Indigenous people pass information – including food traditions – from generation to generation through stories, stories, legends and myths. Indigenous elders teach younger generations how to prepare wild game and fish, how to find wild plants, what plants are edible, their names, their uses for food and medicine, and how to grow, prepare, and preserve them.
As European settlers spread across America and displace Native American tribes, native food customs were turned upside down and completely disrupted. The evolution of Native American cuisine can be broken down into four distinct periods, described below.
Fossils embedded in the cliffs above Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, a major center of ancestral Pueblo culture between 850 and 1250 AD, photographed in 2002.
Ruby Ray / Getty Images
1. Pre-contact foods and ancestral diet
The variety of cultivated and wild foods consumed before contact with Europeans was as vast and variable as the regions where indigenous peoples lived.
The seeds, nuts and corn were ground into flour using millstones and made into breads, porridge and other uses. Many indigenous cultures harvested corn, beans, chili, squash, wild fruits and herbs, wild green vegetables, nuts and meat. Foods that could be dried were stored for later use throughout the year.
Up to 90 percent of the Southwestern Pueblo diet consisted of calories consumed from agricultural produce, with wild fruits, green vegetables, nuts and small game providing the balance. As big game was scarce in some areas, textiles and corn were traded with the people of the plains for bison meat. There is evidence that ancient Indigenous cultures even incorporated cocoa – the bean used to make chocolate – into their diets, as a 2009 dig in Chaco Canyon in New Mexico revealed.
Corn, beans, and squash, called the Three Sisters by many tribes, serve as key pillars in the Native American diet and are considered a sacred gift from the Great Spirit. Together, the plants provide complete nutrition, while offering an important lesson in environmental cooperation. Corn draws nitrogen from the soil, while beans replenish it. Corn stalks provide climbing stakes for bean tendrils, and the large leaves of squash grow low to the ground, shading the soil, keeping it moist, and deterring weed growth.
Two Navajo women, pictured with a baby and three little lambs, c. 1930s.
H. Armstrong Roberts / ClassicStock / Getty Images
2. Foods of first contact and changes after meetings with Europeans
When European settlers began to arrive in the Americas, starting with Christopher Columbus in the 15th century, they brought their own dietary customs with them. Some of the foods supplied with the Europeans included sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, horse, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, melons, watermelons, apples, grapes, and wheat.
Spanish sheep have radically changed the way of life of the Navajo (Diné). From the moment the Diné acquired sheep, their herds became at the heart of their culture and their life. Newborn lambs are brought into the house when it is cold and fed by hand. Sheep are still a sign of wealth in some communities and can be given as a bridal gift to a woman’s family by her future husband.
Just as Indigenous communities adopted new foods and livestock into their kitchens, newcomers also incorporated ingredients from Native American communities into their kitchens. Italian tomatoes, Irish potatoes, Asian peppers, British crisps served with their fish, were all introduced by the natives of the Americas after first contact in the 15e century and beyond.
Rations distributed to Amerindians, 19th century.
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3. Government-supplied food and forced relocation
The opening of the western border, triggered by the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, encouraged many settlers to settle west in what was traditionally an Indian country. Congress initiated the Federal Indian Removal Act of 1830, which deported over 100,000 Native Americans east of the Mississippi to the Indian Territory of Oklahoma, completely disrupting traditional Native eating patterns and all of their traditional food sources.
In the Southwest, in 1864, the Diné (Navajo) were also forced to leave their homeland of Arizona when all of their crops were burnt and animals killed, leaving them without food. They were forced to march to Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on the long march to Bosque Redondo, where many perished.
Four years later, on the long march of the Navajo, they were consolidated on a reserve. In what became known as The Trail of Tears, residents of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations were forced from their homes and forced to march into Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) to make their country of origin accessible to settlers. All the nomadic tribes north of the new border with Mexico have been settled on reservations.
During these forced displacements, new food was distributed to the tribes in the form of rations issued by the government. The rations, distributed twice a month, originally included lard, flour, coffee and sugar, and canned meat, commonly referred to as “spam,” which has been associated with an increased risk of diabetes in Aboriginal. This food distribution program led to one of the most dramatic dietary changes in Native American history.
The original intention of the US government was to provide rations as an interim solution until the resettled natives raised enough food themselves. Instead, many indigenous peoples have become dependent on rations. Some tribes initially abandoned their traditional food purchasing practices, but found that there was never enough government issued food to feed all of their tribal members.
Indian taco, one of today’s best-known Native American dishes, was developed as a creative combination of government-issued rations with traditional indigenous foods that ancestors used to survive. Wheat flour, baking powder, lard, and later in the distribution process, yellow processed cheese, were all staples delivered to families by reservation (and still being distributed today). Beans, wild game meat, if available, green peppers and tomatoes, already familiar and in some cases produced by many families at the time, naturally accompanied new staples.
Although relatively new to the native table, Indian taco and the fried bread it is served on is now considered a must-have at national fairs, powwows, and community events, both on reservations and in urban areas.
4. New Native American cuisine
For the first time in U.S. history, Native chefs, Native cooks, restaurateurs and members of the Native community can decide for themselves which foods they want to include on their menus and on their plates.
New Native American cuisine combines contemporary elements, which could include cooking techniques, presentation and flavors, with elements of ancestral foods from the past. By blending the past and the present, New Native American cuisine helps restore and disseminate pre-colonial food – and the indigenous knowledge that comes with it – for future generations.
Lois Ellen Frank is a Santa Fe-based chef and culinary anthropologist whose book, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, won a James Beard Award.
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“How to eat smarter”, by Christine Gorman, Time, October 20, 2003.
US Dietary Guidelines Unfit for Native Americans, by Neal D. Barnard, MD, and Derek M. Brown, July 4, 2010.
Native American Cuisine, by Linda Murray Berzok, Greenwood Press, 2005.
First American kitchen, by Sophie D. Coe, University of Texas Press, 1994.
“Evidence of cacao use in the Prehispanic American Southwest”, by Patricia L. Crown and W. Jeffrey Hurst, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, February 17, 2009.
Wild plants of the province of Pueblo; Exploration of ancient and sustainable uses, by William W. Dunmore and Gail D. Tierney, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1995.
Sense of place by Steven Feld and Keith H. Basso Eds, School of American Research Press, 1996.
“Inter-Indian Exchange in the Southwest”, by Richard I. Ford, in Handbook of the Indians of North America. Volume 10. Southwest, Smithsonian Institution, 1983.
“Seeds of Health: The Hunger for Ancestral Foodways”, Lois Ellen Frank with Melissa D. Nelson, presented at the NAISA conference in Tucson, Arizona, 2010.
American Terrior: Savor the flavors of our woods, waters and fields, by Rowan Jacobson, New York: Bloomsbury, 2010.
“Ethnic Foodways in America: Symbol and the Performance of Identity”, by Susan Kalcik, in Ethnic and regional foodways in the United States: the performance of group identity, University of Tennessee Press, 1984.
Gather the desert, by Gary Paul Nabhan, University of Arizona Press, 1985.
Coming home to eat: the pleasures and politics of local foods, by Gary Paul Nabhan, Norton, 2002.
Why some like it hot: food, genes and cultural diversity, by Gary Paul Nabhan, Island Press / Shearwater Books, 2004.
Heritage agriculture in the southwest, through Gary Paul Nabhan, Western National Parks Association, 2010.
Amerindian cuisine and traditions, by Carolyn Neithammer, Collier Books, 1974.
Eating in America: a story by Wavery Root and Richard De Rochemon, Ecco Press, 1995.
“Ritualistic aspects of corn spells among a Navajo family from Pinon, Arizona,” by Walter Whitewater, unpublished article, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, 2002.
