2 Northeastern United States and Canada

The climate of the northeastern United States and Canada ranges from gentle to severe. For every tribe, the cycle of the seasons offered different ingredients for their diets. In this cycle, most tribes hunted game in the winter, harvested maple sugar in the spring, fished and gathered wild foods in the summer, and harvested their own crops in autumn.

In the northernmost region, in Maine and Canada, native peoples were forest hunters and fishermen, but they also harvested maple sugar. In the southern area, south of Maine, tribes depended on agriculture for food. Like other tribes, the staple foods were corn, squash, and beans. The seeds of these crops had slowly made their way up from Mexico along trade routes.

This journey of seeds is reflected in the oral traditions of some tribes. For example, the Narragansett tribe of Rhode Island told this story about where corn came from: Crow brought them a grain of corn in one ear and a bean in the other. These seeds came from the great god Kautantowits. He had a field in the Southwest, from where all corn and beans came.

Archeological evidence shows that the cultivation of corn and beans is at least 1,000 years old in southern New England. By the time the first colonial settlers from Europe arrived, the Northeastern tribes were skilled farmers. In fact, the “Three Sisters”—corn, beans, and squash—fed the first colonial settlers who came from England. They would have starved to death if the native peoples had not saved them. These tribes showed the colonists how to grow and prepare these unfamiliar foods.

Making sure that there was enough food for the tribe was a huge undertaking, one in which men and women had specific tasks. In Northeastern tribes, women were the gardeners, and many of them became strong tribal leaders because they performed such an important job. In fact, women were the ones who owned the fields and crops. They decided when the crops would be harvested and organized groups of families to travel to the fields for harvest.

Men were expected to hunt. They hunted deer, bear, moose, and wild birds in the forests and marshlands. They fished in lakes and rivers and, in coastal regions, gathered shellfish.

Men and women both worked to gather wild foods, such as seeds, berries, and tubers. A wild food important to Northeastern tribes was cranberries. These berries were not just food, however; they could heal some internal and external ailments.

Northeastern tribes also harvested maple sugar and syrup. They used it not only as a sweetener, but also as a preservative. Maple syrup could be added to wild berries, roots, nuts, vegetables, and game dishes. Maple sugar was also mixed with parched corn, and Indians carried this mixture in small leather pouches while traveling.

This page from a 16th-century French manuscript depicts an Indian roasting or smoking fish and meat. Though exact recipes have for the most part been lost, much is known generally about the way Native Americans prepared food.

Varieties of clams were a staple food for many coastal tribes, which made seasonal migrations to harvest shellfish. European settlers in New England found huge mounds of clamshells, evidence of these migrations.

Food was stored in cache pits or houses. Cache pits were deep holes in the ground lined with grass and bark to keep corn and seeds dry. When full, the pit was covered and hidden so enemies couldn’t find the tribe’s food supply. In the rafters and ceilings of houses, tribes stored pumpkins and squash that had been cut into strips and dried. Beans were stored in clay jars. After a good harvest season, Northeastern tribes could depend on their stored food to last through the winter and into the spring.

No cookbook exists that could tell us exactly how the tribes of the Northeast prepared the foods they grew, hunted, and gathered. However, we know what they ate and how they prepared it from the records of the earliest colonial settlers. Also, some recipes have been passed down within each tribe from mother to daughter for generation upon generation.

Modern Americans would feel right at home eating much of the fish and shellfish that the coastal tribes ate. Shellfish were eaten raw, steamed, smoked, or dried. Fish might have been baked in hot coals or roasted over flames. Other than turkey, most of the game that the Northeastern tribes hunted, such as deer, bear, and moose, probably wouldn’t taste familiar to us today. However, the method for cooking the meat wouldn’t seem strange. Sometimes, meat was roasted over an open fire on a twisted string that rotated as it unwound, like a rotisserie grill. The meat and fish of Northeastern tribes tended to be mildly seasoned with wild herbs or maple syrup.

Many traditional recipes were shared with European settlers and passed down to modern times. Succotash, called ogonsaganonda by the Iroquois, is a mixture of corn, squash, and beans. Another food eaten for generations by Native Americans and European settlers alike was johnnycakes. The Narragansett people of Rhode Island called johnnycakes no-ke-chick. They used a thin batter of cornmeal, which was poured onto a hot soapstone slab. Today’s version is cooked like pancakes on a hot griddle. Almost every region of the New World where corn is eaten has its own version of this flat corn bread, although it is called many different names.

European settlers arrived in the Northeast in great numbers during the 17th and 18th centuries. They expected Native Americans to share much more than their food and knowledge. Tribes were pressured to give up their traditional farmlands through both negotiation and outright war. This loss of land for farming caused many hardships. Tribes who struggled to live peacefully alongside the European settlers often had to leave the homelands of their ancestors. If they stayed, treaties left them with rocky soil unfit for growing food.

By the 19th century, the tribes of the Northeast had lost nearly all of their traditional lands. What was left of many tribes had moved further west, joining with tribes of the Great Lakes region. But some native peoples stayed on in their homelands, adapting to life among the European colonists. Fortunately, their traditional foods did not disappear.

Native Americans take surplus fruit and vegetables to a village storehouse in this 1591 engraving. The storehouse is located along a riverbank so that its contents will stay cool. In the colder climate of the Northeast, tribes dug cache pits to store the extra food they gathered during the summer months.

Native recipes evolved to include the foods that Europeans had brought with them. To ancient recipes, native and white cooks added ingredients from livestock—including pork, dairy products, and lard. What were once Native American preparations are now considered classic American dishes. Barbecues, clambakes, chowders, and cornbread were all once part of the Native American menu, prepared from foods gathered and harvested in the Northeast.

Northeastern natives also gathered and ate the Jerusalem artichoke, an important tuber that is not often eaten today. Also known as “sunchokes,” these nutritious tubers taste a bit like potatoes, water chestnuts, or carrots. §

During the Green Corn Ceremony, held each summer, Native Americans danced and gave thanks for their food. For the Creek Indians and other tribes of the Southeast, green corn also symbolized a fresh start.