Indians Rise
Blog Post 1
April 13th, 2015
By: Kendra Boub
Native Americans were in America before any other "Americans". I'm interested in this culture because I, myself, have some Cherokee Indian in me. I hope to learn about how the Native American culture and cuisine impacted the United States today. I also hope to learn about how and what these people cooked in the different parts of the United States. Native American culture is unlike most cultures in the sense that the food varies from place to place. They lived in all corners of the United States; from the coast, to the mountains, to the grasslands, to the desert. American Indians lived off the land no matter what type of ecosystem they were in. If the Native Americans never lived, the United States we know today would cease to exist. This is because the Natives were responsible for saving the new immigrants from starving to death. Native Americans traded shares of crops in return for modern weapons and tools. Even though the Native Americans saved the new immigrants, it didn't stop the newcomers from kicking the Natives out of their own homes and land. Most of you know the Trail of Tears, where the United States government forced the tribes to walk to a land hundreds of miles away. The Trail of Tears killed thousands of Indians, some even consider this event in history a genocide.
Since I am roughly 15% Cherokee Indian I'm going to focus on that tribe for the duration of this project. Overall, The United States has an astounding 560 federally recognized Native American tribes ("Native American Indians.") Cherokee is but only one of them. Like most Indian tribes, Cherokee focus on a diet of fruits and vegetables. The Cherokee Nation says that the most basic of foods on a table were, " wild meats, corn and bean bread, pumpkins and dried fruit. At that time fruit was plentiful in the woods, but fruit jars were not known so most of the fruit was dried." So no wonder why most of them were thin. They ate so healthy!
- How the Elders Cooked." How the Elders Cooked. Cherokee Nation, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.<http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/Culture/CookBook/HowtheEldersCooked.aspx>.
- "Native American Indians." The History of Native Americas. Indians.org, n.d. Web. 13 Apr. 2015. <http://www.indians.org/articles/native-american-indians.html>
It is so cool that you choose to look into the Native American food culture since you have that in your heritage. I am also a very small percent Pottawatomie Indian so I also find your food culture choice very interesting. As a citizen of the United States of America I never considered how the Native Americans food would have an affect on us. I also never really even considered the Native Americans having their own food culture. I think this is a very interesting food culture to research and learn about. I think it is a very important one to learn especially with the effect it had on America.
ReplyDelete