The Southwest tribes, including the Apache, Navajo, Pueblo, and others, had a varied diet that included both wild and cultivated foods. Some of the foods they ate include:

• Wild Foods: Pinon nuts, cacti (saguaro, prickly pear, cholla), century plant, screwbeans, mesquite beans, agaves or mescals, insects, acorns, berries, and seeds. Small game such as rabbits, deer, elk, mountain goat, and bear. Wild greens and herbs such as wild Indian tea, wild purslane, tumbleweed greens, piñon, and yucca blossoms.

• Cultivated Foods: Corn, beans, squash, melons, pumpkins, sunflowers, and grasses. Some tribes irrigated and cultivated the land for these crops, while others relied more on wild foods than on agriculture.

• Processed Foods: Some Southwest Native American tribes evolved their cuisines to include processed foods from rations along with traditional fare.

• Meat: Meat made up only a very small portion of the ancestral Southwest Native American diet and consisted almost entirely of small game, such as rabbits.

The Navajo, for example, were farmers, hunters, and gatherers who tended sheep and planted corn. They also grew beans, squash, melons, pumpkins, and fruit. The Apache tribes utilized an array of foods, ranging from game animals to fruits, nuts, cactus, and rabbits, to sometimes cultivated small crops. Some used corn to make tiswin or tulupai, a weak alcoholic drink.

Overall, the Southwest tribes had a diverse diet that allowed them to survive in a sometimes harsh environment.