Native American Foods: Technology and Food Sources: The Southwest

The cuisine of the Pueblo tribes, who have lived in the same place for more than one thousand years, maintained its culinary character longer than that of other regions. Pueblo cuisine remained close to the early Mexican culinary origins of the area—corn, particularly blue corn, beans, pumpkins, and squash. The use of Central American chilies and tomatoes, which were especially favored by the Navajo, was facilitated by the Spanish, who carried these products north. Corn dishes included stone-baked tortillas called “piki,” the paper-thin blue corn bread of the Hopi and Zuni. Blue-corn breads leavened with juniper ash were baked in embers. Posoles—stews with hominy corn, meat, and chilis—were simmered in clay pots, as were various versions of sweet corn pulp, mush, and soup. Squash and pumpkin in various stages of ripeness were cooked similarly and added to composite dishes along with their blossoms. Beans were eaten boiled, mashed, and frequently in combination with corn; under the Spanish influence beans were flavored with pork. Products of wild cacti, among them the leaves, buds, roots, and fruit, were eaten seasonally. For example, the Mescalero Apache pit-baked great quantities of roots of the mescal century plant (genus Agave) and dried them for later use. Small desert game was sometimes available and was roasted or used in soups and stews. Pumpkinseed oil, wild lamb’s-quarter leaves (genus Chenopodium), and juniper berries were important flavorings, as were the many chilies used fresh, dried, roasted, and smoked. Although the cuisines of southwestern tribes were quite similar to one another, there were small differences. The Hopi and Zuni ate turkey, as appropriate for sedentary farmers, but the Navajo, perhaps because of their nomadic origins or as a way of distinguishing their culture, often did not. The early Spanish brought lamb, and the Navajo on the high desert became sheepherders. Their diet then included lamb and mutton that was roasted, broiled, or stewed, and posole-like stews contained larger amounts of meat than in the past. Earlier ash leavening was eventually replaced with baking powder and soda in cornbread.