Were These Native Americans Real-Life "Super Men"?

The First Spanish Explorers in the American Southwest Witnessed Legendary Feats of Strength and Power

When I was in Arizona getting ready to climb Humphreys Peak, I did some research on Native Americans.

Back in the old West, Native Americans enjoyed a kind of power and vigor that is hard for us to understand or believe.

Cabeza de Vaca, one of the first Europeans to explore what is now Texas and the Southwest in the 16th century, lived among the Native Americans for eight years.1

He observed, “One Native American ran down a buffalo on foot and killed it with his knife as he ran by its side.”2

De Vaca found these Indians resilient and hard to kill: “Traversed by an arrow, he does not die but recovers from his wound… the men were happy, generous, with amazing physical prowess… they go naked in the most burning sun, in winter they go out in early dawn to take a bath, breaking the ice with their body.”

To our modern ears it sounds like these Native Americans were supermen. In reality, their power came from being in perfect balance with their environment, what I call native fitness, and eating a high-protein, high-fat diet.

The diet these hunter-gathers followed depended on topography and climate. But, it was basically simple – animal and vegetable, whatever they could catch or reap.

And in contrast to our modern, so-called “healthy” low-fat, or fat-free diets, the ancient native diet was extremely high in fat – mostly the maligned saturated fat.

The ancient Native Americans liked the older fattest because they had built up layers of fat along their backs. This saturated fat was highly prized as it could be rendered and stored, to be consumed with dried or smoked lean meat.3

These hunter-gatherers intuitively knew that

saturated fat was good for them. When big game was scarce and the only fresh meat were small animals with low body fat, like squirrel or rabbit, they developed something called “fat-hunger,” also known as rabbit-starvation. Symptoms include headache, lassitude and vague discomfort… and no matter how much they ate they felt dissatisfied.4

Sounds like the effects of our modern low-fat diet, doesn’t it?

Native Americans added wild berries, fruit and grains to the meat. They ground up the small bones and added it to the meat and fat. No trimming of excess fat and throwing it away.5

And they were remarkably healthy and powerful. So are native Americans who live like their ancestors. There is an almost complete absence of tooth decay or malignant disease among the truly primitive Eskimos and Indians. But, when they become modernized and followed the current American diet, acute medical problems surfaced.6 They became obese, diabetic and sedentary.

So, what can we do today to eat and live like the ancient Native Americans? We can’t go out and kill our own bison or forage for grain on the prairie. We have to forage in our local grocery store, butchers or farmer’s market.

Here are my suggestions, based on my observations of healthy native cultures around the world:

  • Use raw, unprocessed milk from grass-fed cows.
  • Eat free-range meat
  • Consume good fats like butter, tallow or lard
  • Have lots of fresh, wild seafood
  • Use organic grown vegetables and fruits
  • Eat organ meat, such as liver, once a week
  • Add in cod liver oil
  • Cut out processed foods – white flour, sugar, and cereals7

You can imitate stalking and chasing your dinner on the hoof by adopting my PACE program.

Take up an outdoor activity that’ll excite and elate you.

Go hiking in the fresh air. Walk or bike instead of driving. Climb a mountain. Swim in the ocean.

Do all of this and you’ll be a modern day, lean and fit American, able to run across the prairie in pursuit of your dinner… if you needed to.

  1. Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos http://alkek.library.txstate.edu/swwc/cdv/
  2. The explorer Cabeza de Vaca is quoted in WW Newcombe, The Indians of Texas, 1961, University of Texas.
  3. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Fat of the Land, MacMillan Company, 1956
  4. Learning from Cabeza de Vaca – The University of Texas at Austin. http://www.texasbeyondhistory.net/cabeza-cooking/index.html
  5. Stefansson, op cit
  6. Weston A. Price, DDS, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundations, (619) 574-7763, pages 73-102
  7. Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD, Guts and Grease: The Diet of Native Americans, January 2000.