Opinion

Delphine Red Shirt: Our Indian contributions to medicine and food

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Delphine Red Shirt. Photo by Rich Luhr / Flickr

How many medicines and crops have Indians contributed to America?
By Delphine Red Shirt

I ask my students in my Introduction to Native American History what are these contributions? So, here is what I have them fill out. I ask them to match a letter to each of the numbers below:

1. Abacus (A.D. 900-1000)
2. Anesthetics (ca. 1000 B.C.)
3. American history, recorded (ca. 31 B.C.)
4. Antibiotic medications (pre-contact)
5. Aspirin

Foods
6. Beans
7. Corn
8. Avocado
9. Chocolate
10. Potato (8000 B.C.)

Descriptions
a.) Salicylic acid or salicin is a chemical substance that is found in the bark of the American black willow, also known as the pussy willow or the catkin willow. When the human body breaks down salicin, it produces salicylic acid, the main ingredient in this medicine. American Indians used black willow long before contact with Europeans (i.e. Penobscot, Mohegan & Canadian tribes).

b.) This instrument made from maize kernels instead of beads, threaded on strings was used by the Aztec and Maya who lived in Mesoamerican to perform mathematical calculations. Archaeologists have dated the presence of such counters to A.D. 900-1000. A tray with compartments that were arranged in rows in which counters were moved in order to make calculations was used by the Inca in Peru in about A.D. 1000.

c.) Careful seed selection enabled southwestern farmers to develop bush varieties that unlike the twining kind did not compete for water with other plants. Between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100, the Hohokam who lived in what is now Arizona began growing the more commonly known variety (high yield and drought-resistant). In the Ohio Valley they were grown A.D. 800; in the northern plains of the United States around A.D. 1000. The Maya (1500 B.C.) cooked them with chili peppers accompanied by corn tortillas.