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Tuesday, November 12, 2019

November 12, 2019 Native American History month


Well the sun is shining but with about 7 inches of snow, 21 degrees and a brisk breeze it’s not a nice day.  Lake effect snow yesterday left us with a deep dose of unwanted winter. The birds are piling on the feeders this morning. Needless to say, nothing is blooming in the garden today, but some trees and shrubs still have their leaves.

There are good things that snow does. With bitter cold setting in for a few days the blanket of snow may protect things that haven’t fully hardened off for winter.  And the snow reflects lots of light back into my windows for the plants inside.  Inside things are blooming away, hibiscus, pomegranate, Thanksgiving cactus, streptocarpus, begonias, geraniums, gerbera daisy, diplodenia, penta and peace lily.  There’s even a bloom on my big lemon tree.

I haven’t heard snowmobiles yet, no one had theirs ready to go yet I guess.  That’s a good thing. Many of the farm fields haven’t been harvested, and snowmobilers are notorious for trespassing across the fields. If the snow melts in a week or so maybe the poor farmers will get the fields harvested. But I am thinking that some of those fields won’t be worth harvesting.

It’s been a terrible year for farmers. Between the trade wars and the weather, they have been hit hard. Small farmers have been told by Perdue, the current Secretary of Agriculture, that they need to go big or get out.   Suicides of farmers and calls to suicide prevention lines for farm families are up. If you know a farmer tell him or her you appreciate them and to hang in there.

This week’s blog is all about the contributions to agriculture, gardening and culture that the peoples native to the Americas gave us, since it’s Native American Month.  We should all reflect on the contributions to our culture that the First People on this continent gave us. History is finally being corrected to provide a more balanced and honest assessment of what was achieved before the arrival of Europeans and what was lost by the invasion of a non-native “species”.

Reflecting on Native American contributions to our food and culture

It’s Native American month and time for gardeners to remember some of the things the First People of the country gave us- besides this land. The common perception many Americans have is that when Europeans first came to this country it was just vast wilderness with a few tribes of Native Americans living in tepees and bark homes, hunting and fishing to survive.  Archaeologists tell us that just wasn’t true.

Across the Americas, before Europeans arrived, there were millions of people in thousands of communities and cultures. Some cultures were as advanced as those in Europe and Asia at similar times. These different groups/ tribes knew of each other and trade between cultures was frequent. Some cultures were nomadic, following game and moving with the season, others were agricultural and settled permanently. They wove and made pottery, mined metals and made intricate jewelry, domesticated plants and farmed enough food to feed large populations. 

Cabeza de Vaca, an explorer from Spain in 1527 described a city in what is now Arizona, of Pueblo people, who he said, had cotton blankets finer than those at home, large,permanent homes and great stocks of grain. French explorers in the north described large settlements of native people farming land and managing fruit and nut orchards along the St. Lawrence river and down along the Mississippi river. They described large, well-tended farm fields covering many acres. (The French settlement of Quebec and its fort were built in 1608, well before the Plymouth Rock colony struggled to take hold.)
But by the time the Europeans became successfully established and moved further inland the First People’s populations had been drastically reduced.  Diseases brought in by those early explorers, measles, influenza, cholera, and others had swept through the populations, who had no immunity to them, killing millions. Fields were abandoned, homes crumbled into dust. 
When 200 years or so later early European pioneers began migrating from those initial coastal colonies into what they thought was unclaimed and untouched wilderness, they were merely seeing what nature does to heal itself when humans leave. The Native people before them had introduced new species, changed the soil and topography and managed wildlife.  But now those efforts went unseen.
The first true slaves in the nation held by Europeans were Native Americans. (To be fair Native Americans also kept slaves). Diaries of Spanish explorers describe the cruelty that was meted out to the people enslaved by the first invaders. They used them as guides, pack animals and to mine for precious metals. They took what they wanted from Native people, food and homes, and their contact began the series of disease epidemics that would wipe out indigenous populations from South America to North America.

Later the English would use Native American slaves as farm labor. Their experience with crops that would grow in this country was helpful. But the Native Americans did not make “good” slaves.  They knew the country and escaped into it easily. They were also susceptible to dying from diseases their captors gave them. Europeans then turned to importing black slaves.

So, as it can be said of black slaves, Native American slaves helped get this country established. Between helping the first Europeans survive, helping European countries fight their wars on American soil and slave labor, Native Americans had a great part in establishing the countries that now exist on this continent.

Native American food contributions

Native Americans (from South and North America) introduced Europeans to many new foods, corn, several types of beans, tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, pecans, cashews, black walnuts, agave, Jerusalem artichoke, quinoa, amaranth, arrowroot, sunflower, wild rice, pineapple, pumpkin/squash, cocoa bean (chocolate), vanilla, cranberries, blueberries, cassava, papaya, avocado, turkey, bison, salmon and muscovy duck to name a few. About 60% of the typical western diet today consists of foods that originated in the Americas.
Corn
A note about the word “corn”. Corn is an English word for grain of all sorts. In Europe corn could be oats, barley, wheat or other grain. When Europeans were given “maize” by Native people they applied the word corn to it also. In this article corn is Zea mays or in common language maize.
Corn is probably the most important contribution to food/agriculture that Native Americans gave the world. Corn was first developed by people in Central America starting about 7000 years ago. It was developed by selective breeding from a plant called teosinte. Hundreds of varieties were in existence by the time Europeans arrived and corn was being grown as far North as what is now Canada. Even people who were nomadic hunter cultures often traded for the corn and used it as a basic food.
Corn is still immensely important to North American agriculture and is now grown around the world.  There are still hundreds of varieties and hundreds of uses for corn. Corn is used as food for people, food for animals, ethanol, drinking alcohol, oil, cornstarch and as a sweetener, corn syrup.
While early Native American corn did come in yellow and white varieties, many varieties had beautifully colored kernels of red, pink, blue, black and green or mixed colors. Different colors often denoted different uses for the kernels, such as making flour, making hominy, or popping.  There were varieties for different climates and soil conditions. The idea of growing a crop variety best suited to an area was understood by early Native American farmers.

Corn was planted separated by color and the use for which it was being grown.  Even the early indigenous farmers knew corn had to be separated if they wanted the kernels to be a specific type. There was corn for flour, corn for making hominy, corn for parching, corn for popping, and so on. Beans, squash or sunflowers were often used to separate corn fields.
Native Americans were the inventors of hominy. To make hominy corn is dried, then the dried corn is soaked in a lye solution (lye is made from wood ashes) then washed several times and dried again. Why go through all of this?  Because humans cannot absorb niacin from corn unless it is treated like this, and a diet based largely on corn would lead to a niacin deficiency, (pellagra). Of course, indigenous people did not know it was a lack of niacin that caused sickness, but they had realized that corn treated like this kept the sickness away.
Hominy also stores better, the kernels do not germinate if they get moist, and the kernel hull is softened and easy to remove.  Hominy was often ground into flour as well as untreated corn. That flour was used in “breads” and in soups and stews.
Doll made from corn husks
Popcorn is also a Native American “invention”.  Archeologists have found evidence of popped corn dating to around 3600 BC.  Popcorn was probably the first type of corn domesticated into a pure variety. That was in South and central America but by the time Europeans began settling on the continent popcorn was known and grown through most of North America too. That first harvest dinner celebrated by the pilgrims had popcorn brought by Native Americans.
Popcorn was eaten and was also used for ceremonies and decoration by indigenous people. Several varieties of popcorn were grown by various cultures.  Native Americans popped corn in clay pots, on cobs held by sticks over fire and by throwing kernels into a fire.  A game was made of catching the popped kernels that flew out of the fire.  Early settlers used popcorn as a breakfast food, with milk and sugar, and this probably inspired the breakfast cereals we now enjoy.

Beans
There were beans and peas in Europe and Asia before the New World was discovered, but many of the most common beans we eat today come from the American species Phaseolus vulgaris. This includes Navy Bean, Red Kidney, Pinto, Great Northern, Marrow, and Yellow Eye. It also includes all beans called snap or “green” beans, where the pods are consumed.
Where corn was grown indigenous peoples almost always grew beans.  These two foods compliment each other, the beans adding protein and other nutrients corn lacks in sufficient quantity and together form a more nutritious diet. Beans are also easy to dry and store or transport.
All the native beans were vining types.  If corn was not used to support the vines brush or poles were sometimes used or the vines simply sprawled on the ground. Like corn, indigenous species of beans came in a wide variety of seed colors and patterns. Some of these beans are so beautiful they were used in decorative ornaments.  Different cultures had unique bean varieties they preferred to grow.
Succotash is a combination of beans, corn and often peppers. It is a very nutritiously balanced food, containing all essential amino acids. This is a food indigenous people introduced Europeans to that would help save their lives.

Squash and pumpkins – and gourds

Despite the story of Cinderella, which seems ancient and linked to the old world, pumpkins and squash are American in origin.  Four species, C. maxima which includes most winter squash and some large pumpkins, C. pepo which includes the small pie pumpkins, acorn squash, vegetable spaghetti, zucchini, and other summer squash, C. moschata which includes butternut squash and a few others and C. mixta  which includes the cushaw varieties are the American squash species.
Like beans and corn there were hundreds of varieties of squash. Often squash was grown at the edges of corn fields or between rows, but some fields were planted with only squash. And squash was part of the 3 sister’s method of growing I’ll discuss later.  Some of the harder shelled winter squash types were stored whole for winter, but most squash was cut into circles or strips and dried for storage. Squash was often used in soups.
The seeds of squash were also important as food.  They were roasted, dried and stored and were part of many indigenous dishes.  They were used as “travel” foods and snacks.
Gourds, which are related to squash, have a very long association with humanity and their origins are a bit murky. While gourds were present in the Americas long before European contact, they probably didn’t originate here.  Science now believes the bottle type gourds originated in Africa. The genus Lagenaria has six species which comprise most of the “hollow”, hard shelled gourds.
I mention gourds here because all cultures around the world have a record of gourd use very early in their civilizations.  Gourds probably came with the first migration of people from Africa and went wherever people went from that point on. They are found in Peruvian archaeological sites dating from 13,000 to 11,000 BC. Before European contact gourds were being used by every Native American culture from south to north.
What makes gourds so special? They hold things. Before we had clay pots and woven baskets, we had gourds. They can carry water, seeds, fat, medicine, you name it.  They were made into musical instruments, such as rattles, flutes and stringed instruments. They were ornaments, gourds were carved and painted, and eating and cooking utensils, sometimes even cradles. Gourds were an essential part of every human civilization. Sometimes they were collected from the wild, but often they were purposefully grown.

Gourd serving dish and utensils
Wikimedia commons
One of the interesting things noted in the accounts of early European explorers of North America was that some native cultures used gourd birdhouses to attract Purple Martins and other birds around their villages in the hopes they would control mosquitoes. They are still used as bird houses today.
Like beans, corn, squash and other crops there were hundreds of varieties of gourds in America.  Some were huge, some small, some colorful, many unique to a group of people over generations of time.
Years ago, I was fortunate to be given some seeds descended from seeds found in an ancient southwest Native American archeological site. Someone was able to germinate some of the seeds and grow out some gourds from them and they distributed the seeds from those gourds to a number of Master Gardeners. (These seeds were at first called squash seeds.)
The seeds did not produce exactly the same gourd for everyone that grew them. This might indicate the seed strain wasn’t pure to begin with or that those who grew out the first modern generation had some cross pollination. I found the gourds took a long time to mature, they were from the southwest after all. The fruits I got were large and tan when ripe, somewhat like a bottle gourd without a long neck. The gourds took up huge amounts of space, vines were 20 feet long and 6 or 7 feet wide, so I quit growing them after a couple years, but I did pass on the seeds.

Peanuts

Did you think peanuts came from Africa with black slaves?  Well they may have but that’s not the whole story. Peanuts are native to South America. In Peru thousands of years ago peanuts were being turned into peanut butter, roasted in the shell, fried, boiled, and made into flour. Peanuts roasted in the shell were eaten at ceremonies and games just as they are today.
Since we know peanuts had found their way into Mexico from Peru by the time Europeans arrived, Natives in southwest North America may also have peanuts. But it was the Portuguese who brought them from Brazil to Africa in the 1500’s.
Africans quickly found many uses for the peanut and they grew well there.  Peanuts were introduced back into southeastern North America by African slaves. They once again became an important crop in the Americas. And roasted peanuts are still eaten at games and ceremonies.

The maple sugar controversy

There is some controversy as to whether Native Americans actually converted maple sap to sugar before European contact.  (Maples grow in Europe and other places but there is no history of making syrup and sugar from it there.)  At the present time it is believed that Native Americans in the Northeast before European contact did collect maple sap and boil it into syrup using primitive vessels. But it is now believed that they could not have processed the sap into sugar until they had iron kettles.  Experiments have found sap can be reduced to syrup in clay and wood vessels, but most experiments found sugar impossible to make in such vessels.

An example of Native American technique for maple syrup
Wikimedia common 
Native Americans processed the sap in the “hunger times” when little other food was available in early spring. But the syrup would not have stored well. It was for immediate consumption and probably was not traded. There is little archeological evidence to support this, but it is not expected as the syrup making would have been local and sporadic, not a regular seasonal event that it became after the Natives Americans had iron kettles.
There are many legends and words associated with “maple syrup” in various Eastern tribe’s languages that linguists say pre-date colonial history and support this idea.  Also, early French explorers wrote of the Natives drinking a sweet liquid in the spring made from trees. 
By the 1600’s, when natives were getting trade goods like iron kettles from Europeans, they learned to further boil down syrup into sugar. The sugar stores and transports well and it is at this point in time when maple sugar became a trade item, and more of a spring industry, for Native Americans.  It was traded to Europeans, who had cravings for cane sugar, and to other tribes outside the sugaring country.
In either case, it was Native Americans who developed the process of making maple syrup and sugar, before and after technology from Europeans. So, it is fair to say that Native Americans gave us those foods.
 Here’s more information


Sunflowers

Sunflowers are native to the Americas.  Not only were there dozens of varieties of corn, beans and squash, sunflowers were also selectively bred into distinct varieties. The sunflower was probably the closest thing to an ornamental that early Native Americans grew but it was also a source of food.
Sunflowers were being grown as a crop as early as 3000 BC., probably in Central America.  It is thought that they were domesticated before corn. The First People developed the plant by selective breeding to have one large head and a lot of seeds. They produced tall sturdy stalks. They also cultivated plants with different colored ray flowers and seeds, and some of these varieties were probably also grown for their beauty. The use and growing of sunflowers spread north and west until most First People in North America that farmed were also growing the crop.

Sunflowers were used for food, for dye, for oil, and they also had some medicinal uses. The oil was used on the skin and hair and a purple dye made from sunflowers was used to color textiles and paint the body.  As is typical of indigenous crops no part of the sunflower was wasted. The stalks were used as building material and fodder for animals.
Other garden plants
 The strawberry we grow in gardens was only developed after botanists brought back strawberries from America- Fragaria virginiana- to cross with tiny European strawberries.  Black raspberries are from American species of raspberry.
There are wild species of the genus Vaccinium ( blueberry) in Northern Europe and Asia that were used as food in some places. In Europe these were called bilberries. But the cultivated blueberry is developed from North America species. Huckleberries and cranberries are also native to the Americas.

The three sisters garden misconception

Many people think that most Native Americans farmers/gardeners grew corn, beans and squash/pumpkins together in what white people have termed the “3 sisters garden”.  In this method a mound is made, and the seeds of the three planted together. It is said that the corn provides support for the beans and the squash shades the ground to conserve moisture.  Sunflowers are sometimes substituted for corn.
It is probably true that some indigenous cultures grew crops in this way.  But each culture grew crops in a different way.  Many cultures separated each crop because they believed it was easier to care for and harvest crops grown separately. Often squash/pumpkins were grown on the edges of fields.  And sunflowers sometimes surrounded fields of other crops. 
Many cultures used mounds to plant in, whether in three sister’s style or in long rows. Raised beds were a useful concept then as they are now.  The loose soil is deeper in mounds and scraping soil into mounds with primitive tools was easier than digging it. Mounds also make it easy to determine what is a row and what is a planted area.

Other early gardening and farming techniques

Some southwestern indigenous cultures in dry areas used irrigation canals to water crops. Some cultures fertilized plots with animal manure. Many cultures fenced plots with sticks and brush, and it was common to post guards around crops as they neared harvest, both to deter animals and humans. In the Midwest platforms were built at the edges of corn fields and young girls manned them 24 hours a day to protect the crop.  (Young men often hung around these platforms, offering even more protection, at least for the crop.)
The scapula (shoulder blade) of a large animal was often used as a shovel or hoe.  Some cultures carved wooden garden tools.  Women had planting sticks, sometimes elaborately decorated.  There were woven bags and baskets to carry seeds and harvested crops.  Clay pots with seals were used to preserve seed for planting. Usually pits were dug to store dried corn and beans, often lined with grass mats. 
In wooded lands Native Americans practiced a type of slash and burn agriculture. In the first year, saplings were cut down and large trees girdled. In the second year the sapling piles were burnt, dead trees removed and then crops were planted.  After the crop was planted a new area was prepared by cutting saplings and girdling trees to expand the growing area.
Wikimedia commons
While most Native Americans did not believe in the concept of “owning” land, some cultures did believe in the concept of a gardener having control over their own plot. It was usually women who grew food, although men helped clear land and harvest.  A woman staked out her plot in various ways, with the older, higher “ranking” women having the best and largest locations.  A family or extended family worked as much ground as they could.  And other people in the community respected the boundaries of that family.
Harvests were sometimes done by the community, with people moving from one plot to the next, in a community effort.  Men and older people who didn’t participate in other parts of the growing often helped in the vital harvest tasks. This is a practice many agricultural communities around the world follow.  Agriculture does lead to more cooperation among people of a community.
When the harvest came some of it almost always went to communal stores, but the rest was stored by the family growing it. When a family had a crop failure or when people could not grow their own food, it was generally shared or given from communal stores.
In some cultures, agriculture was more communal, with most women working in one large plot. Men were more involved, and the harvest considered to be for the whole community. This may have been the case in arid regions where ditch type irrigation practices require lots of labor.
After a few years old fields became less productive and were abandoned.  If new land suitable for growing wasn’t available, the community might move.  However agricultural societies were more likely to remain in the area for decades and build more substantial homes.
If you would like to know more about Native American gardening and farming you can read the account of an elderly Native American recorded in 1918 by researcher Gilbert L. Wilson. The book is called Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden.  This 70+ year old woman describes gardening techniques and crops of the Hidatsa tribe, in the area of North Dakota.  It’s an interesting story and easy to read.  Amazon carries it.  I wrote a review of it which you can read on this page

Other Native American contributions  

The use of cotton to make fiber and cloth originated in at least two areas of the world from different species of the plant.  At around the same time use of cotton began in Pakistan and Asia, people in Peru and Mexico were also using cotton of a different species.  Cotton from the Americas was found to be superior when the species were eventually compared, and today most commercial cotton grown is derived from the American species Gossypium hirsutum.  Gossypium barbadense (Pima cotton) is another important species of cotton that originated in the Americas.
We developed several medicines from native remedies. Native Americans had a deep reverence and respect for medicinal herbs and a lot of knowledge about them. Medicine men, as Europeans called them, not only used “spiritual” remedies but were very experienced in herbal medicines. Herbs known for healing properties were traded to areas outside of where they grew naturally. Unfortunately, they had no cures for the diseases Europeans brought with them.
Native Americans also gave us tobacco and coca (cocaine), maybe a payback? Jerky making and freeze drying are food preservation techniques from the Americas.  Syringes, toboggans and snowshoes are pre-European Native American inventions.

How Native Americans gave you the Land Grant college/Extension system

Native Americans also gave us something, although not willingly, that many gardeners have utilized, the land grant college system and its Extension services, which exist in almost every county in the US.  Many of you have had soil tested, plant or insect specimens examined, had advice given to you about growing crops or ornamentals or have taken a Master Gardener course or other outreach courses through Extension. Native Americans gave up their lands so you could have these services, although they were often forced off the land or tricked off it and did not voluntarily surrender it.
Congress passed the Morrill Act in 1862.  This act gave each state land to start a state college. Colleges could build on the land or sell it to build elsewhere in the state. They had to give back to the state certain services like low cost college tuition for residents, and outreach to the communities to share research findings about agricultural practices and other science-based knowledge. These land grant colleges now provide a host of programs and services to residents of the states they are in.  Some of the most well-known services are the Extension service and the 4-H programs.
So, where did Congress get this land they so magnificently gave to the states?  By this time in history large tracts of vacant land existed mostly in places west of the Mississippi, unless you counted land in Indian reservations, which it seems, didn’t count as occupied. So, Congress gave away treaty lands.
For example, Michigan State University was one of the first land grant colleges. Congress gave it land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw to the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples near the Red River in Michigan. Native people were still living on the land when the college held its first classes. This is an example of what happened across the US, lands known as reservations or held by treaty were just simply given away to be used or sold by state colleges. 
In states in the northeast where there wasn’t enough land not owned by white settlers, the land grant was fulfilled by giving those states land in the west, often reservation land. The land could be sold to provide funds to build a college in the eastern state. The fact that this land was often part of reservations ceded in treaties to Native Americans concerned few people, other than Native Americans, who by now, had pretty much lost any ability to fight back.
In recent years Michigan State and a few other land grant colleges have acknowledged the sacrifices and indignities Native Americans suffered when Michigan State University was built.  You can read a statement drafted in November 2018 called the land acknowledgement statement here;

In the statement MSU pledges to “affirm Indigenous sovereignty and hold Michigan State University accountable to the needs of American Indian and Indigenous peoples.”  Let’s hope we keep those promises better than our ancestors kept their promises to indigenous people.

Three sister’s soup

In keeping with this week’s theme, I am going to post a Native American recipe that’s been modernized a bit.  It’s a good meal for a cold wintry day.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced.
1 cup yellow corn kernels, canned or frozen
1 cup white beans, cooked
1 teaspoon curry powder
½ teaspoon salt- or to taste
¼ teaspoon ground coriander
1⁄8 teaspoon crushed red pepper
2 cups of cooked and pureed pumpkin or butternut or acorn squash.  Do not use pumpkin pie filling.

Directions

Melt the butter in a large pot and sauté the onion and garlic until soft.
Add the spices, beans, corn and stock.
Bring the pot to a boil then reduce to simmer and simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the pumpkin or squash, stir well.  Simmer 5 minutes.  Makes roughly 4 servings.
Serve with your favorite cornbread.

“The soldiers did go away and their towns were torn down; and in the Moon of Falling Leaves (November), they made a treaty with Red Cloud that said our country would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow.”
-Black Elk-


Kim Willis
All parts of this blog are copyrighted and may not be used without permission.

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