{"id":41887,"date":"2021-09-24T20:02:57","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T20:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/?p=41887"},"modified":"2025-11-02T11:24:55","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T11:24:55","slug":"indian-fry-bread-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crazycrow.com\/site\/indian-fry-bread-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian Frybread History: Explore a Complex & Fascinating Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Indian Frybread History: Explore a Complex & Fascinating Story<\/h1>\n

Navajo Innovation, Reservation Rations & the Mexican Tortilla<\/h2>\n

By Crazy Crow Trading Post ~ September 24, 2021<\/h3>\n<\/div>

Indian Frybread History: Explore a
\nComplex & Fascinating Story<\/h1>\n

Navajo Innovation, Reservation Rations & the Mexican Tortilla<\/h2>\n

By Crazy Crow Trading Post ~ September 24, 2021<\/h3>\n<\/div>
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What \u201cis\u201d Indian Frybread?<\/h2>\n

Before we get into “complexities” of Indian frybread history (also spelled fry bread), let\u2019s address some basics. This article is about the Indian frybread that has evolved from the 1864 Navajo ‘Long Walk’ as explained below. Indian frybread is usually made with a few simple ingredients \u2013 wheat (white) flour, salt, fat (lard), and water. Once the ingredients are mixed, it is formed into a flat dough bread that is fried or deep-fried in oil, shortening, or lard. Frybread can be eaten just as it\u2019s taken from the oil, or with one or more of several popular toppings. By itself it is a great bread accompaniment with a bowl of stew or when paired as a side to any beef-based meal or stew. When topped with honey it is often compared with sopapillas. Other sweet treat or dessert versions are sprinkled with sugar or topped with jam. Topping with beef or brisket is a popular pairing, making it a meal itself.<\/p>\n

The ultimate frybread-based meal, however, has evolved in its use as the base for an unlimited variety of tacos (replacing the \u201cshells\u201d). While the origin of frybread is linked to the Navajo \u201cLong Walk\u201d of 1864, it is often found at powwows and tribal events (and homes) from coast to coast. On an even broader scale, its popularity has spread well beyond native events so that today it can be found at all types and sizes of fairs or festivals throughout the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Frybread was not originally a traditional Native food.<\/h2>\n

Ask most folks in American about frybread and you will find that they consider it a traditional Native food. While this may be true given its origins, it is not an accurate description of the ‘roots’ of Indian frybread history. Frybread was created by the Navajo in 1864 when the U.S. government created the reservation system and the distribution of food commodities to the peoples and tribes \u2018moved\u2019 there whose way of life (and feeding themselves) had been disrupted. [1]<\/p>\n

At the time this was happening to the Navajo, relocating them from northern Arizona to Bosque Redondo, New Mexico (which would not support their traditional staples of vegetables and beans), this same process resulted in many tribes being removed from their ancestral homelands to reservations in other parts of the West. Thus, the history of frybread is directly linked to this trauma of relocation and the Native fight for survival.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Original Indian Frybread Recipe Defined by Minimal Government Rations<\/h3>\n

The tragic elements of Indian frybread history start hundreds of miles away from the traditional and familiar lands of the Navajo where they could forage, hunt, and grow familiar crops. Here, in this new and desolate place, the Navajo starved. They were issued government rations of white wheat flour, salt, and lard, from which they created the recipe for frybread. This ‘new’ bread recipe (see Mexican Frybread Connection section below) and cooking method (deep frying) helped them survive their time on the reservation until an 1868 treaty allowed them to return home to Arizona.<\/p>\n

The story was a familiar one among other Native American communities who experienced similar relocations and internments across the United States. Native Americans received unfamiliar foods in the relocation camps where low-income communities continue to receive federal disbursements today. This means that for many Native Americans, fry bread history links generation with generation, connecting the present to the painful narrative of Native American history and relocation. [1]<\/p>\n

Frybread’s significance and relationship to Native Americans is described by some as complicated. Although frybread is often associated with “traditional” Native American cuisine, some Native American chefs reject it as a symbol of colonialism. Still others have described it as a symbol of “perseverance and pain, ingenuity and resilience\u201d; a symbol of resilience as it developed from necessity using government-provided flour, sugar, and lard. because the government had moved the people onto land that could not support growing traditional staples like corn and beans.<\/p>\n<\/div>

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A Mexican Fry Bread Connection to Indian Frybread History?<\/h2>\n

While finishing research on this article, there were certain issues we were trying to cover, including the similarity of the tortilla and frybread, wheat flour vs. corn meal, etc.\u00a0 Every article about the history of Indian frybread describes how it originated in 1864 as a result of the “Long Walk” and the minimal rations issued for survival, yet we found no references, except the two gentlemen quoted below,\u00a0 who asked if that wasn\u2019t just half the story. Judge for yourself. It makes sense that after hundreds of years of contact with the Spanish (and subsequently Mexicans) that the Navajo would have been familiar with the flour tortilla. White flour had been introduced into the northern Mexican by the Europeans in around 1650, and corn tortillas had been replaced by white flour in that area for decades before 1864.\u00a0 So the tortilla of these bordering northern Mexican states already included white flower. Then, instead of cooking in a fry pan or griddle without grease (or just a coating), you deep fry it in the lard provided by the government agents for a fluffier, dense, filling result. If you are given a handful of ingredients to make some type of nourishment on which to survive, it would be logical (and smart) to ask yourself, \u201cwhat do I know to make that I could use or substitute some of these available rations with?\u201d If I’m familiar with tortillas and can think of a way to basically just change the way I cook it to produce a much more filling piece of bread (and tastier if you don’t have the usual tortilla fillings), I’d vote for fry bread!<\/p>\n

Frybread Transition from Other Mexican Tortilla-Type Breads<\/h3>\n

Jos\u00e9 R. Ralat, Taco Editor for Texas Monthly and author of \u201cAmerican Tacos: A History and Guide\u201d (University of Texas Press), tells an interviewer from \u201cthetakeout.com\u201d in May 2020 that he is starting to believe that with the Navajo, frybread was something that transitioned from other tortilla-type breads that were learned from farther south. Then, when they were moved to a reservation in 1864 and their normal diet was replaced with government provided with a handful of less-healthy ingredients, flour was substituted for the traditional corn masa out of necessity and survival mode.[14]<\/p>\n

When you note that flour tortillas are typical of the U.S.-Mexican border region and the northern states of Mexico, including Sonora and Sinaloa, this theory appears very reasonable. They\u2019re a consequence of Spanish conquest replacing corn with European white wheat flour introduced during the colonial period of New Spain. This would mean that Native American tribes, such as the Navajo, in the area would have been aware of flour as an ingredient in cooking long before 1864 and their removal to Basque Redondo.<\/p>\n

But even if frybread wasn\u2019t simply a product of the Long Walk and subsequent internment, this perspective doesn\u2019t detract from the significance of the back story of Navajo fry bread, and later, the frybread taco. The elements of bread-making were already established when the Navajo were torn from their land. They simply used the government provided staples of lard, salt, and flour in a familiar way. As Jeffrey Pilcher, an expert in the subject of tacos and Mexican food and a professor of history at the University of Minnesota, explains, \u201cPeople start innovating with ingredients when they have a lot of it around. In this case, government commodity programs may be part of the story.\u201d They did what they could with what they had and, in turn, created something so powerful it nourished their bodies and their identities. [14].<\/p>\n<\/div>

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Cooking Comparisons: Indian Frybread vs. Tortillas vs. Biscuits [17]<\/span><\/h2><\/span>
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COMPARE: Except for the olive oil (not available at Fort Sumner in 1864) used in tortillas and biscuits, and the cooking method, all three recipes are identical!<\/p>\n<\/div>

FRYBREAD RECIPE<\/h2>\n<\/div>