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Native American Cuisine




Native American cuisine includes all food practices of the native peoples of the Americas.

Information about Native American cuisine comes from a great variety of sources. Modern day native peoples retain a rich body of traditional foods, some of which have become iconic of present-day Native American social gatherings (for example, Frybread ). Foods like Cornbread are known to have been adopted into the cuisine of the United States from Native American groups. In other cases, documents from the early periods of contact with European, African, and Asian peoples allow the recovery of food practices which passed out of popularity in the historic period (for example, Black Drink ). Archaeological techniques, particularly in the subdisciplines of Zooarchaeology and Paleoethnobotany , have allowed for the understanding of other culinary practices or preferred foods which did not survive into the written historic record.


NATIVE AMERICAN CUISINE OF THE UNITED STATES

The native cuisine of the Native Americans Of The United States :
  • American Indians of the , Beans , and Squash .

  • In addition, a number of other domesticated crops were popular during some time periods in the Eastern Woodlands, including a local version of Quinoa , a variety of Amaranth , sumpweed/marsh elder, little barley, maygrass, and Sunflower .



Some known dishes



NATIVE AMERICAN CUISINE OF MESO-AMERICA

The pre- Conquest cuisine of the Native Americans of Meso-America made a major contribution to shaping modern-day Mexican Cuisine . The cultures involved included the Aztec , Maya , Olmec , and many more (see the List Of Pre-Columbian Civilizations ).


Some known dishes



NATIVE AMERICAN CUISINE OF SOUTH AMERICA

This currently includes recipes known from the Inca and Nazca of Peru.



CROPS AND INGREDIENTS

Maize , Bean s and Squash were known as the Three Sisters for their Symbiotic relationship when grown together by the North American and Meso-American natives. If the South America ns had similar methods of what is known as Companion Planting it is lost to us today.


Crops''



Hunted or livestock

  • Horse The only animal on the list introduced by Europeans, the horse was still very important to Native American cultures throughout the Americas (although famously on the North American Plains) in the historic era.

  • Squirrel Many groups had no cultural stigma against the consumption of small mammals such as squirrels.

  • Guinea Pig Domesticated in the Andes.

  • Bison A centrally important wild food and modern livestock animal.

  • Llama Domesticated in the Andes.

  • Guanaco Hunted in Southamerica by hunter-gatherer societies, for ex. in Patagonia until the 19th century.

  • Turkey Domesticated at least once in Mexico.

  • Sloth , extinct

  • Wooly Mammoth , extinct



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