Hot Tamales

By the time of European settlement, almost all Native American farmers had corn, beans, and squash, and an oral “cookbook” of at least 100 corn recipes. Maize-based mushes and hearth breads were taken on by the settlers as soon as the ship-borne foods ran out, but boiled leaf breads, although universally reported among Native Americans, were not adapted, probably because they were not in use even by rural or backward communities in Europe. Thus the Virginia colonists noticed that “ … they lap yt [fresh corn off the cob] in rowlls within the leaves of the corne, and so boyle yt for a deyntie,” but they did not take the time to do likewise, Cherokee “broadswords” and “dog-heads,” or Iroquois wedding breads (paired like dumbbells) might be eaten and described by visitors, but apparently were not adapted by colonial farmers other than a few intermarried pioneers. Tamale-like leaf breads were steamed and roasted in contemporary Africa, and some native leaf breads may have persisted in the slave quarters for a time, but are not recorded. Only in what are now the southwestern states were local leaf breads incorporated into the colonial diet, and the early Spanish and Mexican colonists did so under the Aztec name, tamales.