Had Indigenous America not existed, the Irish would lack potatoes and the Italians would be without tomatoes. Think of the tomato topping your pasta, the chili spicing Thai curry, the potatoes in fish-and-chips. A large share of what we label ‘traditional’ world cuisine traces its roots to native American crops grown millennia ago today.
The Magic Eight
Eight ingredients—corn, beans, squash, chili, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao—existed nowhere else before Columbus arrived in the Western Hemisphere. Chef, historian, and cultural anthropologist Lois Ellen Frank says the absence of these items would have changed European and Asian diets forever.
“If we deconstruct that, the Italians did not have the tomato, the Irish did not have the potato, and half the British national dish did not exist,” Frank says. “Russians didn’t have the potato, and thus no vodka; there were no chilies in Asia, and no chilies in any East Indian curries.”
Without these staples, iconic dishes would not exist. No fish and chips. No pasta puttanesca. A papaya salad would lack its spicy kick.
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Frank leads a cooking class in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She and her Diné colleague Walter Whitewater demonstrate how to bake trout in clay, stuff it with sage and grilled onions, and wrap it in smoked applewood bacon. The side dishes include wild rice sauté and a smoky guajillo chile sauce.
Whitewater speaks rarely but makes a strong impression. “Food is our medicine,” he tells the class.
Frank and Whitewater work through the day’s preparations. They serve the trout with rainbow chard and a corn pudding and berry compote for dessert. The experience goes beyond a cooking lesson, offering a look at how Indigenous people view their relationship with food.
The history of these ingredients spans three periods, according to Frank: Pre-Contact, First Contact, and the Government Issue period. The last era covers the time when U.S. westward expansion and government-issued food supplies disrupted Indigenous eating habits.
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The consequences of this disruption are visible today. Frank, a descendant of the Kiowa Indian Tribe of Oklahoma, describes a worrying trend in her community. Children are told, not if they will get diabetes, but when.
Frank believes reconnecting people with traditional foodways can help reverse this health crisis. Her book, Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations, documents these traditions. At her Santa Fe catering company, Red Mesa Cuisine, she uses ancestral ingredients like hand-harvested prickly pears and traditional techniques such as clay baking.
Reconnecting with the Past
Frank points to fry bread as a specific example of this history. The bread is a flat dough that is deep-fried. It became a staple after the Government Issue period. It is made from flour and other government-issued ingredients. It is fried in oil. The food is a symbol of resilience. It also shows the conditions that created it.