Native American Foods: Technology and Food Sources: Introduced Foods

Columbus’s second voyage to the Americas carried European plant foods and established them on Caribbean islands. The list included sugar cane, melons, wheat, chickpeas, large onions, radishes, salad greens, grapevines, and fruit trees. Not long after this voyage, Spanish conquistadors and explorers brought food plants to Mexico and the American Southwest, and the slave trade brought African plants to the southeastern coasts. When planted in the appropriate soil and climate, the crops flourished, were carried long distances on established Native American trade routes, and were quickly adopted by other tribes. Thus, a number of introduced foods, among them wheat, peaches, and melons, were growing profusely in the Southwest at the time of English encounters many decades later and were misinterpreted as indigenous plants. These foods had become integral to local agriculture and were part of the ongoing dietary change that would characterize changing Indian foods throughout North America. In the course of centuries, other European and African foods were introduced to local agriculture with the same results. Among these were the potato, carrot, turnip, eating apples and pears, and okra. In addition to these domesticated plants, a number of European species often planted in colonial kitchen gardens “escaped” to grow wild and thrived across the continent. Explorers entering “new territory” sometimes found dandelions, certain varieties of purslane, cresses, violets, and burdock already in Native American diets.