Native American Food
Native American Cuisine
Native American cuisine includes all food practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Information about Native American cuisine comes from a great many sources. Modern-day native peoples retain a rich body of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native American social gatherings (for example, frybread).
Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, blueberry, hominy and mush are known to have been adopted into the cuisine of the United States from Native American groups. In other cases, documents from the early periods of contact with European, African, and Asian peoples allow the recovery of food practices which passed out of popularity.
Modern-day Native American cuisine can somewhat cover as wide a range as the imagination of the chef who adopts or adapts this cuisine to the present. The use of indigenous domesticated and wild food ingredients can represent Native American food and cuisine. North American Native Cuisine can differ somewhat from Southwestern and Mexican Cuisine in its simplicity and directness of flavor. The use of ramps, wild ginger, miners’ lettuce, and juniper can impart subtle flavours to various dishes. Native American food is one of living flavours and ideas. Different ingredients can change the whole meaning of Native American cuisine. A chef preparing a Native American dish can adopt, create, and alter as his or her imagination dictates.
Native American cuisine of North America
The essential staple foods of the Eastern Woodlands Aboriginal Americans were maize (also called “corn”), beans, and squash. These were called the “Three Sisters” because they were planted interdependently: the beans grew up the tall stalks of the maize, while the squash spread out at the base of the three plants and provided protection and support for the root systems. A number of other domesticated crops were also popular during some time periods in the Eastern Woodlands, including a local version of quinoa, a variety of amaranth, sumpweed/marsh elder, little barley, maygrass, and sunflower.
In the Northwest of what is now the United States, Native Americans used salmon and other fish, seafood, mushrooms, berries, and meats such as deer, duck, and rabbit. Rum was popular, having first been introduced to the Western Hemisphere by Christopher Columbus. In contrast to the Easterners, the Northwestern aboriginal peoples were principally hunter-gatherers. The generally mild climate meant they did not need to develop an economy based upon agriculture but instead could rely year-round on the abundant food supplies of their region. In what is now California, acorns were ground into a flour that was the principal foodstuff for about seventy-five percent of the population, and dried meats were prepared during the season when drying was possible.
Southeastern Native American cuisine
Southeastern Native American culture has formed the cornerstone of Southern cuisine from its origins till 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 technology known as nixtamalization. Corn was used to make all kinds of dishes from the familiar cornbread and grits to liquors such as whiskey, which were important trade items. Though a lesser staple, potatoes were also adopted from Native American cuisine and were 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, tomatoes (though Europeans initially considered them poisonous), many types of peppers, and sassafras all came to the settlers via the native tribes.
Many fruits are available in this region. Muscadines, blackberries, raspberries, and many other wild berries were part of Southern Native Americans’ diet.
“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 live 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.” | ||
—- Charles Hudson, The Southeastern Indians. |
Southeastern Native Americans also supplemented their diets with meats derived from the hunting of native game. Venison was an important meat staple, due to the abundance of white-tailed deer in the area. They also hunted rabbits, squirrels, opossums, and raccoons. Livestock, adopted from Europeans, in the form of hogs and cattle, were kept. When game or livestock was killed, the entire animal was used. Aside from the meat, it was not uncommon for them to eat organ meats such as liver, brains, and intestines. This tradition remains today in hallmark dishes like chitterlings, commonly called chitlins, which are the fried large intestines of hogs; livermush, a common dish in the Carolinas made from hog liver; and pork brains and eggs. The fat of the animals, particularly of hogs, was rendered and used for cooking and frying. Many of the early settlers were taught Southeastern Native American cooking methods.
Dishes:
- Acorn bread;
- Acorn mush, from the Miwok people;
- 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;
- Bean bread, made with corn meal and beans, popular among the Cherokee;
- Bird brain stew, from the Cree nation;
- Black drink or asi, a Southeastern ceremonial drink made from the yaupon holly;
- Buffalo stew, from the Lakota people, also called tanka-me-a-lo;
- Chinook olives, a type of cured acorn eaten by the aboriginal people of the Columbia River Valley;
- Cornbread;
- Dried meats like jerky and smoked salmon strips;
- Filé powder, made from sassafras leaves, used by the Choctaw for flavoring and thickening soups and stews as well as for herbal medicine;
- Frybread, a dish made from ingredients distributed to Native Americans living on reservations;
- Green chili stew;
- Mutton stew, from the Navajo people;
- Nokake, Algonquian hoecakes, made of cornmeal;
- Pemmican, a concentrated food consisting of dried pulverized meat, dried berries, and rendered fat;
- Piki bread, from the Hopi people;
- Psindamoakan, a Lenape hunter’s food made of parched cornmeal mixed with maple sugar;
- Pueblo bread;
- Salted salmon, an Inuit dish of brined salmon in a heavy concentration of salt water, left for months to soak up salts;
- Sapan ([ˈsaːpːʌn]), cornmeal mush, a staple of Lenape cuisine;
- Stink fish, an Inuit dish of dried fish, kept underground until ripe, for later consumption; also done with fish heads;
- Succotash, a dish of beans and corn;
- Tiswin, a term used for several fermented beverages in the Southwest, including a corn or fruit beer of the Apache and asaguaro sap beer of the Tohono O’odham;
- Walrus flipper soup, an Inuit dish made from walrus flippers;
- Wojape, a Plains Indian pudding of mashed, cooked berries.
Native American cuisine of the Circum-Caribbean
Jerk Chicken with plaintains, rice and honey biscuit
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 groups have mostly vanished, but their culinary legacy lives on.
- 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 fried bread made from cassava and coconut milk or water;
- Guanime, a Puerto Rican food similar to the tamale;
- Funche or fungi, a cornmeal mush seasoned with salt and butter;
- Cassareep, a sauce, condiment, or thickening agent made by boiling down the extracted juices of bitter cassava root;
- Pepperpot, a spicy stew of Taíno origin based on meat, vegetables, chili peppers, and boiled-down cassava juice, with a legacy stretching from Jamaica 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;
- Ouicou, a fermented, cassava-based beer brewed by the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles;
- Taumali or taumalin, a Carib sauce made from the green liver meat of lobsters, chile pepper, and lime juice.
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