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The Ethnobotany 495
beans cultivated by the Timucua in northeastern
Florida in 1562.
Earlier explorers also found beans farther north
(Hedrick 1919). Florentine navigator Giovanni da
Verrazzano (alias John Verazanno) (1485 /1528) found
them among the indigenous people of NorumBega,
Maine, in 1524. As the first European visitor to the
New England coast, he had never before seen kidney
beans. He wrote of the people, presumably the
Pequod, ‘‘Their ordinarie food is of pulse, whereof
they have great store, differing in colour and taste
from ours, of good and pleasant taste.’’ Later, Jacques
Cartier found beans ‘‘of every color’’ among the
Hurons at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River of
Quebec in 1535.
In the same region, Samuel de Champlain (1567 /
1635) found the Abenaki of the Kennebec River on
southern Maine eating multicolored beans in 1605,
and Capt. John Smith (1580 /1631) knew them among
the New England tribes in 1614 when the Pilgrims first
landed. Before 1670, John Josselyn wrote of ‘‘French
beans: or rather, American beans. The herbalists call
them kidney-beans from their shape and effects: for
they strengthen the kidneys. They are variegated
much, some being bigger, a great deal, than others;
some white, black, red, yellow, blue, spotted’’ (Hedrick
1919).
Harriot ([1590] 1972) wrote of North Carolina that
the okindgier was ‘‘called by vs beanes, because of in
greatnesse and partly shape they are like to the Beanes
in England, sauing that they are flatter, of more divers
colours, and some pide. The leafe also of the stemme is
much different. In taste they are altogether as good as
our English peaze.’’
Beans are documented as grown for food among
the Abenaki, Algonquin, Apache, Aztecs, Cherokee,
Choctaw, Creek, Delaware, Havasupai, Huron, Iroquois,
Menomin, Navajo, Ojibwa, Onondaga, Papago,
Pequod, Potawatomi, Santee, Seminoles, Sia, Tewa,
Tuscarora, and Zuni (Romans [1775] 1961, Bartram
1719, Hedrick 1919, Smith 1933, Swanton 1946,
Berkeley and Berkeley 1982, Moerman 1998). All the
agricultural tribes in the eastern United States surely
made use of them.
Harriot ([1590] 1972) wrote that the people of
Virginia cooked corn and beans together to ‘‘make
them victuall either by boyling them all to pieces into a
broth; or boiling them whole vntill they bee soft and
beginne to breake as is vsed in England, eyther by
themselues or mixtly together: Sometime they mingle
of the wheate with them. Sometime also beeing whole
sodden, they bruse or pound them in a morter, &
therof make loaues of lumps of dowishe bread, which
they vse to eat for varietie.’’ Romans ([1775] 1961)
found the Choctaw doing much the same by boiling
corn and beans together, and calling it holhponi. We
now call this mixture ‘‘succotash’’ (an Algonquian
word akin to Narraganset msekwatas; in use by 1751).
Capt. John Smith recorded for Virginia a dish of
unripened corn, roasted in hot ashes, and eaten boiled
with beans during the winter. He called it pausarowmena
or pausarawmena. Le Page Du Pratz found the
Natchez in 1758 cooking corn bread with beans, a dish
they called co oëdlou (Swanton 1946).
The Caddo of southwestern Arkansas, northwestern
Louisiana, and adjacent Texas had a unique bean
dish. Henri de Joutel wrote about 1615 that they ‘‘do
not make much mystery in preparation of them.’’
These people cooked them in a big pot without any
preparation and kept them covered with leaves until
they were almost done. Then, they poured warm,
salted water over them before serving. Those eating the
pods were expected to eat strings, stems, and other
parts or remove the pieces they did not want (Swanton
1946). This tribe was also unusual in salting their food.
By the time Bartram ([1791] 1958) was among the
Seminoles of northern Florida in the 1770s, he found
them growing ‘‘beans’’ (Phaseolus). They were also
growing what he called ‘‘pease,’’ the introduced cowpea,
Vigna unguiculata. Indeed, along with native
produce, Bartram recorded a number of other introduced
plants among these villagers.
At Palatka (from Creek pilotaikita, crossing), in
what is now Putnam County, Florida, Bartram visited
a Seminole garden. The field was planted ‘‘chiefly with
corn (Zea), Batatas [Ipomoea batatas], Beans [Phaseolus
vulgaris], Pompions [Cucurbita pepo], Squashes
(Cucurbita verrucosa) [C. pepo], Melons (Cucurbita
citrullus) [Citrullus lanatus], Tobacco (Nicotiana) &c.
are abundantly sufficient for the inhabitants of the
village.’’ At the same village he later wrote, ‘‘The fields
surrounding the town and groves were plentifully
stored with’’ exotic crops including peas (Vigna
unguiculata), potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), peaches
(Prunus persica), figs (Ficus cairica), and oranges
(Citrus sinensis).
Later Bartram visited Cuscowilla (taska, warrior,
weli, plunderer, Choctaw), near the northwestern
corner of Tuscawilla Lake, and east of the present
Micanopy, Alachua County, close to the Alachua
savanna. There the Seminoles planted, ‘‘but little here
about the town, only a small garden spot at each
habitation, consisting of a little Corn, Beans, Tobacco,
Citruls [Citrullus lanatus], &c.’’ Instead, they had their
major crops elsewhere.
Bartram also described an extensive maize field
near Cowee (a Cherokee town formerly on the Little
Tennessee River, Macon County, NC). He rode ‘‘near
two miles through Indian plantations of Corn, which
was well cultivated, kept clean of weeds and was well