Choctaws: The True Master Gardeners

This is something you might use in the blog, and it is very close to my heart because I am half or more Choctaw Indian and I have been a vegetarian for 31 years.

Choctaws: The true master gardeners. Among my own people, the Choctaw Indians of Mississippi and Oklahoma, vegetables are the traditional diet mainstay. A French manuscript of the eighteenth century describes the Choctaws’ vegetarian leanings in shelter and food. The homes were constructed not of skins, but of wood, mud, bark and cane. The principal food, eaten daily from earthen pots, was a vegetarian stew containing corn, pumpkin and beans. The bread was made from corm and acorns. Other common favorites were roasted corn and corn porridge. The rich lands of the Choctaws in present-day Mississippi were so greatly coveted by nineteenth century Americans that most of the tribe was forcibly removed to what is now called Oklahoma. Oklahoma was chosen both because it was largely uninhabited and because several explorations of the territory had deemed the land barren and useless for any purpose. Although many Choctaws suffered and died during removal on the infamous “Trail of Tears “. Those that survived, survived with their agricultural genius intact. George Catlin, the famous nineteenth century Indian historian, described the Choctaw lands of southern Oklahoma in the 1840’s this way: “… the ground was almost literally covered with vines, producing the greatest profusion of delicious grapes,…and ganging in such endless clusters…our progress was oftentimes completely arrested by hundreds of acres of small plum trees…every bush that was in sight was so loaded with the weight of its…fruit, that they were in many instances literally without leaves on their branches, and quite bent to the ground… and beds of wild currants, gooseberries, and (edible) prickly pear.” (Many of the “wild” foods Anglo explorers encountered on their journeys were actually carefully cultivated by Indians.)Their sweetest treat, of course: melons, a never-ending supply. More tribes were like the Choctaws than were different. Aztec, Mayan, and Zapotec children in olden times ate 100%vegetarian diets until at least the age of ten years old. Such a diet was believed to make the child strong and disease resistant. The Spaniards were amazed to discover that these Indians had twice the life-span they did. Nearly half of all the plant foods grown in the world today were first cultivated by the American Indians, and were unknown elsewhere until the discovery of the Americas. Many history textbooks tell the story of Squanto, a Pawtuxent Indian who lived in the early 1600’s. Squanto is famous for having saved the pilgrims from starvation. He showed them how to father wilderness foods and how to plant corn. There have been thousands of squantos since, even though their names are not so well-known. In fact modern day agriculture owes its heart and soul to Indian-taught methods of seed development, hybridization, planting, growing, irrigating, storing, utilizing and cooking. Choctaws believe the Great Spirit resides within the sun, for it is the sun that allows the corn to grow!
Thanks so much Jerry for sharing with us. www.ionxchange.com

Jerry Hinton of the Natural Gait.
Source: Vegetarian journal
Jerry Hinton, ManagerThe Natural Gaiit
877-776-2208 563-419-3938
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