History of pecans

The word pecan is derived from the Algonquin tribe’s word “pacane” which translates to “nuts requiring a stone to crack”. The Algonquins were a North American tribe located on the Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers where pecans were a food staple during the winter months.

French traders recorded the word as pacanes or pecanes, which later evolved into its current common name.

Native Americans were the first to cultivate and utilize wild pecans and their trees. They consumed and stored pecans, but also traded them for furs and other goods. Fur traders brought the pecan to the Atlantic coast from Illinois, calling them "Illinois nuts", hence the latin classification of illinoinensis.

They highly valued pecans for their delicious taste, nutritional content, and because they were easier to shell than other North American nut species. A historical record from the mid-1500s by the Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca revealed that Native Americans in south Texas would gather pecans in autumn and then grind them and soak them in water to make a milky beverage to sustain them throughout the winter. This liquid also formed the base of a fermented beverage called powcohicora.

Early uses of the pecan saw it pounded into a paste with a mortar. This could be dried and used as a flour or more often was added to soups and stews. Native Americans also roasted the pecans for sustenance on long journeys.

In addition to using the pecan nuts as a food source, the Kiowa tribe of the Great Plains area of the United States used decoctions of the tree bark to treat tuberculosis. The Comanche Nation used a poultice of pulverized pecan tree leaves as a topical treatment for ringworm-infected skin.

After the 17th century, both native Americans and settlers began seeing pecan trees as a potential source of income. Pecans could be traded and were integral dietary components, especially during times of difficult harvests.

Between the late 1600’s and the early 1700s, Spanish colonists cultivated pecan orchards. In 1772, Long Island, New York, became the location where the first pecan trees were planted in the United States.

In 1775, George Washington planted pecan trees and so did Thomas Jefferson in 1779. Both men planted and grew the resulting trees on their properties. Right after the Civil War, Union soldiers helped increase the pecan's popularity by bringing pecans home when they returned north from the war. By the end of the 1700s, pecans became increasingly popular, and therefore their economic potential was realized.
History of pecans

History of maple sugar

The first historic mention of sugar is found in China in the eight century BC, where it is spoken of as a product of India. The Arabs and Egyptians were the pioneers in crystallizing the sugar.

According to Robin Mower, it was as early as the mid-1500s that North American Indians and early European forest travelers drank the clear, barley sweet liquid; of both the sugar maple and the black ample as a source of nutrition.

Article published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1684-1685, where it is stated that the Indians have practiced this art of making maple sugar longer than any now living among them can remember.

The American Indians had a name for it Sinzibuckwud – the Algonquin word for maple sugar, meaning literally ‘drawn from wood’.

Tapping sugar maples was a fairly common practice in the Great Smoky Mountain. Native Americans used maple sugar sap and sugar to season meats and grain and to make candy and beverages. The Chippewa of the Great Lakes region seasoned fish heads with maple sugar and fed them to their babies; the Mohican mixed maple sugar with meal of dried corn for a snack or trail food.

The traditional of pouring maple syrup over popcorn to form balls was the origin of an American invention, Cracker Jacks, first marketed in 1893.

Although the earliest sellers called ‘Indian melasses’ and ‘Indian sugar’ there have been proponents of the notion that the natives of North America did not tap the trees or make maple sugar until the European came and taught them how.

During the 1800s and early 1900s, many mountain farm families maintained areas in the first called ‘sugar camps’ or sugar bushes for the production of syrup and sugar.

In the early 1900s, sugaring in the United States ceased to be family operations. Instead, the sugaring operation became industrial process.
History of maple sugar

History of Blueberries in America

History of Blueberries in America
The blueberry is native to North America, whereas the closely related bilberry originated in Europe.

This fruit was used by Indians to make pemmican, which is prepared by mixing – sun or wind dried strips of meat with melted fat and various types to bring any of the wild types of blueberries under cultivation because an abundant supply of the wild plants grew throughout the eastern United States and wild blueberries were tart flavored, and the sugar materials suitable for sweetening them were in short supply until the mid – 1800s.

Americans began to consume greater amounts of blueberries after the supply of sugar increased sharply in the latter part of the 18th century, when the fruit became a popular ingredient of jams, jellies, pies and tarts.

The cultivation of blueberries in the United States was initiated in 1906 by Dr. F. V. Coville, a botanist in the US Department of Agriculture who selected wild highbush berry plants from New Hampshire and New Jersey for his experiments.

He noted that the wild plants thrived in swamps, but did not grow as prolifically in other environments.

Hence, he concluded that an acid soil was required.

By 1909, he was ready to begin crossbreeding different varieties in order to obtain higher yields of larger and sweeter berries.

Reports of Dr. Coville’s work were read by Miss Elizabeth White of Whitesbog, New Jersey (a small town located in eastern Burlington country a few miles south of Fort Dix, that was so named because the White family had extensive cranberry plantings in the local bogs.)

Miss White became interested in the cultivation of blueberries because she had often observed the wild bushes growing on her family’s land.

She began a long collaboration with Dr Coville, which resulted in her conducting experiments of her own and her family establishing the first commercial blueberry plantings in America.
History of Blueberries in America

History of Blueberries

According to Native American blueberry is good for health. It helps the woman during childbirth, the tea leaves were good for kidneys and the juice was good for cough. Native American also dried his leave in sun and ground it into powder and us it to make pudding and it was used to season the meat.

Among the first American settlers who saw how American Indian used blueberries was Samuel de Champlain. He saw that the Native American grounded the leave to powder then mixed with corn and honey then water to make a pudding. The settlers also found that the Indians smoked wild blueberries during winter to preserve them.

The Native American tribes revered blueberries and folklore developed around them. The blossom end of each berry, the calyx, forms the shape of a perfect five-pointed star; the elders of the tribe would tell of how the Great Spirit sent "star berries" to relieve the children's hunger during a famine.