Kahesana Xaskwim, the Corn Mother (literally 'our mother corn,' from xaskwim, maize), is the Lenape spirit of the staple crop. As one of the manitowak that the Creator placed over the world, she personifies maize and holds the power to give or withhold it. Lenape oral tradition, catalogued by Bierhorst and reflected in the ethnographies, tells how the Corn Mother once left the earth in sorrow because young men scorned her and denied she existed, so that the corn seed failed; she relented and the harvest was restored only when an old man offered her respect and the people sang and danced in her honor. The Lenape sustained their relationship with her through burnt offerings, marking corn as a sacred gift held in trust rather than a mere commodity.