Native American Foods: Technology and Food Sources

Meals and recipes are elusive constructs; they are difficult to describe and analyze. Archaeologists have identified plants and animals by their seeds and bones, but they have not found a sense of what the food tasted or felt like or how it fit into the day’s nourishment. In addition, cookery, like other aspects of culture, is in a constant state of change, and food historians use caution when applying modern foodways to the past. A good deal of what is known or surmised depends on firsthand accounts—the oral history of Native Americans and the observations of early European travelers, a sometimes contradictory base.