Native Foods

Native American Foods

Take only what you need and leave the land as you found it.

-- Apache

Southwestern Native American farmers produced a great variety of food despite the region’s marginal growing conditions. After centuries of environmental destruction, cultural change, and land transfers, these farming systems have survived—but just barley. As late as 1925, the Tohono O” odham people cultivated 10,000 acres in Southern Arizona with traditional floodwater methods. Today, only a few scattered plots remain. For one tribe living near the Grand Canyon, the process has reached its logical and devastating conclusion; all crop varieties have been lost. Visit our Native Vegetable Seeds for more information. These desert plants are drought tolerant, and many of the crops are resistant to rust, insects, chemicals, and other stresses.

Many of the wonderful ethnic native foods on this web site are organic and made by the indigenous native tribes. Ancient recipes used for thousands of years in the desert-valleys.