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Indigenous New England Foodways

Indigenous

⚠ PRESENT TENSE, NOT PAST. The WAMPANOAG (Mashpee and Aquinnah, both federally recognised), NARRAGANSETT, NIPMUC, MOHEGAN, MASHANTUCKET PEQUOT, ABENAKI, PENOBSCOT, PASSAMAQUODDY, MALISEET and MI’KMAQ are living nations, and several run their own food-sovereignty programmes. Documented foodways: the THREE SISTERS grown together — maize, beans and squash, the beans fixing nitrogen and climbing the corn, the squash shading out weeds — plus sunflower, Jerusalem artichoke, cranberry, blueberry, nuts, MAPLE tapping, and an enormous coastal harvest of quahog, soft-shell clam, oyster, lobster, striped bass, alewife and eel, with SHELL MIDDENS as the archaeological record. NASAUMP, the corn porridge; SUCCOTASH, from a Narragansett word; the clam roast in a seaweed-covered pit that is the clambake’s ancestor. ⚠ THE THANKSGIVING STORY IS NOT RECORDED HERE AS HISTORY, and the Wampanoag observe a National Day of Mourning on that day.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Wampanoag community documented
  • Narragansett community documented
  • Nipmuc community documented
  • Mohegan community documented
  • Pequot community documented
  • Abenaki community documented
  • Penobscot community documented
  • Passamaquoddy community documented

Languages: Wampanoag, Western Abenaki, Mohegan-Montauk-Narragansett, Malecite-Passamaquoddy, Mi'kmaq

What is recorded

  • The Wampanoag, Narragansett, Nipmuc, Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Mi’kmaq are recorded as living nations, several operating food-sovereignty programmes. Three-sisters intercropping of maize, beans and squash is documented, as are shell middens evidencing large-scale coastal harvesting. Succotash derives from a Narragansett word. Epidemics of 1616-19 killed a large proportion of the coastal Indigenous population immediately before English settlement. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to First Nations Foodways documented

    The Wabanaki — Abenaki, Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, Mi’kmaq — live on both sides of a border drawn across their territory.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • originates from New England Maritime Foodways documented

    The clambake descends from the documented Indigenous practice of roasting shellfish in a stone-lined pit under seaweed.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.