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South America—llamas. The introduction of
European pigs, sheep, cattle, and especially
horses transformed how and what Native
Americans ate, wore, traveled, and traded.
Escaped cattle from herds in Argentina and
the southwestern United States would breed
in the wild, providing foundations for massive
commerce in beef and leather products in the
1800s. Inthe century that followed, however,
the bison—so plentiful and so crucial for the
Indians of North America—was all but wiped
out.
Many crops introduced from the Old
World did not exist in the Americas prior to
1492, including onions, melons, radishes, let-
tuce, cabbage, cauliflower, chickpeas, apples,
peaches, pears, yams, rice, wheat, and other
grains. Several introduced crops, such as
sugar, bananas, and coffee, would eventually
become major exports from the Americas.
Meanwhile, New World crops unknown in
Europe before 1492 included maize (corn),
tomatoes, pumpkin, squash, sweet potatoes,
pineapples, avocados, and many varieties of
beans. Cacao beans used for making choco-
late were a novelty. So were potatoes. These
South American tubers were initially unpopu-
lar when imported to Europe in the 1500s, but(^178) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
the next 200 years. The equestrian skills of Native Americans grew, too, as horses
transformed Indian life from the Canadian prairies to the grasslands of Argentina.
North American Great Plains tribes, which depended on the buffalo for survival,
were able to hunt more easily. Societies that previously traveled on foot and
transported their belongings on travois frames hitched to dogs became more
mobile, moving faster and over longer distances. Horses also changed the nature
of warfare, both among tribes and against settlers pushing into Indian territory.
Within a few centuries, the horse changed from being an object of terror into a
creature whose great contributions to Native American culture were honored in
religious rituals and art across the hemisphere.
\
(continued)
Cotton, a crop cultivated in the Americas before
Europeans introduced it, became a valuable export
throughout the Americas after colonists settled there.
In an early 19th-century drawing, two Jamaicans sit
on a structure with a tall bag for cotton. (Library of
Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
[LC-USZ62-110700])
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