What types of food did Native Americans eat?

One of the most interesting things about the Native Americans is their ability to live alongside nature without trying to conquer it. They didn’t hunt species to extinction just to get rich like the settlers they encountered did, but instead managed to live peacefully alongside nature while thriving from doing so.

Its estimated that over half of the most commonly eaten foods around the world originated in the Americas which were already well established by the time people first made it to the north of the continent, which is estimated to be between 12,000 and 15,000 years ago when there was a land bridge connected to Asia.

The native plants and animals of North America would have provided one of the best food sources in the world for ancient tribes, giving an excellent selection of meats, fruit and vegetables that thrive in the forgiving climates of North America.

Native American tribes didn’t have their own written language so getting hold of ancient texts that detail past recipes is simply impossible, but we do know which of their foods were native to the north of the continent and what they would have had as an option to eat. Here’s a selection of foods native to North America that were farmed and collected by various tribes.

Vegetables
Jerusalem artichoke
Pinto, Kidney, Cranberry and navy beans
pumpkin
butternut squash
marrows and courgette

fruits
black raspberry
blueberry
cranberry
grapes

grain and nuts
wild rice
maize
walnuts
pecan
sunflower

meats
bison
turkey
wild pigs and boar
bear
wild horse
game animals (Hare, Rabbits, squirrel, birds etc..)
fish and seafood

other foods and flavourings
maple syrup, wild mint, tarragon, juniper, wild onion

The above foods are all known to be native to North America, but it’s very possible that over the years a variety of foods managed to make their way up from central and South America, such as the potato, peppers and a huge variety of spices. One major point about their diet was that it was very heavily meat based, with the bison being the animal they hunted the most.

(This is jeremy the bison, and he’ll provide about 250 lbs of meat and around 50 lbs of fat)

As well as providing a massive amount of meat, fat and leather, the bison was also one of the reasons that many tribes made it through the winter. Their herds would often migrate too far away for a tribe to keep travelling to whenever they needed meat, so they invented a way to preserve it. This method of bison meat preservation was called pemmican, and it was so successful that it became the most commonly traded item with the settlers during the early years of colonization, and is widely known as the ultimate survival food.

Pemmican is made by removing all the fat from the meat before slicing it as thinly as possible. The meat is then dried on a rack to remove all the moisture before being ground into a powder, at which point it’s mixed in a 50/50 ratio with rendered fat from the same animal. It turns into a thick putty which is then formed into bars and kept in airtight containers. When made and stored properly, pemmican can be safe to eat for years and provides a huge amount of calories and energy, perfect for making it through the winter months.

(freshly made pemmican bars, they may not taste great on their own but they more than make up for it in calories and energy)

Before winter came, a huge hunting expedition would take place to secure enough meat for the coming months, and entire bison would be turned into pemmican and sown up in a piece of leather made from the same animal. These huge sacks of meat would be opened one by one to avoid spoilage after it made contact with the air, and shared out amongst the whole tribe. Corn was one of the few crops they farmed in large quantities as it could be dried and would safely last through the whole winter, with dried beans of various types coming in at a close second.

There were many other foods eaten by the native people of North America, but like many ancient people they relied very heavily on hunting and fishing to provide the bulk of their food, mostly because growing crops wasn’t always guaranteed when there was no way to protect them from crop pests and diseases.