Factors of Change: Hospitality

The reactions of the first Europeans to visit an area (1500–1700) give mixed impressions of what early Native American foods were like. Native American worldview prescribed hospitality, and visitors were well fed. The visitors’ reactions to the ingredients and cookery they encountered varied, presumably depending on the degree of ethnocentrism and gastronomic adventurousness of the observer, the food’s resemblance to familiar flavors and textures of home cookery, the type of occasion and meal being shared, the skill of the cook, and the time of year and its effect on food availability. Opinions ranged from delight, “pas good as any feast I have had in England,” to “inedible,” suggesting that the indigenous cuisine sometimes reached the heights of sophistication and variation known in Europe at the time.