As many of us take a bite out of that corn on the cob this Independence Day, we are experiencing an ancestor of something inherently indigenous and “American.” Long before our forefathers began to even consider ringing the bells of revolution against Britain, and long before the first Europeans set foot on the New World, Native Americans were cultivating foods that we sometimes take for granted today.

Many native cultures described a process of cultivation using three major foods - maize (corn), beans, and squash - called the “Three Sisters.” In what was actually a brilliant piece of agricultural engineering, they planted maize in rows, and sowed bean plants in between the maize to fertilize the soil with replenishing nitrogen. They planted squash as a ground cover to keep weeds and unwanted plants from taking precious resources away from the food plants. Hampton Sides wrote in “Blood and Thunder” how the Navajos would leave their crops virtually unattended until harvest time.

Today we do basically the same thing with the nitrogen soil content as the Native Americans did. We call it crop rotation. We also have a host of technological advances to make our job much easier and more fruitful. But we were far from being the first farmers of “American” staples. In fact, several Native Americans have written about trading farming techniques with the Amish.

The Amish, who still harvest in social groups, carry on a tradition that was commonplace not too long ago in modern America - social gatherings for the purpose of harvesting and storing food. Many fairs and festivals in the 20th century were born out a community gathering for the purpose of hand-picking corn and other seasonal delights. Today we use machinery, but many places in the world still carry on the practice of socializing and harvest when the corn is mature.

Here’s something also interesting: ask any nutritionist what happens when people don’t get enough niacin in their diet (a B-vitamin found in maize), and they’ll tell you “Pellagra,” a condition that causes all sorts of problems including skin lesions. Native Americans already figured this problem out, and they learned to soak the maize in a lime alkali solution to facilitate the release of niacin. Settlers didn’t undertake this important step, and suffered from the deficiency and didn’t definitively understand the cause up until close to the first World War.

Native Americans also consumed their maize and beans together, forming complete amino acid chains, giving them adequate protein intake without needing meats on a constant basis.

So when you eat your corn on the cob, and perhaps a slathering of baked beans, think of not only Independence Day, but the even deeper history that is in every bite you take, and how we’ve made it into something uniquely American.