Gifts From The Native Americans

       How many know of the important gifts that the Native American gave to us? We have received gifts of food, medicines, building materials, games, and cities! This sounds a little strange, doesn't it? But what would we do without corn, cotton, rubber, and potatoes? These are all plants that were cultivated by the Indians for thousands of years before the Europeans discovered the New World.

Native Americans introduced modern Americans
 to so many foods, medicines and inventions!

       Most American dinners include the Irish potato, either mashed, fried, or baked. The potato is not Irish at all. It was cultivated for ages by South American indigenous people. In the early 1500's the potato was taken to Spain, and from there it spread to Italy and Belgium. It finally got to Ireland, where the climate, soil, and rainfall helped potato breeders to develop the large potato that we use today.
       Corn is another important native food. Methods of planting, tending, harvesting, and preserving corn, which had been developed over many hundreds of years by native people, were copied by the Europeans who came to live in the New World. In addition to corn, many other foods that we eat are really native foods: lima beans, kidney beans, cranberries, strawberries, maple sugar, pumpkins, squashes, and peanuts.
       Tobacco was cultivated by the natives for so long that to them it was almost a sacred plant and was used mainly in religious ceremonies and important meetings. In Europe tobacco was first used as a medicine. This medicine however, was thought to be too pleasant to use only when one was sick. Before long, tobacco was smoked only for pleasure.
       The early settlers used a number of native medicines. Some of the natives remedies were good and others were not. Certain South American natives, for example, chewed the leaves of the coca plant to relieve pain. The modern pain-relieving drug cocaine, which is not used much any more, comes from this plant. Quinine, cascara, and witch hazel are Indian medicines. Surprisingly enough, curare, which was originally a South American arrow poison, is now used as a kind of medicine.
       The Native Americans not only gave us foods and medicines but they also gave us some of our most popular sports. Did you ever stop to think of the number of sports or games that started with indigenous people? How about canoeing, tobogganing, and lacrosse? Other things that we received from the natives are moccasins, snowshoes, and hammocks.
       Two of our most important everyday products were obtained from the natives‚ rubber and cotton. As early as 1520 the Spanish Conquistadores found Indians bouncing rubber balls in the courtyards of Mexico City. Cotton was a plant cultivated in both the New World and Old World, but an American  cotton forms the largest part of the world's supply.
       It was mainly because of natives that certain large cities such as Detroit, Pittsburgh, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City had their beginnings. Indigenous people did a lot of traveling. Their trails crisscrossed the length and width of North America. Some Indian trails led to good camp sites or to hunting and fishing grounds. They followed the easiest routes over and through the mountains and through the safest waterways. Certain trading posts that were located on these trails eventually grew into cities. Many of our towns and villages in the United States have Indian names and so do many of our states. A few such Indian names are Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Dakota, Nebraska, and Mississippi. Svoboda

Read more about the gifts from Native Americans:

• Cultivated Plants 
• Wild Plants
• Nuts and Berries
• Beverages
• Maple Sugar
• Seasoning
• Bark and Bast
• Medicine
• Gourds and Pumpkins and Their Uses