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LAND FROM the THE INDIGENOUS FOODS OF ST. LOUIS
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The culinary history of the St. Louis area began long before the French se led here in the 1700s. It started thousands of years ago with the land’s Indigenous peoples. They hunted for deer, gathered nuts and fruits and grew corn and squash. Still today, Native Americans from the Midwest continue to cook with these foodstuffs to nourish their communities.
Rooted in the Earth
To understand what Indigenous communities in the St. Louis area ate and why, there’s no be er place to start than the archaeological record. Julie Zimmermann, an anthropology professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, explains that Native peoples from the region ate a lot of deer and nuts roughly 8,000 years ago. They began to domesticate plants about 4,000 years later. One of the most important plants – Chenopodium berlandieri, commonly known today as goosefoot – is similar to present-day quinoa. Although other Indigenous groups typically used beans as a key source of protein, Zimmermann explains, Native Americans in the St. Louis area used Chenopodium berlandieri as a critical ingredient for this nutrient.
Other vital domesticated crops included sunflowers, squash and sumpweed (a spiky herb with an edible seed). These crops helped form what academics call the Eastern Agricultural Complex. In 900 A.D. – about 1,100 years ago – the EAC was a critical source of food. Maize was first introduced around this time. “I would make the argument that Cahokia [Mounds] would not have been possible without corn,” Zimmerman says. This cheap, readily available carbohydrate helped sustain the large population that developed at the Illinois se lement.
A er the decline of Cahokia Mounds around the 13th century, the Oneota (who evidence suggests were bison hunters) and Illini peoples se led in the same area. On the Missouri side of the river, the Osage moved to this area in the same time frame. Other important Missouri foods Indigenous people ate included pawpaws, persimmons, sumac and yonkapin (wild lotus root).
Sunflower
