One Word

[_bcuzbcuz]

Over 5000 edible sorts of this plant exist in the Americas.....but it is never mentioned in Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon.

http://www.countryfarm-lifestyles.com/heirloom-potatoes.html

Do I believe his book? My answer is one word- potato

[_GR33N]

Observations on the Creek and Cherokee Indians food traditions

( by William Bartram in 1789, From "Transaction of the American Ethnological Society Vol. 3 Pt. 1. Extracts )

They use a strong lixivium prepared from ashes of bean stalks and other vegetables in all their food prepared from corn, which otherwise, they say, breeds worms in their stomachs.

The vines or climbing stems of the climber ( Bigonia Crucigera) are equally divided longitudinally into four parts by the same number of their membranes somewhat resembling a piece of white tape by which means, when the vine is cut through and divided traversely, it presents to view the likeness of a cross. This membrane is of a sweet, pleasant taste. The country people of Carolina crop these vines to pieces, together with china brier ands sassafras roots, and boil them in their beer in the spring, for diet drink, in order to attenuate and purify the blood and juices, it is a principal ingredient in Howards famous infusion for curing the yaws, etc., the virtues and use of which he obtained from Indian Doctors.

Their animal food consists chiefly of venison, bear's flesh, turkeys, hares, wild fowl and domestic poultry; and also of domestic kind, as beeves, goats and swine - never horse flesh, though they have horses in great plenty; neither do they eat the flesh of dogs, cats or any such creatures as are rejected by white people. Their vegetable food consists chiefly of corn, rice, convelvulus batatas, or those nourishing roots usually called the sweet or Spanish potatoes ( but in the Creek country they never eat the Irish potato).

[_bcuzbcuz]

Yes, the Creek and Cherokee, who came from what is now the state of Georgia, used the sweet potato, which is not a relative of the common potato.

The book you quote was written in 1789, roughly nines years after the common potato became "common" in Ireland. By then it had travelled from South or Central America to Spain, through Europe, and finally cultivated in Ireland. The Creek and Cherokee seeing it as the "Irish" potato is actually a bit humourous.

but in the Creek country they never eat the Irish potato

As for the rest of the Americas, potatoes were spread through South, and Central America, while potato usage in North America was not as widespread. Are Squash and beans mentioned in the Book of Mormon?

[_MCB]

Here is a search-able text for the book. also look for turkeys, wild rice, cranberries, bison or buffalo, llamas, etc. Have fun-- there are many things you would expect to see there, if the Book of Mormon were really an account of pre-Columbian America.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17

[_GR33N]

Yeah, from what I've read it got it's name (Irish Potato) because of how much the poor people in Ireland depended on it for a main food source. The ironic thing is that it then became the cause of their demise when potato blight broke out and killed most of the poor. Interestingly the Choctaw Indians took up donations to send to Ireland to help them during the famine. The Choctaw donation was the largest donation of any other group that contributed. $170 in 1847.

[_MCB]

I read that the relief fund sent cornmeal. Many Natives believe in a pre-Columbian link with Ireland.