North Carolina chef Hadassah Patterson takes a close look at the origins and resilience of “Indian corn.” She also includes some savory food memories and an original recipe for hot water cornbread with smoked chiles and roasted corn.
Story by Hadassah Patterson
When people think of “Indian Corn,” they tend to envision autumnal tables: bi-colored ears with neatly peeled, dried husks, and variegated gourds alongside a cornucopia of plenty — evoking images of a harmonious gathering of unlikely neighbors.
Mmm-hmm. That was a short-lived historical notion at best and really the stuff of historical myth. I recall how my father would shake his head in disgust at perfectly decent corn “just sitting there,” not being used, even in the grocery store. He hated the idea of anyone wasting food, especially behind false notions.
You see, I come from food people. I don’t mean foodies. Both my parents worked in restaurants and retail food stores professionally. My mother made the sauce for a time at the historic Dillard’s Bar-B-Q restaurant in Durham, North Carolina, and worked in the back of the house at other establishments. My maternal grandmother was the private chef for a Duke University chancellor during the 1950s and 1960s. My father and grandfather worked in local restaurants, and Daddy ran his own community store for a while. However, Daddy was preoccupied with the bi-color corn going to waste because of our Indigenous heritage. We still used it regardless of what color it was, and he said so.
Now, first of all, we never celebrated Thanksgiving, ever. Some Indigenous descendants do, but we did not. My family is multiracial, as genealogy tells us of many people in the Southeast. The people of the Carolinas and Virginia are often tri-racial, with African lineages (Senegambia, Ghana, Cameroon, and Nigeria to name a few), European colonial lineages (Scots-Irish, Scots-Welsh, French, Spanish, and British), and Indigenous roots. My Indigenous origins are with Cape Fear (Skarù·rę’ Woccon), Tuscarora, and Saponi-Catawba of the Carolinas — among others, including Virginian tribes.
We did have seasonal dinners with turkey and such to celebrate our culture and region. We were always happy to share with our friends, and trying to stop my father from inviting people was an exercise in abject futility. My siblings and I were rushed off our feet to accommodate the constant flow of people when my father decided to host a dinner.
During one of those dinners in early fall, I was given the high honor of carving the humongous turkey for the 100 people who showed up. My daddy’s best buddy, “Uncle” William, had a full belly already. (He was among the first in line.) “I’m just going to get a little bit of fruit for my diet,” he drawled. He shuffled into the kitchen in his shirtsleeves and suspenders, holding a handkerchief to congratulate us on yet another successful feast. He followed my gaze up to a pan of pocketbook yeast rolls made from my chef grannie’s recipe, rising on top of the fridge and peeking out from under oiled plastic and a towel. His mouth was agape as I uncovered them in a slight panic to put them into the oven. As I did so, I retrieved Daddy’s third pan of cornbread dressing someone had forgotten. It was quite fine, and my mouth watered gratefully as I held its warmth because this was my favorite part and I’d barely eaten yet.
Uncle William shook his head at the scene. “My goodness child, you’re trying to hurt somebody!” He laughed as deep as his tenor allowed, burped gingerly into his handkerchief fist, begged our pardons, and tottered back out. He righted his tie back into place from its safety perch over his shoulder and left my younger sister and me exchanging looks and bursting into a fit of girlish giggles. At this point, Mama was sitting down on the first available folding chair and fanning herself while catching up on gossip. Daddy was outside debating and laughing with friends on the porch. I grabbed a plate and stopped to breathe, smile, and chew.
Aside from turkey, there were Daddy’s barbecue ribs, triple-washed collards with smoked turkey legs, and sweet potato casserole; Mama’s beef roast, her broccoli and cheese casserole recipe, and green beans with bacon meat; my baked macaroni and cheese and gingerbread; my sister’s brownies; and a fruit salad. All of us helped in shifts when a dinner was on.
Last, but not least, there was Daddy’s spicy cornbread dressing made with roasted turkey drippings and day-old cornbread he’d baked himself. Now a pan of his cornbread was OK, but he truly excelled at fried cornbread cakes and made them almost daily, left to his own devices. But his pan cornbread was perfect for dressing, and it showed. The bagged stuff earned his ire. As he stirred pots, he would mutter, “How do you know what they put in it?”
We had corn every way we could: hominy, grits, stews, soups, salads, fritters, corn cakes, spoonbread with cracklings, succotash, cornbread. Nearly every meal was blessed by the presence of these fine kernels. I’ve come to love them all, even the ones that were less familiar at first.
Corn — or maize — has so many faces, colors, and variations. All corn is edible, and it is all “Indian corn.” As American as corn has become, and as Southern as cornbread is, we would be remiss to stop at calling it Southern food — or Soul Food.
Corn — or maize — has so many faces, colors, and variations. They are all edible, and they are all “Indian corn.” As American as corn has become, and as Southern as cornbread is, we would be remiss to stop at calling it Southern food — or Soul Food.
Maize is indigenous to the American landmass. It migrated through our countrysides by specific routes that often followed the paths of trade and tribal activity. North Carolina Indigenous Chief Lovell “Eagle Elk” Pierce points out that the 1989 edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary lists cornbread as “Indian bread,” and conversely, the dictionary entry for “Indian Bread” is cornbread. It is that simple. Or rather, that complex.
Steeped in my family’s food culture, I became a classically-trained chef and have cooked across the country for school demos, museum dinners, and private events. I’ve also run my own bakery and private chef service. Over the years, I’ve become a food history researcher, freelance writer, and a member of culinary historian groups. A question always tapped on my shoulder. How do I convey the depth of Indigenous contributions, which is so seldom given due credit in the cannon of Southern foodways?
Over the past year, I’ve spoken with tribal members, Eastern foodways experts, chefs, and archaeologists across the country to understand how corn, our sustaining grain, found its way to our plates. Corn has endured an amazing journey of colonial assaults, modern governmental interference, and cultural assimilation. The story is worthy of telling.
Since part of my family has roots in Anson County, North Carolina, I called up Glenn Roberts, resident grain expert and co-owner of Anson Mills. He worked in his mother’s restaurant as a youngster and eventually became involved in architectural history, historical renovations, and food history as an adult. This led to research on historic rice and then corn in 1995, with the subsequent birth of the mill that he co-owns with Catherine Schopfer. Anson Mills’ products, such as Carolina gold rice, farro, and polenta, are common staples of Southern restaurant menus.
All modern corn comes from the grass teosinte, from what we know as Mexico. The world’s population uses flints, flour, dent, pop, sweet (a newer variety), and waxy varieties for everything from masa to moonshine.
“From teosinte, there are at least 59 phenotypes of maize and over 100,000 different varieties of corn,” Roberts says.
“A native maize in Cherokee country will be the same maize in the seed bank they have been collecting in Mexico. That exact genetic match showing in the Cherokee tribe from … pre-colonial contact into modern times.”
Glenn Roberts, co-owner and resident grain expert at Anson Mills. Photo by Greg Dupree.
Corn traveled throughout the African continent from the Americas as well. According to James McCann’s “Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa's New Landscapes, 1500-1999,” the first mention of maize cultivation in African regions was in 1540, when it was harvested on the Cape Verde islands. Maize migrated back and forth between countries and continents spanning the globe — from the American landmass to Japan at various stages of cultivation.
Trade routes tend to morph migration patterns into a maze themselves. As trade in both goods and humans mushroomed, so did the spread of corn. Cornmeal mush was fed to the enslaved of the South, even as they prepared elaborate banquets to adorn plantation tables. Corn was a critical sustainer in the lives shaping the South.
“Everything changed after the American Revolution, including attitudes toward Native maize. Because we wiped it out here, and then turned around and did it again right after our revolution, and then we did it again during Jim Crow,” Roberts says.
For Roberts, it was difficult to talk about the horrific and enduring effect wrought by the destructive manner of American colonization. “So, we went from 100,000 distinct varieties of Native maize at first contact, down to less than 20,000. It's been disastrous, and then there’s just a massive amount of condensation hybrids.” These commercial hybridizers combined them to make number two yellow dent corn, which, according to Roberts, has “no redeeming qualities whatsoever except its production value, which we have weaponized worldwide and disseminated to everybody.” This is the primary cheap corn variety for food manufacturing. It is in the cornmeal, tortilla chips, and corn chips in most grocery aisles.
Chef Dave “Smoke” McCluskey is Mohawk (Kanien'kehá:ka) Haudenosaunee and grew up in Southeastern New England. He currently resides in South Carolina, where he is working to raise awareness of “lost” or “heirloom” varieties of maize and expand our palates. He’s a “Three Sisters Evangelist,” culinary educator, co-founder of the Augusta Boucherie, and an avid forager. As a traveling chef and cultural expert, McCluskey teaches Three Sisters knowledge to schools, seminars, and other chefs.
Chef Dave “Smoke” McCluskey is a “Three Sisters Evangelist,” Culinary Educator, Co-Founder of Augusta Boucherie and an Avid Forager.
The Three Sisters — corn, beans, and squash — have traditionally served as a cross-tribal cornerstone to Indigenous American cuisine. “We used a lot of Tuscarora White Corn [flour variety], some blue, and a few other varieties for ceremony and other things,” McCluskey says. “But the white, blue, and even a red were our favored corns. And yes, some yellows for sure. We grew all six varieties of corn.
“There is a variety called Cherokee [White] Eagle [dent variety of corn] that is purple and white. Corn can be very promiscuous, so it crosses very easily with other varieties. Sometimes this was done intentionally to make it easier to grow in different regions. This changes the color, but also the flavor — as in the French term ‘terroir.’”
McCluskey enjoys working with chefs and uses both traditional and ceremonial varieties like black corn at powwows and events. At one powwow in North Carolina, their crew made a Turkey stew with corn, beans, and Haudenosaunee Black corn dumplings (shaped like Matzo balls). The Iroquois Black that he used was originally a ceremonial corn, and it can be eaten fresh or dried. The black corn was one predecessor to the sweet corn variety “discovered” in the 1700s, which is where our corn on the cob habit comes from. Most corn was eaten after drying and processing instead of fresh from fields. Ceremonial corns are kept specifically for that purpose to prevent cultural appropriation and misuse, but some may be incorporated for teaching, such as at classes and powwows.
Maxton, North Carolina, Tuscarora Nation, 39th Annual Powwow with Travis Dunn. Photos by John ManiQ Whittemore.
McCluskey tells me he fell in love with Cherokee Gourdseed corn. It has a thin shell, so it takes well to stone grinding. Cherokee Gourdseed was a popular variety that became the most widely used cornmeal on the Eastern Seaboard prior to the Civil War, producing a velvety cornbread or “spider bread,” named for the three-pronged, deep-sided cast-iron pan it was cooked in. It was ideal for dumplings, puddings, and even cakes. Gourdseed comes from one of the first corns to spread in the Southeast — a softer Southern dent variety that came to be called “shoepeg” in more modern times, but was originally referred to as “tooth corn” due to its shape and white color.
“I still like to lye/nixtamalize it for the nutrients though,” McCluskey says. Nixtamalization is the process of using an alkaline soak to remove the tough outer hull from maize which provides better access to its nutrition and prevents illness. The result is called hominy. This is where the term “hominy grits” comes from.
One might be surprised to find how few places still make true hominy this way. In American Indigenous culture, we call this “lyeing” and prefer to use sustainable sources like ash from safe vegetable and plant discards.
Gourdseed was once grown over a wide swath of the Southeastern states from Texas to Maryland. By the 1940s, it was replaced by higher-production hybrid field corn varieties like Reid’s Yellow Dent — and by the 1960s it was nearly extinct. It came to be replaced by hybrids to make cornmeal grittier - an attempt at “all-purpose” cornmeal which nearly extinguished the seed’s existence. That hybridization requires us to use baking powder or leavening agents to lighten the texture of cornbread today.
“Haudenosaunee Uses of Turkey Meat, Corn and Beans” featuring chefs Tawnya Bryant and Dave McCluskey (not pictured above) at the Tuscarora 39th Annual Powwow in Maxton, North Carolina. Video courtesy of Corn Mafia. Cover photo by John ManiQ Whittemore.
McCluskey is developing “Lyeing Mohawk Masa” under his Corn Mafia brand in collaboration with The Congaree Milling Company, based in South Carolina. He will be producing true small batch Longhouse Hominy Grits and small batch white, yellow, red, and blue masa for bread making — such as Iroquois leaf bread, tortillas, tamales, and more.
McCluskey’s upcoming book, The Three Sisters Manifesto, will cover the development of corn, beans, and squash as Indigenous contributions on the global alimentary stage. “Over 60% of the world's cultivated crops were first cultivated here in the Americas by our people,” he says.
“Corn culture in the East is more ancient,” Frank “Fix” Cain tells me in an email. “Our corn is more closely related to the Highlands Mayan strains than to the Plains or northern Mexican varieties.” The Mayan Highlands refers to the southern, mountainous regions of the Mayan civilization — what is now known as southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras.
Cain and his fiancé, Beth Roach, run the Alliance of Native Seedkeepers. Cain also runs a new Native fusion restaurant, Cahaba Cafe, in Lewiston Woodville, North Carolina.
“The Tuscarora maintained raids and trade as far south as Mexico,” Cain tells me. “Francisco de Chicora was a captured Tuscarora man that was forced to lead the explorer De Soto to Mexico along one of the routes the Tuscarora used.”
Thus, the connections formed by routes to the Cherokee people, as well as Tuscarora activity between the Carolinas and Mexico, influenced the migration of domesticated maize throughout the Southeastern states from Southern Mexico and Central America.
“Shapes, sizes, rows, patterns, colors — distinct selection traits that are culturally significant. For example, Haudenosaunee corns have few rows, usually eight, but thicker cobs with a wider base,” Cain says. “The wider base helps hold this corn up in braids that are hung in the rafters of our homes … Plains corns don't usually need the additional support for braiding and hanging.”
Cain points out similarities between Indigenous oral histories as clear mile markers on the journey of corn migration. “While the Haudenosaunee have almost entirely associated corn as a feminine deity from the Three Sisters, the Tuscarora still have stories associating corn with both — one of the Sisters and one a male interpretation figurehead. The Maya still have almost exclusively a male deity for corn.”
The Alliance revitalizes an extensive list of varieties, such as lesser known orange ears, Seneca Pink Lady flour corn, Tutelo Strawberry, Keever Locklear’s red corn (rematriated from government custody), and Incan Purple Flint. Corn culture is a living state of Indigenous existence which influences everything from our dance to our calendars.
Modern-day commercial growers often make spurious claims of “saving” varieties without giving credit to regional Indigenous seed keepers. This is a modern form of biopiracy. So are claims that tribes have somehow become extinct from “war, famine, and disease.” This is a form of social violence — casual erasure for pure commercial profit or novelty.
True Indigenous varieties are being revitalized and rematriated in cooperation with tribes and seed keepers — restoring this vital component of Indigenous culture where it rightfully belongs. Seed revitalization programs are entirely different from commercial operations that create new hybrids for confetti value. Many Original tribes’ descendants are still quite alive and immensely dedicated to the work of carrying on agricultural traditions.
Corn has sustained generations for thousands of years and continues to do so. It is beautiful, delicious, and deftly consumed as an integral part of American history. However, it is unsettlingly easy to access any number of sources that merely describe the cold science of growing maize in large volumes without a whiff of suggestion to its points of origin, the duty of stewardship, or sustainable practices at community levels.
In fact, the stark irony exacerbated by national disaster is that many farming communities are focused on commercial production for ethanol and animal feed, but are not able to sustain themselves outside of transported groceries.
Leni Sorensen runs Indigo House, a teaching farmstead in Crozet, Virginia. “Our contemporary fascination with foraging, living off the land, stalwart self-sufficiency, and the hunter-gather ethos are sort of backward projections onto groups that often were primarily agriculturists. They grew the Three Sisters and collected crops from well-known and carefully preserved wild-grown areas.”
Only the future will tell how effective our generations have been as stewards of maize — one of the trusts we have received. Sustenance is a gift, a necessity, and a trust. How we use our resources determine the struggles and successes of future generations.
During cultural conversations, I look into the spirited bright eyes of those stepping into the roles of protectors and nurturers and hope they appreciate the sacred trust laid in rows for them as much as I do.
“It is easy for me to believe that the cardinal has its own rights and duties in life as given to him by The Creator, even when I’m not the best of practitioners,” muses McCluskey. “In the end, everything matters. Even the stuff I don’t think of or acknowledge very often.”
Indeed, the truth of corn is written in every kernel.
Hadassah Patterson has written articles for professional chefs or restaurateurs, health-focused magazines, beverage-focused blogs, and Southeast region news. She was one of several contributors to the hurricane relief As Country As Cornbread e-cookbook by Chef Vivian Howard of “A Chef’s Life” on PBS. She recently covered the Black Lives Matter Minneapolis protests for Toward Freedom and Zenger News Wire Service and wrote an article on Afro-Indigenous hemp farming for Indyweek.
