Native American Foods: Before and after Contact

The study of Native American foodways is immensely large and complex. It involves vast tracts of land with varied geographical terrain and weather systems and consequent regional differences in foods, fuels, and implements. Indigenous history spans many thousands of years, encompassing a long period of precontact, dramatic and often devastating encounters with Europeans, and evolving adaptations to foreign modernization. Foodways are equally complicated and depend on the moment and place of European encounters, the ethnicity of the settlers, and gradual encroachments on ancestral lands. Indian foods—never static historically—continue to evolve today.