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Beans may be called “the food of the ancients,” with literature recording the cultivation of beans, lupins and lentils in the Nile Valley dating as early as 2000 BCE. Common beans originated in Latin America (high Andeas, Guatemala and Mexico) where its wild progenitor (P. vulgaris var. mexicanus and var. aborigenous) has a wide distribution ranging from northern Mexico to northwestern Argentina (Gepts 2001; Grigolo and Fioreze 2018). Phaseolus beans are recognized as an exclusive New World Crop of American origin despite their wide distribution worldwide. Secondary centers of diversification are East Africa and Europe, since the Phaseolus beans were introduced by Spaniards and Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Angioi et al. 2010; Schumacher and Boland 2017). Beans have played a part in the superstitions, the politics, and the warfare of ancient peoples. Magistrates were elected in Greece and Rome by the casting of beans into helmets. Certain kinds have been credited with medicinal value (Hardenburg 1927).

Originally domesticated in Central and South America, dry beans moved northward through Mexico and spread across most of the United States. These beans were commonly grown with corn and sometimes squash (Schumacher and Boland 2017). The early Europeans, first in the New England States of the US, then generations later in the upper Midwest (Great Lakes region), found that the white pea bean and many other dry beans provided a fine staple for a subsistence diet. The settlers explored and adapted to growing dry beans that the native Indians apparently had never exploited. They traded their excess production to non‐bean‐growing neighbors for goods, services, or cash.

The Iroquois Indians grew a small, round pea bean (Indian bean) with corn and squash (“three sisters” cropping system); this bean later became known as the “navy bean” because of the large demand that developed for this bean for naval and marine food supply purposes.