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Native Americans in the northeast of the U.S pounded native-to-the-U.S. cranberries together with dried meat and animal fat to make pemmican, an almost-perfect trail-food which keeps almost forever.
Early French explorers also found the native inhabitants of Wisconsin eating cranberries, and using them along with wild rice as trade goods. The native inhabitants of New England also invented cranberry sauce, cooking cranberries with maple sugar or honey.
The combination of the high acidity in the fruit, along with naturally
occuring amounts of benzoic acid, a preservative, means that cranberries can stay whole and fresh almost indefinitely; their staying powers long before the era of refrigeration meant that they were among the first fruits shipped back to Europe from the New World. Cranberries for storage were sorted by tossing them down stairs: the good ones bounced, and the rotten ones stayed put. This is technology still used by modern packers and sorters of cranberries (although it's machines, and not stairs, that are deployed for the bouncing).
Cranberries in their bogs rely on bees for pollination.
Dried cranberries pull together salads containing such diverse ingredients as wheatberries, mint leaves, pine nuts, pecans, or mandarin-orange segments. Fresh cranberries added to smoothies made from vegetables add piquancy.
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