbus had little idea of what he was doing, it was his voyages that ultimately proved the most important, and we can date the moment that that became so with precision. On November 5, 1492, on Cuba, two of his crewmen returned to the ship carrying something no one from their world had ever seen before: “a sort of grain [that the natives] call maiz which was well tasted, bak’d, dry’d and made into flour.” In the same week, they saw some Taino Indians sticking cylinders of smoldering weed in their mouths, drawing smoke into their chests, and pronouncing the exercise satisfying.
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