Native Harvests: Recipes & Botanicals of the American Indian (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 202 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (June 12, 1979)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394728114
• ISBN-13: 978-0394728117
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,006,757 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference & delightful, usable guide book!, September 1, 1999

By A Customer

NATIVE HARVESTS is a popular work of ethnobotany! Well-illustrated with pen & ink botanicals by the author, this little book has become a leading guide book & teaching text - used in high schools, colleges, environmental & national parks centers, & on Indian reservations. Fortunately is has been expanded by the author in a new "20th birthday edition" now available as Native Harvests: American Indian Wild Foods & Mushrooms, published in November 1998 by the Institute for American Indian Studies in Washington, CT (250-pages) 860-868-0518. Color folio included! Outstanding!

2.0 out of 5 stars A Big Disappointment, August 23, 2008

By	Sherman A. Thompson (Brady, TX, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

To be fair, this is a review of the 1979 Edition, not the later one which I have not seen.

The title should have been something like "Harvests of the Eastern Indians" because it is sadly lacking in harvests and recipes of the southwest and west. For example, it includes a recipe for Boston baked beans (now there's a native dish) but nothing for dove, squirrel, or armadillo. I will overlook dog and horsemeat, which the indians were also fond of. In other words, this is a "nice" book rather than a comprehensive one.

I was particularly interested in the harvests and recipes of the plains indians. These included such things as pine nuts, chia seeds, and especially mesquite beans, none of which were mentioned. Mesquite beans were widely used by the western, southwestern, and western plains Indians for making flour, syrup, and many other healthy foods before the issuance of of white flour at the Indian agencies. White flour introduced the reservation Indians to obesity, diabetes, and a host of other ailments rare in the pre-reservation days.

Many of the recipes in "Native Harvests" call for baking soda, which I presume the Indians picked from soda trees or obtained by some other means before the white man civilized them with Indian Agency commodoties.

The book is illustrated by excellent line drawings and the text is clear and flows nicely. My disappointment arises from the misleading title and omissions of some of the most important food staples. Perhaps others will disagree, and that's OK. These are just my impressions. The book wasn't expensive and will make a good addition as a filler.