Common Foods & Crops of Indian Origin, Vernal, UT, circa 1950

About this postcard

An informational card from the Utah Field House of Natural History in Vernal, Utah, sets out the food plants domesticated by Native peoples and their place in world agriculture. Under the heading "Common Foods & Crops of Indian Origin Used By Us Today," the text credits prehistoric Indians of Central and South America with domesticating most of the listed plants and argues that farming ended nomadic life and made the village possible, a development it calls the basis for the earliest civilization. Corn and the white potato get the longest entries. Corn is described as the world's oldest grain, grown from Patagonia to Canada in prehistoric times, with Columbus reporting fields eighteen miles long. The potato entry traces the crop from Peru to Europe and repeats the old derivation of "batata," the Spanish rendering of an Indian word for sweet potato. A column of names follows, from beans, squash, and tomatoes to chocolate, rubber, quinine, and chicle. The tone is admiring and boosterish, in keeping with mid-century museum labels that presented Native agriculture as a foundation of settled life. The Vernal museum, established just after the Second World War, interpreted the natural history of the Uinta Basin for travelers passing through eastern Utah.