Food, farming, and Native knowledge

Lesson plan

3 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Planting maize

   1. 5 minutes: Read the encyclopedia article on maize, linked from the unit page.
   2. 15 minutes: Half the class reads Maize and Cassava Bread (Oviedo), passages 4.1–4.2, on Hispaniola. Half reads Maize, Markets and Books in Yucatán (Landa), passages 23.3–23.5, on the Maya. Each half lists the steps of planting and who did the work.
   3. 10 minutes: Pairs compare the two lists. What do the writers describe in the same way, and what does each notice that the other does not?
   4. 15 minutes: Read the History tab of each source. Oviedo wrote from memory in Spain as a defender of the conquest; Landa wrote in Spain while his own conduct was under examination, and burned Maya books (passage 41.1). Discuss how a historian should use the farming knowledge these two men recorded.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   Cassava and the women's fields

   1. 5 minutes: Read the encyclopedia article on cassava, linked from the unit page.
   2. 15 minutes: In pairs, turn Oviedo's chapter on cassava bread (passages 5.1–5.5) into a numbered flow chart, from cutting the stems to using the juice as syrup and vinegar. Beside each step, note whether Oviedo says who did it.
   3. 15 minutes: Read Corn, Land, and the Women's Fields (Williams), passages 16.7–16.10. The Narragansett word lists can be skimmed. Students sort the farming words into the order of the farming year and note who did each job and with what tools.
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss why Williams puts his observation on land first (16.2), and what it says about English claims to Narragansett land.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   Who gets the credit

   1. 15 minutes: Read Winter at Stadacona and the Cedar Cure (Cartier), passages 17.1–17.3. Students note what Domagaya and the two women showed the French to do.
   2. 15 minutes: Read The First Winter and Squanto's Corn (Bradford), passages 8–9. Use the Connection question on Bradford's For teachers tab: how much credit does each account give to Native people, and how much to God?
   3. Extension, for groups who finish early: choose one extra source on Native food and knowledge: The Great Market of Tenochtitlan (Cortés), The Bison Plains and the People Who Follow the Herds (Castañeda), Making Manioc Flour in a Tupinambá Village (Léry), Food from the Great River, 1639 (Acuña) or Inca Storehouses and the Palaces of Tumebamba (Cieza de León). The last three are early versions.
   4. 15 minutes: Each student answers the unit question, What did Europeans learn from Native farmers, cooks, and healers, and how did they describe it?, in a paragraph that uses evidence from at least two sources and quotes one writer's own words.

Read these sources

The sources the lesson plan uses, in its order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   Maize and Cassava Bread

   Oviedo, 1525–1526. Moderate.

   Plain, step-by-step description; a few island words and old Spanish measures are explained in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   maize

   corn, the grain also called Indian corn

   cazabi

   cassava bread, a flat bread the Taíno made from the grated root of the yuca plant

   yuca

   cassava or manioc, a plant with a large starchy root; the bitter kind is poisonous until the juice is pressed out and the root is cooked

   canebrake

   a thick growth of tall cane or reeds

   cacique

   a chief; a Taíno word the Spaniards used for Indigenous leaders everywhere

   the devil

   in Christian belief, the chief evil spirit, who tempts people to sin; many Christians of the time believed he spoke to peoples who did not know Christ

   1. Comprehension How did the Indians of Española plant maize, and who guarded the fields as the ears filled?
   2. Analysis Oviedo moves from making cassava bread to the deaths of a cacique and his followers who drank the juice. How does he explain those deaths, and what other explanations does his account leave out?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Oviedo had eaten cassava and watched the bread being made, but he wrote in Spain from memory, for the emperor, while his notes were in Santo Domingo. Which parts of his account are most likely to be accurate, and which are you less sure of? Why?
   4. Connection In Maize, Markets and Books in Yucatán, Landa describes Maya farmers who burned the brush, then made holes with a pointed stick and dropped in five or six grains of maize. Compare his description with Oviedo's on Española. What do the two writers describe in the same way, what does each notice that the other does not, and what might explain the likeness?

   Activity In pairs, students turn the chapter on cassava bread into a numbered flow chart, from cutting the stems to eating the finished bread and using the juice as syrup and vinegar. Beside each step they note whether Oviedo says who did it. Then they circle any sentence where he gives a judgment instead of a description, and the class discusses whose knowledge the chart records.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   Maize, Markets and Books in Yucatán

   Landa, 1566. Moderate.

   Short, plain paragraphs; needs the notes on sorcerers, cacao, and the Maya books.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   idol

   an image or statue of a god; Christian writers used the word for images of gods they did not believe in

   sorcerer

   a person believed to use magic or the help of spirits; Landa's word for Maya healers who used prayers and divination

   superstition

   a belief or practice that the writer judged false, especially in religion

   cacao

   the beans from which chocolate is made; in Yucatán they also served as money

   usury

   lending money at interest, which the medieval church condemned as a sin

   granary

   a building or place for storing grain

   1. Comprehension What did Maya traders carry to Ulua and Tabasco, and what did they bring back?
   2. Analysis Landa praises the Maya for helping one another and for lending honestly, and later says, “we burned them all,” of their books. How does he explain the burning, and what does he say about how the Maya felt?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Landa wrote in Spain in the mid-1560s, while his own conduct at Maní was being examined, and his account survives only in a later, shortened copy. How might each of these facts affect what he wrote, and what reaches us today?
   4. Connection In The Great Market of Tenochtitlan, Cortés describes a market with judges and inspectors, where goods were sold by count and measure (the notes to that source add that cacao beans served as a kind of money). Compare what Cortés and Landa choose to praise about Native trade. How might each writer's purpose shape that praise?

   Activity Students make a two-column chart: what Landa recorded or praised about Maya work, trade, and writing, and what he condemned or destroyed, using the text and the headnote. Using the chart, each student writes a short paragraph on how a historian should use a source whose writer both preserved and destroyed Maya knowledge, quoting one sentence from each column.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   Corn, Land, and the Women's Fields

   Williams, 1643. Moderate.

   The Narragansett word lists in italics can be skimmed; the observations are plain modernized English.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   heathen

   a word Christians used for people who were not Christians, Jews, or Muslims; here, the Native peoples

   prince

   Williams's word for a sachem, a Narragansett leader

   hill

   to heap soil up around the base of growing corn plants

   mortar

   a hard bowl in which food is pounded or crushed

   bushel

   an English measure for grain and other dry goods

   concord

   agreement and peace among people; its opposite is discord

   1. Comprehension According to Williams, who planted, weeded, and stored the corn, and when might a man help?
   2. Analysis Williams's first observation is about the bounds of Narragansett lands and their sales of ground. Why might he place it first, and what does it say about English claims to the land?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Williams lodged in Narragansett houses to learn their language, but he wrote in English for English readers, partly to argue a case. Which of his statements rest on what he saw, and which rest on other people's opinions?
   4. Connection In The First Winter and Squanto's Corn, Bradford says that Squanto showed the English how to plant their corn. Compare what Bradford and Williams tell us about who held the knowledge of growing corn and how it was shared. Whose work does each writer bring forward, and whose does he leave out?

   Activity Students sort the Narragansett farming words into the order of the farming year: breaking up the ground, planting, weeding, hilling, harvest, and drying. Beside each stage they note, from Williams's observations, who did the work and with what tools. The class then discusses what an English reader in 1643 would learn from the chapter, and what it shows about Williams himself.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

4. 4

   Winter at Stadacona and the Cedar Cure

   Cartier, 1536–1545. Moderate.

   A clear story with some period religious terms; the notes explain the prayers and the tree.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   mortality

   a deadly outbreak of disease, in which many people die

   scurvy

   a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C

   contagion

   the spread of disease from person to person

   Mass

   the main act of worship in the Catholic Church

   vow

   a solemn promise, here one made to God

   pilgrim

   a person who travels to a holy place as an act of faith

   calking

   hammering fiber into the seams of a ship to keep the water out

   1. Comprehension What did Domagaya and the two women show the French to do with the branches of the tree called Annedda?
   2. Analysis The writer calls the cure “a true and plain miracle” and thanks God for it, but he also tells how Domagaya and the two women taught it. How does he fit these two explanations together, and why might he tell the story of the cure this way?
   3. Analysis (reliability) The writer was with the French that winter, but his name is not known, he writes in praise of the captain, and the account was printed in 1545. Which parts of the passage could he know firsthand, and which did he learn from the people of Stadacona? How should that shape what we trust?
   4. Connection Read The Sickness That Followed the English (Harriot). Harriot reports that people began to die soon after the English left towns that had plotted against them, while none of the English died, and that some of them thought the English God was killing them. The French at Stadacona believed the sickness had passed to them from the town. Compare how each group explained where a sickness came from, and whom each account leaves to blame.

   Activity Students build a timeline of the winter from the text (the news in December, the count by the middle of February, the Mass and the vow, the captain's pretense, Domagaya's visit, the cure). On each entry they note who acted and what explanation the writer gives. They then write two captions for the cure, one in the writer's terms and one that names only what the text shows Domagaya and the women did, and compare them.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

5. 5

   The First Winter and Squanto's Corn

   Bradford, 1630–1650. Moderate.

   Modernized seventeenth-century English with long sentences; the notes explain the old calendar date.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   scurvy

   a disease of long sea voyages, from a lack of fresh food

   elder

   a leader of a church congregation, chosen to guide its members

   visitation

   a time of sickness or trouble that believers saw as sent by God

   sachem

   a Native leader or chief in southern New England

   interpreter

   a person who puts what is said in one language into another

   calamity

   a great disaster that brings suffering to many people

   1. Comprehension How many of the English were healthy at the worst time of the winter, and what did they do for the sick?
   2. Analysis Look at the six terms of the peace. Which terms bind Massasoit and his people, which bind the English, and which bind both? What does this suggest about what each side wanted?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Bradford lived through this winter, but he wrote about it some twenty years later, as the colony's governor and as a believer who saw God's hand in its survival. Another English account words two of the treaty terms differently. How should these facts shape how we use his account of the treaty and of Squanto?
   4. Connection In Winter at Stadacona and the Cedar Cure, Cartier's men are cured after Domagaya and two women of Stadacona show them a remedy from a tree. Compare how that account and Bradford's give credit for the help the Europeans got. How much credit goes to Native people, and how much to God?

   Activity Small groups each take one of the six terms of the peace and rewrite it in their own words, naming who must act and who gains. Groups report in order, and the class builds a chart of the whole treaty. Then the class decides whether the treaty, as Bradford gives it, binds both sides equally, keeping in mind that another English account words two terms differently.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

6. 6

   The Great Market of Tenochtitlan

   Cortés, 1520. Moderate.

   Long lists of goods, and comparisons with Spanish places that the notes explain.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   arcade

   a row of arches along the side of a building or square, with a covered walk behind it

   provisions

   food and other supplies

   herbalist

   someone who gathers and sells plants used as medicine

   apothecary

   a person or shop that makes and sells medicines

   maguey

   the agave plant; its sap was made into syrup and into the drink pulque

   by count and by measure

   sold by the number of items or by the size of a container, not by weight

   1. Comprehension According to Cortés, how were the goods arranged in the market, and who kept order there?
   2. Analysis Cortés compares the square to the square of Salamanca and the cotton stalls to the silk market of Granada. Why might he describe the market through Spanish places for Charles V? What can comparisons like these show, and what can they hide?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Cortés says more than sixty thousand people came to the market every day. Using the headnote, explain how his situation when he wrote, and his reasons for writing, should affect how we use this number. Is his description of how the market worked more or less trustworthy than the number, and what other evidence would help you check it?
   4. Connection Read Maize, Markets and Books in Yucatán (Landa). Landa writes that Maya traders exchanged salt, cloth and slaves for cacao and stone beads, which served as money, and that they sold on credit and paid back honorably. Compare what Cortés and Landa each admired about Native trade, and what each writer's own background led him to notice.

   Activity Groups each take one part of the market from the letter (metals, jewelry and building materials, game, herbs and medicines, food and honey, maize, fish and eggs, cotton, colors and pottery). They list every good named and sort the list into food, medicine, materials and tools, and fine goods. The class combines the lists into a labeled sketch of the market: the arcades, a street for each kind of goods, and the building Cortés says is “like a courthouse,” noting that he gives no layout. Then the class discusses what the market shows about Mexica farming and healing, and what Cortés admits he could not name.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

7. 7

   The Bison Plains and the People Who Follow the Herds

   Castañeda, 1560–1570. Moderate.

   Old measures and Spanish pack-saddle words, all explained in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   league

   an old measure for long distances over land

   bison

   large wild animals of the plains, related to cattle, which Castañeda calls “cows”

   dress hides

   to clean and prepare animal skins for use or trade

   packsaddle

   a pad or frame strapped on an animal's back for carrying loads

   ravine

   a narrow, deep valley cut by running water

   flint

   a hard stone that can be chipped to a sharp edge and used as a blade

   1. Comprehension How did the people of the plains dry and store bison meat, and how did they cook it?
   2. Analysis Castañeda says the plains peoples travel “like Arabs.” What does this comparison help his Spanish readers picture, and what might it lead them to miss about the Querechos and Teyas?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Castañeda served as a common soldier and wrote more than twenty years after the journey, from memory. He says that what he did not see, he learned by asking. Choose one detail in this passage that he most likely saw himself and one that he most likely heard from others. How does the difference affect how far you trust each one?
   4. Connection Read Maize and Cassava Bread (Oviedo). Oviedo writes that cassava bread keeps for a year or more and can be carried long distances, even at sea. Castañeda describes bison meat dried, ground and stored. Compare what each writer noticed about how Native people prepared food to keep and to travel with, and what each writer seems to have valued in it.

   Activity Students draw a simple outline of a bison and, using only the text, label each part the plains people used and how (meat, blood, gut, stomach, fat, hides). Beside it they list the tools and animals the passage names (the flint on a stick, the dogs with their packs, the tents). Each student then writes a short paragraph on what Castañeda admired in the plains people and what he found strange.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

8. 8

   Making Manioc Flour in a Tupinambá Village

   Léry, 1563–1580. Moderate.Early version

   A practical, step-by-step description; the Tupi words are in italics and explained in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   manioc

   a root crop, also called cassava; the bitter kind holds a poison that grating, drying, and cooking reduce

   grate

   to rub food against a rough surface to break it into tiny pieces

   starch

   a white powder made from wheat or other plants; Léry means the kind made by soaking wheat in water

   bushel

   a measure for dry goods such as grain or flour

   apothecary

   a person who made and sold medicines

   porridge

   a soft food made by cooking flour or grain in water or broth

   1. Comprehension What are the two kinds of manioc flour Léry describes, and why do the Tupinambá carry the hard kind to war?
   2. Analysis Léry compares many steps to things a French reader knew, such as nutmeg, starch, chestnuts, and omelets. Why might he do this? What might a French reader still misunderstand about the food?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Léry ate this food every day, but the book was printed twenty years after he came home, after his first draft was lost twice. Which kinds of details in this chapter would be easy to remember after so long, and which would be harder? How far should we trust him on each?
   4. Connection Read Oviedo, Maize and Cassava Bread. Oviedo also describes bread made from a root whose juice is a deadly poison. Compare how the two writers describe the poison and the ways the root was made safe to eat. What does each writer say, or show, about who held this knowledge?

   Activity In groups, students turn Léry's chapter into a set of illustrated recipe cards: one for each kind of flour, one for the porridge, and one for the dish made from the pressed juice. Each card lists the steps in order and names who does them, using only what Léry says. Groups then mark any step Léry explains only by comparing it to a French food and decide whether the comparison is clear enough to follow.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

9. 9

   Food from the Great River, 1639

   Acuña, 1640–1641. Moderate.Early version

   Long sentences broken up, but many names of foods; readers need the notes on manioc and the drink.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   league

   an old measure of distance, about 5–6 kilometers (3–3.5 miles)

   manioc

   a plant with a thick, starchy root, also called yuca or cassava; some kinds need long processing before they are eaten

   Divine Providence

   God’s care for the world and plan for what happens in it

   ship’s biscuit

   hard, dry bread baked to keep for months on long voyages

   birdlime

   a sticky paste spread on branches to catch small birds

   arquebus

   an early gun fired from the shoulder

   saltpeter

   a white, salty mineral, used in gunpowder and in curing meat

   1. Comprehension How did the river people keep their manioc roots from being lost in the yearly floods?
   2. Analysis Acuña explains the people’s way of storing manioc by comparing them to ants and by pointing to nature and Divine Providence. How does this explanation shape the way a reader sees the people and their knowledge?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Acuña traveled with the fleet, did not live in any village, learned much of what he reports through others, and wrote to persuade the Spanish crown that the river was rich and worth conquering. Which of his claims about food could he have seen for himself? Which might his purpose have shaped?
   4. Connection Read Making Manioc Flour in a Tupinambá Village (Léry). Léry lived for some months among the Tupinambá; Acuña passed villages by canoe. Both describe manioc made into a food that keeps a long time. Compare what each writer notices about how the food is made, stored, and eaten, and who does the work. What can you learn from each account that the other does not tell you?

   Activity Students make a two-column chart. In the first column they list every food or drink Acuña names; in the second they note how it is got, prepared, or kept, using his words (pits, hard cakes stored high in the houses, jars, carved casks, coated woven vessels, roasting on wooden grills). Then they discuss his last point: what the people lacked to keep the manatee meat for a whole year, and why.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

10. 10

    Inca Storehouses and the Palaces of Tumebamba

    Cieza de León, 1547–1553. Moderate.Early version

    Clear description built on lists; a few Quechua and Spanish terms are explained in the notes.

    Questions, key terms and an activity

    storehouse

    a building where goods are kept until they are needed

    league

    a Spanish measure of distance, roughly what a person could walk in an hour

    tribute

    goods or payment that a people must hand over to those who rule them

    mamaconas

    the Quechua word Cieza uses for the women who served the Sun and the Inca; they lived apart, wove fine cloth, and brewed maize beer

    mitimaes

    groups of people the Inca moved from their homelands to settle in other provinces

    khipu

    a set of knotted strings on which the Incas recorded numbers and other information

    eunuch

    a man who has been castrated, sometimes given the work of guarding women

    1. Comprehension What kinds of things were kept in the Inca storehouses, and who saw that they stayed full?
    2. Analysis Cieza writes that Cañari women dig, sow, and harvest, while many men stay home weaving and spinning, which he calls "women's work." What does his wording show about his own ideas? What reason do the Cañari give him for why so many women carried the Spaniards' baggage?
    3. Analysis (reliability) Cieza saw Tumebamba only after it had been sacked and stripped. Which statements does he rest on what Cañari and Inca people told him, and how does he say he checked them against what he saw? Where does he speak as an eyewitness?
    4. Connection Read The Great Market of Tenochtitlan. Cortés praises the judges and inspectors who kept order in the market. Cieza praises the Inca accountants and the strict punishment of soldiers who robbed. Why might both Spanish writers dwell on order and record-keeping, and how might each writer's purpose shape his praise?

    Activity Using the first three paragraphs, students draw a simple diagram of the Inca supply system: a road with lodgings and storehouses, a provincial palace every ten or twenty leagues with its temple and larger storehouses, and the governor who collects tribute and refills them. They label each part with Cieza's own words. The class then discusses which parts of the system Cieza could have seen himself in the late 1540s and which he must have learned from others.

    For teachers · Worksheet for this source

More sources for this unit

• The People Made of Maize Popol Vuh, 1550–1715. Challenging.Early version For teachers
• A Visit to the Great Camp on the Plains Henday, 1754–1755. Moderate.Early version For teachers
• Peace in the Town-House at Chota Timberlake, 1762–1765. Moderate.Early version For teachers

To finish

Come back to the question: What did Europeans learn from Native farmers, cooks, and healers, and how did they describe it? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students turn farming and cooking passages into flow charts and farm-year sequences, sort Narragansett words, and ask whose knowledge the writers record and credit.

Go further

Other units

First encounters · Violence, disease, and blame

Encyclopedia

Cassava · Maize · Tenochtitlan · The Columbian Exchange · The Taíno · Tisquantum (Squanto)

Play

Lost Settlement

Collection

Every source in Early Americas