Indigenous cuisine of the Americas includes all cuisines and food practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Contemporary Native peoples retain a varied culture of traditional foods, along with the addition of some post-contact foods that have become customary and even iconic of present-day Indigenous American social gatherings (for example, frybread). Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, blueberry, hominy, and mush have been adopted into the cuisine of the broader United States population from Native American cultures.
In other cases, documents from the early periods of Indigenous American contact with European, African, and Asian peoples have allowed the recovery and revitalization of Indigenous food practices that had formerly passed out of popularity.
The most important Indigenous American crops have generally included Indian corn (or maize, from the Taíno name for the plant), beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, wild rice, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, avocados, papayas, potatoes and chocolate.[1]
Indigenous cuisine of the Americas uses domesticated and wild native ingredients.[2] As the Americas cover a large range of biomes, and there are more than 574 currently federally recognized Native American tribes in the US alone, Indigenous cuisine can vary significantly by region and culture.[3][failed verification][4] For example, North American Native cuisine differs from Southwestern and Mexican cuisine in its simplicity and directness of flavor.
The Government of the Northwest Territories estimated in 2015 that nearly half of Northwest Territories residents in smaller communities relied on country food for 75% of their meat and fish intake; in larger communities, the percentage was lower, with the lowest percentage relying on country foods (4%) being in Yellowknife, the capital and only "large community".
The most common country foods in the Northwest Territories area include mammals and birds (caribou, moose, ducks, geese, seals, hare, grouse, ptarmigan), fish (lake trout, char, inconnu, whitefish, pike, burbot) and berries (blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, cloudberries).[8]
The cultural value attached to certain game species, and certain parts, varies. For example, in the James Bay region, a 1982 study found that beluga whale meat was principally used as dog food, whereas the blubber, or muktuk was a "valued delicacy".[9] Value also varies by age, with Inuit preferring younger ring seals, and often using the older ones for dog food.[10]
Contaminants in country foods are a public health concern in Northern Canada; volunteers are tested to track the spread of industrial chemicals from emitters (usually in the South) into the northern food web via the air and water.[11][12]
In 2017, the Government of the Northwest Territories committed to using country foods in the soon-to-open Stanton Territorial Hospital, despite the challenges of obtaining, inspecting, and preparing sufficient quantities of wild game and plants.[13]
A 19th-century illustration, "Sugar-Making Among the Indians in the North". Aboriginal peoples living in the northeastern part of North America were the first people known to have produced maple syrup and maple sugar
Corn was a vital source of food for Indigenous communities across the Northern Hemisphere. Sophisticated farming techniques were used to cultivate the crop throughout the American continent.
The essential staple foods of the Indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woodlands have traditionally been corn (also known as maize), beans, and squash, known as "The Three Sisters" because they were planted interdependently: the beans grew up the tall stalks of the corn, while the squash spread out at the base of the three plants and provided protection and support for the root systems.
Maple syrup is another essential food staple of the Eastern Woodlands peoples. Tree sap is collected from sugar maple trees during the beginning of springtime when the nights are still cold.[15] Birch bark containers are used in the process of making maple syrup, maple cakes, maple sugar, and maple taffy. When the sap is boiled to a certain temperature, different variations of maple food products are created. When the sap starts to thicken, it can be poured into the snow to make taffy.[16]
Southeastern Native American culture has contributed to the formation of Southern cuisine from its origins through the present day. From Southeastern Native American culture came one of the main staples of the Southern diet: corn (maize), either ground into meal or limed with an alkaline salt to make hominy, using a Native American technique known as nixtamalization.[22] Corn is used to make all kinds of dishes such as the familiar cornbread and grits.
Though a less important staple, potatoes were also adopted from Native American cuisine and have been used in many ways similar to corn. Native Americans introduced the first non-Native American Southerners to many other vegetables still familiar on southern tables. Squash, pumpkin, many types of beans, many types of peppers, and sassafras all came to the settlers via Indigenous peoples. The Virginia Algonquian word pawcohiccora means hickory-nut meat or a nut milk drink made from it.
To a far greater degree than anyone realizes, several of the most important food dishes of the Southeastern Indians live on today in the "soul food" eaten by both black and white Southerners. Hominy, for example, is still eaten ... Sofkee lives on as grits ... cornbread [is] used by Southern cooks ... Indian fritters ... variously known as "hoe cake", ... or "Johnny cake." ... Indians boiled cornbread is present in Southern cuisine as "corn meal dumplings", ... and as "hush puppies", ... Southerns cook their beans and field peas by boiling them, as did the Indians ... like the Indians they cure their meat and smoke it over hickory coals.
Southeastern Native Americans traditionally supplement their diets with meat from hunting native game. Venison is a vital staple meat, due to the abundance of white-tailed deer in the region. Rabbits, squirrels, opossums, and raccoons are also common. Although it may have been secondary to game hunting, fishing is also an important food source; many peoples lived near rivers and other consistent sources of fish.[24] Indigenous fishing methods in the Southeast include shooting with arrows, spearing or gigging, trapping with weirs or dams, poisoning with fish toxins, bare-hand noodling, and netting. Fish were often roasted, while small or very bony fish were stewed for use in soup.[25]
Livestock, adopted from Europeans, in the form of hogs and cattle, are also kept. Aside from the more commonly consumed parts of the animal, it is traditional to also eat organ meats such as liver, brains, and intestines. Many of the early settlers were taught Southeastern Native American cooking methods.
Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies or Plains Indians have historically relied heavily on American bison (American buffalo) as a staple food source. One traditional method of preparation is to cut the meat into thin slices then dry it, either over a slow fire or in the hot sun, until it is hard and brittle. In this form it can last for months, making it a main ingredient to be combined with other foods, or eaten on its own.
One such use could be pemmican, a concentrated mixture of fat and protein, and fruits such as cranberries, Saskatoon berries, blueberries, cherries, chokecherries, and currants are sometimes added. Many parts of the bison were utilized and prepared in numerous ways, including: "boiled meat, tripe soup perhaps thickened with brains, roasted intestines, jerked/smoked meat, and raw kidneys, liver, tongue sprinkled with gall or bile were eaten immediately after a kill."[27]
The animals that Great Plains Indians consumed, like bison, deer, and antelope, were grazing animals. Due to this, they were high in omega-3 fatty acids, an essential acid that many diets lack.[28]
"We landed at a Watlala village 200 men of Flatheads of 25 houses 50 canoes built of Straw, we were treated verry kindly by them, they gave us round root near the size of a hens egg roasted which they call Wap-to (wapato) to eate . . . . which they roasted in the embers until they became Soft"
—William Clark, Lewis and Clark Expedition
Wapato (Sagittaria latifolia) has a number of varieties and is found growing in damp marsh area around ponds, lakes, rivers, and streams. The edible rhizomes were gathered and could be roasted in the embers of a fire, or dried, ground and the meal pressed into a cake which "served well as bread" as noted by Meriwether Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. They are known today as broadleaf arrowhead, arrowhead, duckroot, or duck-potato.
Western Indigenous cuisine
In the Pacific Northwest, traditional diets include salmon and other fish, seafood, mushrooms, berries, roots and tubers, and meats such as deer, duck, and rabbit.
In contrast to the Easterners, the Northwestern peoples are traditionally hunter-gatherers, primarily. The generally mild climate led to the development of an economy based on year-round abundant food supplies, rather than having to rely upon seasonal agriculture. Yet, Native American tribes of California still relied on storing food for winter seasons, which included "nuts, seeds, and dried meat and fish".[30] Since animals migrated, vegetation is seasonal, and also weather needs to be taken into account.
In what is now California, acorns can be ground into a flour that has at times served as the principal foodstuff for about 75 percent of the population,[31] and dried meats can be prepared during the dry season.[32] It seems that acorns and other nuts took priority among indigenous tribes because of the archaeological evidence of "mortars and pestles".[33] Grinding acorns requires a lot of resources and time to gather and process them. Which implies an area where location is more permanent. When it came to gathering acorns it took everyone in the tribe because within weeks they would become mature. There was communal participation when it came to obtaining food. Soups and bread were made from the grinding of acorns.[30]
California like other parts of the states, and across the world goes through seasonal stages. Indigenous tribes along the California region were able to use "over 500 species of plants and animals for food".[30] Before contact with indigenous tribes and colonizers, there were vast resources for subsistence that were diverse among varying regions of California.
Archaeological methods suggest the use of flames and cutting materials altered bones from rodents.[34] The presence of rodent bones in Quiroste archaeological sites suggests that the Quiroste people ate rodents. The abundance of rodents may have made them a convenient food source.
Deer and seal bones are also found in indigenous communities.[34] This means that the diet is varied, as seals are found near the coast and deer are found further inland. Indigenous tribes that were closer to inland would consume land-based animals, and those closer to the coast would consume more marine-based animals.
Other evidence is through the use of screening that found anchovies to be a source of food for indigenous people.[34] This is a valuable discovery because anchovies are difficult to come by due to their fragile bones. Indigenous cuisine is not limited to salmon as a primary source of protein.
Indigenous tribes were consuming the meat of shellfish with the implication of "bi-pitted cobbles".[33] As cuisine differs between regions so do the tools used for obtaining those proteins. In this case, the meat of shellfish required stone tools to crack open the shells. Which can lead to eating more shellfish-based cuisines.
The consumption of marrow from animal bones is evident from archaeological analyses of "hand axes made from andesitic and quartzitic cobbles".[33] Obtaining bone marrow from an animal requires both time and resources, as it is located in the center of the bone and requires extra effort to extract. When food requires extra effort to obtain, it is given more value.
The destruction of Native California was done by the missionaries taking over the indigenous land and clearing the environment for their own cultural foodways.[35] This caused some indigenous tribes to become dependent on missionaries for survival. Archaeological evidence shows that some indigenous tribes were eating cattle because of the reliance they had on missionaries.[36]
Although some tribes relied on the food from missionaries, they still hunted for their own food from the evidence of birds found that know to migrate to the area seasonally.[36] Although they were fed by missionaries, they required more food. That's when their own ways of foodways came into play for hunting and preparing the food they captured.
As previously mentioned there was a large variety of food available in California. However native tribes living along the confines of missionaries were only able to gather "wheat, maize, barley, and peach".[30] That's if the surrounding areas were equipped to grow them.
Food not only played an important role in subsistence but also an important role in ceremonies especially to mourn someone's death.[36] Foods not only play an important role in survival but maintain cultural costumes and traditions going for personal and generational knowledge.
The preparation for making atole was done by toasting the wheat before it was granulated.[30]
While indigenous food may appear to be a thing of the past, there are still indigenous people who are keeping their traditions alive through modern cuisine. Crystal Wahpepah sees her kitchen as a way to promote indigenous "food sovereignty and the reclamation of ancestral knowledge".[37]
Ancestral Puebloans are also known for their basketry and pottery, indicating both an agricultural surplus that needed to be carried and stored, and clay pot cooking. Grinding stones have been used to grind maize into meal for cooking. Archaeological digs indicate a very early domestication of turkeys for food.[citation needed]
Alaska Native cuisine consists of nutrient-dense foods such as seal, fish (salmon), and moose. Along with these, berries (huckleberries) and bird eggs are traditionally consumed by Alaska Natives.[41]
Seal, walruses, and polar bears are the large game that Alaska Natives hunt. Smaller game includes whitefish, Arctic char, Arctic hare, and ptarmigan.
Due to weather, edible plants like berries are only available to be consumed in the summer, so people have a diet very high in fat and protein, but low in carbohydrates.
The game that is hunted is also used for clothing. The intestines of large mammals are used to make waterproof clothing and caribou fur is used to make warm clothing.[42]
Akutaq, also called "Eskimo ice cream", made from caribou or moose tallow and meat, berries, seal oil, and sometimes fish, whipped together with snow or water
Bannock, is a type of frybread that is eaten equally in the Arctic, Plains, Sub-Arctic, and Pacific cultural areas
Bean bread, made with corn meal and beans, popular among the Cherokee[45]
This region comprises the cultures of the Arawaks, the Caribs, and the Ciboney. The Taíno of the Greater Antilles were the first New World people to encounter Columbus. Prior to European contact, these groups foraged, hunted, and fished. The Taíno cultivated cassava, sweet potato, maize, beans, squash, pineapple, peanut, and peppers. Today these cultural groups have mostly assimilated into the surrounding population, but their culinary legacy lives on.
Ajiaco, same as pepperpot, a soup believed to have originated in Cuba before Columbus' arrival. The soup mixes a variety of meats, tubers, and peppers.
Barbacoa, the origin of the English word barbecue, a method of slow-grilling meat over a fire pit.
Jerk, a style of cooking meat that originated with the Taíno of Jamaica. Meat was applied with a dry rub of allspice, Scotch bonnet pepper, and perhaps additional spices, before being smoked over fire or wood charcoal.
Casabe, a crispy, thin flatbread made from cassava root widespread in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean and Amazonia.
Bammy, a Jamaican bread made from cassava and water, today this bread is fried and made with coconut milk.
Guanime, a Puerto Rican food similar to the tamale; made with cornmeal or cornmeal and mashed cassave together.
Pasteles, a dish that may have also been called hallaca and originated from Puerto Rico. Pasteles were once made with cassava and taro mashed into a masa onto a taro leaf. They are then stuffed with meat and wrapped.
Pepperpot, a spicy stew of Taíno origin based on meat, vegetables, chili peppers, and boiled-down cassava juice, with a legacy stretching from Cuba, Colombia coast and to Guyana.
Bush teas, popular as herbal remedies in the Virgin Islands and other parts of the Caribbean, often derived from indigenous sources, such as ginger thomas, soursop, inflammation bush, kenip, wormgrass, worry wine, and many other leaves, barks, and herbs.
Chicha, a generic name for any number of Indigenous beers found in South America. Though chichas made from various types of corn are the most common in the Andes, chicha in the Amazon Basin frequently use manioc. Variations found throughout the continent can be based on amaranth, quinoa, peanut, potato, coca, and many other ingredients.
Chicha morada, a Peruvian, sweet, unfermented drink made from purple corn, fruits, and spices.
Colada morada, a thickened, spiced fruit drink based on the Andean blackberry, traditional to the Day of the Dead ceremonies held in Ecuador, it is typically served with guagua de pan, a bread shaped like a swaddled infant (formerly made from cornmeal in Pre-Columbian times), though other shapes can be found in various regions.
Humitas, similar to modern-day tamales, a thick mixture of corn, herbs and onion, cooked in a corn-leaf wrapping. The name is modern, meaning bow-tie, because of the shape in which it's wrapped.
Locro (from the Quechua ruqru) is a hearty thick stew popular along the Andes mountain range. It is one of the national dishes of Argentina and Bolivia.
Mazamorra morada, a thick, sweet pudding made from ground purple corn and fruit. Sold in mix form in Peru.[59]
Mate de coca, a Peruvian tea made from steeped coca leaves. It is commonly sipped by Indigenous people living at high altitudes in the Andes to prevent elevation illnesses.
Paçoca, from the Tupi "to crumble," describes two different dishes of pulverized ingredients: one with peanuts and sugar, and the other with dried meat, ground manioc, and onion.
Yerba mate, a tea made from the holly of the same name, derived from Guaraní.
Cooking utensils
Metate and mano
The earliest utensils, including bowls, knives, spoons, grinders, and griddles, were made from all kinds of materials, such as rock and animal bone. Gourds were also initially cultivated, hollowed, and dried to be used as bowls, spoons, ladles, and storage containers.
Many Indigenous cultures also developed elaborate ceramics for making bowls and cooking pots, and basketry for making containers. Nobility in the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations were even known to have utensils and vessels smelted from gold, silver, copper, or other minerals.
Batan, an Andean grinding slab used in conjunction with a small stone uña
Comal, a griddle used since pre-Columbian times in Mexico and Central America for a variety of purposes, especially to cook tortillas.
Cuia, a gourd used for drinking mate in South America.
Metate, a stone grinding slab used with a stone mano or metlapil to process meal in Mesoamerica and one of the most notable Pre-Columbian artifacts in Costa Rica.
Molinillo, a device used by Mesoamerican royalty for frothing cacao drinks.
Cooking baskets were woven from a variety of local fibers and sometimes coated with clay to improve durability. The notable thing about basket cooking and some native clay pot cooking is that the heat source, i.e. hot stones or charcoal, is used inside the utensil rather than outside. (Also see Cookware and bakeware.)
Crops and ingredients
A russet potato with sproutsThe bean pods of the mesquite (above) can be dried and ground into flour, adding a sweet, nutty taste to breadsA maple syrup tapSeveral large pumpkinsAcorns of sessile oak. The acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera Quercus and Lithocarpus, in the family Fagaceae).
Plant-based foods
Acorn, used to make flour and fertilizers for plants
Cactus (various species), fruits and young pads (see nopales)
California poppy seeds (There are eastern American poppies also, but they are believed to have always been so rare, inclusion in the human diet is highly unlikely)
Spikenard, berries and roots for tea, some tribes ate roots (this is a select species, of which there are many in the Americas and not all species are edible, though Natives had wide medicinal and practical uses)
Honey wasp—Brachygastra mellifica, Brachygastra lecheguana, and Polybia occidentalis, a source of honey found from the Southwestern United States to Argentina
Horse—although imported by Europeans, the horse was still very important to Indigenous cultures throughout the Americas (famously on the North American Plains) in the historic era
^Nerburn, Kent (Project Director) (1991). We Choose To Remember: More Memories of the Red Lake Ojibwe People. Bemidji, Minnesota: Arrow Printing. p. 8.
^Freedman, P. (2019). American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way. (pp. 1-40). New York, NY: Liveright Publishing. ISBN978-1631494628
^Freedman, Robert Louis (1976). "Native North American Food Preparation Techniques". Boletín Bibliográfico de Antropología Americana (1973-1979). 38 (47). Pan American Institute of Geography and History: 142. JSTOR43996285., s.v. Hickory Nut Soup (Cherokee)
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Dragonwagon, Crescent (2007). The Cornbread Gospels. Workman Publishing. ISBN978-0-7611-1916-6.
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^ abcdecontent Popper, V. S. (2016). Change and Persistence: Mission Neophyte Foodways at Selected Colonial Alta California Institutions. Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 36(1), 5–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45155062
^Redhawk (2004). "Cooking With Acorns". North American Indian Recipes. "the People's Paths home page!". Archived from the original on November 19, 2018. Retrieved August 23, 2008.
^ abccontent Hylkema, Mark G. & Cuthrell, Rob Q. (2013) An Archaeological and Historical View of Quiroste Tribal Genesis, California Archaeology, 5:2, 225–245, DOI: 10.1179/1947461X13Z.00000000013
^ abccontent Gifford-Gonzalez, Diane, Boone, Cristie M., & Reid, Rachel E. (2013) The Fauna from Quiroste: Insights into Indigenous Foodways, Culture, and Land Modification. California Archaeology, 5:2, 291-317, DOI: 10.1179/1947461X13Z.00000000016
^ abccontent James M. Potter, Tiffany Clark & Seetha Reddy (2021) Subsistence and Ritual: Faunal and Plant Exploitation at the Mission Santa Clara de Asís Ranchería (CA-SCL-30H). California Archaeology, 13:2, 203-225, DOI: 10.1080/1947461X.2021.1997507
^"Bird brain stew". NativeTech: Native American Technology & Art. Archived from the original on November 19, 2018. Retrieved September 29, 2005.
^"Buffalo Stew (Tanka-me-a-lo)". NativeTech: Native American Technology & Art. Archived from the original on December 4, 2018. Retrieved September 29, 2005.
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