Native American Foods: Technology and Food Sources: Regional Specialties

Before contact, each region used local products and technologies in representative dishes. However, after the first encounters with Europeans, available foods and technologies changed, and the divisions of local cooking styles started to blur. European ingredients were added gradually, and modernizing technology replaced use of earlier hearths and pit ovens and other methods of cooking and preserving. The original balance between the numerous local wild and the few domesticated foods reversed, becoming more heavily oriented to commercial foods and limited choices that were available everywhere. In later times many tribes combined local precontact specialties and those of more recent origin. Regional distinctions are sometimes highlighted and sometimes tempered by the creative skills of gourmet chefs and cookbook authors. In the movement to strengthen a pan–Native American culture, some regional foods have been adopted by tribes everywhere. Regionalism continues to be a factor but is a smaller one. The following representative dishes suggest the character of each region.