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THANKS TO THE INDIANS 



By Kathy Hart 



Americans owe much to the native 

 inhabitants whom Christopher 

 Columbus mistakenly called "Indi- 

 ans." 



Had it not been for the complex 

 agricultural methods 

 developed by the Native 

 Americans, many of the 

 very foods that grace 

 our tables and fill our 

 bellies would not exist. 



European crops 

 simply would not grow 

 in the new soils of the 

 Americas. Oh sure, 

 some would have 

 eventually adapted, but 

 by then thousands of 

 colonists would have 

 starved. 



Instead, the Indians 

 shared their foods and 

 their agricultural 

 knowledge with their 

 invaders. Such sharing 

 brought new food to the 

 table and new farming 

 methods to the fields. 



Native Americans 

 introduced the colonists 

 to com. Without this 

 staple, the South would 

 have been breadless 

 because our climate was 

 simply too wet and 

 humid for European 

 wheat to grow. 



Com was also easier for colonial 

 cooks to use. It was easy to grind, and 

 it was far easier and much faster to 

 make cornmeal into com bread than it 

 was to make flour into bread. Wheat 

 flour required a leavening ingredient 

 — in this case yeast, because baking 



powder was unavailable until after the 

 Civil War. 



This Indian favorite is still a 

 favorite today, especially in the 

 South, where as late as the 1930s the 

 average Southern family consumed 



500 pounds of cornmeal a year. 



Other vegetables introduced by 

 Native Americans included pump- 

 kins, various kinds of beans, squash, 

 melons, sweet potatoes and tomatoes. 

 Where would we be today without 

 pumpkins at Halloween, tomato 



sandwiches for lunch and a cold slice 

 of watermelon on a hot summer day? 



North Carolina's prime cash crop, 

 tobacco, was first cultivated by the 

 Indians. Native Americans taught the 

 colonists how to raise the leafy plant, 

 dry it and, most 

 importantly, how to 

 smoke it using pipes. 



Aside from food- 

 stuffs, Native Ameri- 

 cans also influenced 

 our socio-political 

 structure. The framers 

 of the U.S. Constitu- 

 tion, impressed with the 

 political structure of the 

 Iroquoians, sought 

 advice from these 

 Native Americans. The 

 Bill of Rights, which 

 limits the absolute 

 power of the govern- 

 ment and ensures 

 individual freedoms, 

 was based on the 

 Iroquoian belief of 

 personal liberty. 



Native American 

 words pepper our 

 language and mark 

 places on our maps. 

 The word "pocosin," 

 for instance, is an 

 Algonkian word. 

 Likewise, Hatteras, 

 Manteo, Wanchese and 

 Roanoke Island bear 

 Indian names. So do rivers such as the 

 Chowan, the Neuse and the Pamlico. 



Now these things that were once 

 Indian are so much a part of American 

 culture that we don't stop to think of 

 their origins. But we should, and we 

 should be thankful. □ 



COASTWATCH 7 



