Here's a follow up to the previous post on this topic. David Brenner of USDA & Iowa State University, who is is a noted expert on plants in several genera that include millets (notably Setaria, Panicum, and Echinochloa), kindly forwarded a copy of a book chapter he co-authored in which wild relatives of cultivated grains are discussed in some detail../1 Setaria and Panicum species are quite numerous, and of those native to North America, more than one in each genus were apparently used as food at some times and in some ways by the first peoples in this region. Below are some excerpts from David's book chapter of interest for this discussion, plus mention of a source for small quantities of seed for Panicum hirticaule (sometimes aka P. sonorum; also called "sauwi" and "panic grass," and seen in some sources as "Sonoran millet"). SETARIA SPP. "Besides foxtail millet (Setaria italica), the most important Setaria P. Beauv. crop, 11 other Setaria species, including some North American natives, have been used as cereals on either on a wild-gathered or domesticated basis; and many are therefore represented in the archeological record (Austin 2006)." (Brenner, et al, 2019:69) "Setaria species may be the most common plants in temperate North America but mostly as weeds. They are used as forage by domesticated animals (Lawrence et al. 1989; Rominger 2003) and are outstanding in importance to wild seed-eating animals (Martin et al. 1951). The grain of at least three wild Setaria species was used as cereals by indigenous North Americans, and probably seeds from all the available species were used (Austin 2006)." (Brenner, et al, 2019:74) PANICUM SPP. "There are three domesticated Panicum L. millet species. Proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.), the most important species, is grown in the US High Plains. It is commercially available as bird seed but is also the millet generally marketed for human consumption in the United States as 'millet.' ... Sauwi (Panicum hirticaule J. Presl) is a traditional pre-Columbian crop of the lower Colorado River, where indigenous peoples usually grew it on river mud flats until seasonal flooding was controlled by the building of dams in the twentieth century (Nabhan and de Wet 1984; Freckman and Lelong 2003). At least three other wild or semi-domesticated Panicum species were used as grain by Native Americans (Doebley 1984)." (Brenner, et al, 2019:60) "Wild Panicum seeds are edible; they are used by wildlife, especially songbirds (Martin et al. 1951). The grain of at least five Panicum species was harvested for food by Southwestern Native Americans (Doebley 1984). In Florida, panicoid grass seeds in threshed condition (with the bracts removed) are present at prehistoric archeological sites and are thought to have been an important food. However, the term “panicoid” applies to many grass genera, including Echinochloa and Setaria, which with available archeological methods are indistinguishable (Hutchinson et al. 2016). Based on this evidence, it is possible that grain from Panicum was a staple prehistoric food in Florida, or perhaps only one of several edible grass seeds that were processed and eaten in similar ways." (Brenner, et al, 2019:62) Seeds for P. hirticaule (aka P. sonorum) are available for purchase in small quantities from Native Seeds Search./2 The purpose of all this is to establish the background narrative that "millets" in the broadest sense are not new or alien to North America. This is because more than one species related to two of today's best known small millets (i.e., proso & foxtail) figured in the foodways of various Native American peoples in the distant past, and one of these millets apparently has survived (barely, from the accounts we have read) as a cultivated grain. Don DO, EL, MI, US NAMA Notes: 1. Brenner, D.M., Bockelman, H.E., Williams, K.A. (2019). North American Wild Relatives of Grain Crops. In: Greene, S., Williams, K., Khoury, C., Kantar, M., Marek, L. (eds) North American Crop Wild Relatives, Volume 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97121-6_2 2. https://www.nativeseeds.org/products/o001?variant=41580014665882 On Sun, Oct 30, 2022 at 11:54 AM Don Osborn <don@milletsalliance.org> wrote:
Long before the millets we are talking about today came to the shores of North America, and well before Columbus, Native Americans cultivated species of Setaria and Panicum - cousins, in effect, of today's foxtail (S. italica) and proso (P. mileaceum) millets. Aside from being interesting in its own right, I think this history - or prehistory - might be a unique dimension of our messaging about the International Year of Millets (IYM) in 2023. The species of millets, as we discuss them today, are crops originally of Eurasia and Africa, and parts of food cultures of those regions for ages. As we look to expand their cultivation and consumption here, it is worth remembering that the first peoples of this continent apparently had their own millets as part of their own rich foodways.
We all are familiar with the amazing story of corn (maize), at least in its outlines - that this productive crop was domesticated and developed in Mexico, and eventually became part of Native American food cultures across the continent. But corn was not the only grain or source of starch for these peoples, especially over the time before it disseminated out of the location of its domestication. There is renewed interest in the story of these other crops/foods, as evidenced by an article earlier this month in The Atlantic./1 That article, however, doesn't mention millets (apart from the example of browntop millet in India, cultivation of which almost ceased at one point). So in the rest of this post, I'll briefly spotlight one species each in the genera of Setaria and Panicum, and what we currently understand about them from paleoethnobotony and, in the latter case, apparent ongoing cultivation:
SETARIA GENICULATA or S. PARVIFLORA
According to one source/2 (which cites others/3 /4 /5 /6), "A species of Setaria, probably S. geniculata, was the oldest cultivated cereal in the Americas, its origins dating to almost 9000 B.P." I believe this is another name for S. parviflora,/7 but have no expertise on this subject. This may be the only Setaria native to North America (if I read Dekker/2 correctly).
Another source/8 discusses this cereal as S. parviflora, addressing possible reasons for abandonment of its cultivation, with reference to Setarias elsewhere. Its reference to other Setarias gathered, but not necessarily cultivated, for their comestible grains is also of interest. At the same time, it bears mentioning that may of those other Setarias are today considered weeds./2
It would be of great interest to know of anyone cultivating (or gathering) seeds of S. geniculata / S. parviflora for any food purposes.
PANICUM HIRTICAULE or P. SONORUM
A species of Panicum - P. hirticaule or P. sonorum - has been well documented as being under cultivation in what is now the SW US and northern Mexico since prehistoric times until modern times./9 /10 Cultivation now is apparently limited largely to small farms notably of Wariho Indians in Sonora, Mexico, where it was documented as recently as 2011./11
Regarding nomenclature, it seems that P. hirticaule/12 may be used more for the wild varieties, and P. sonorum/13 for the larger and larger-grained variants that have been cultivated. However usage varies, esp. in older literature.
At one point, it was thought that this grain - its cultivated variety - was extinct./11 An important range of cultivation in the Colorado River delta effectively disappeared as an indirect effect of the Hoover Dam./9 Its present status is "vulnerable."/13 There is some discussion of whether P. sonorum is truly "domesticated" in the strictest agricultural sense of the term, but there is no question that it has long been selected and cultivated
NATIVE AMERICAN MILLETS IN IYM?
The prehistory, history, and limited current use of species of Setaria and Panicum in the agriculture and foodways of the first inhabitants of North America are in the domain of "hidden histories" and "lost crops." That should change, and current interest in crops of Native Americans before 1492, along with the focus on millets invited by the IYM, offer the potential to bring native millets out of obscurity.
The IYM proposal was conceived with reference to better known millet crops established in agriculture of Eurasia (esp. Asia) and Africa, and introduced in limited degrees in other regions like North America. That focus is being framed by FAO in terms of "dryland small grains that contribute to food security and nutrition," which would logically include Panicum sonorum. One ideal outcome of the IYM in North America would be more attention and resources devoted to this grain (with respect to the communities and cultures of the people who have kept its cultivation alive).
In terms of messaging about IYM in North America, the existence of species of Setaria and Panicum in this region that have been cultivated for food - and which rightly can be called "millets" - adds a unique dimension to the story of millets here. Can this be used to heighten awareness of and interest in millets in general?
Don
Don Osborn, PhD (East Lansing, MI, US) North American Millets Alliance don@milletsalliance.org
bcc: Ms. Sarah Laskow, Sr. editor, The Atlantic, & author of the article referenced in note #1 Dr. Rob Myers, Dir., Ctr. for Regenerative Ag., U. Missouri & NCR-SARE Reg. Dir. of Extension
Notes: 1. Sarah Laskow, "America's Lost Crops Rewrite the History of Farming: Our food systems could have been so different," The Atlantic, 1 Oct. 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/10/agricultural-revolution-...
2. Jack Dekker, n.d. "The Foxtail (Setaria) Species-Group." http://agron-www.agron.iastate.edu/~weeds/PDF_Library/Jax_Pubs/FoxWSciRev7.1... (this is likely the same article that the author published in Weed Science, Oct. 2003, 51(5): 641-656 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4046542 ) 3. E.O. Callen, 1965. "Food habits of some Pre-Columbian Mexican Indians." Economic Botany 19(4):335-343. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02904803 4. E.O. Callen. 1967. "The first New World cereal." American Antiquity *32*(4), 535-538 https://doi.org/10.2307/2694082 [NB- in his citation of this source, Dekker, footnote #2 above, mistakenly added an "s" after "cereal" in the title] 5. J.M.J. de Wet. 1992. "The three phases of cereal domestication." In: Grass evolution and domestication, G.P. Chapman (Ed.). Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, UK. pp. 176- 198. 6. C. Earle Smith, Jr. 1968. "The New World centers of origin of cultivated plants and the archaeological evidence." Economic Botany 22(3):253-266. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02861958 7. https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Setaria_geniculata 8. Daniel F. Austin. 2006. "Fox-tail millets (Setaria: Poaceae)—Abandoned food in two hemispheres." Economic Botany 60(2), 143–158. https://doi.org/10.1663/0013-0001(2006)60[143:FMSPFI]2.0.CO;2 9. Gary Nabhan & J.M.J. de Wet. 1984. "Panicum sonorum in Sonoran Desert Agriculture." Economic Botany, 38(1), 65–82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4254574 10. https://www.nativeseeds.org/pages/sonoran-panic-grass 11. Barney T. Burns. 2011. "A Short History of Panic Grass." Seedhead News, No. 109, Spring 2011, pp. 6-7. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0157/0808/files/SeedheadNews109-2011-Sprin... (Republished in 2015 at https://www.nativeseeds.org/blogs/blog-news/a-short-history-of-panic-grass ) 12. https://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Panicum_hirticaule 13. https://explorer.natureserve.org/Taxon/ELEMENT_GLOBAL.2.130251/Panicum_sonor...