Reflecting on A Revolution in Eating

 

I've spent the better part of a year reading the book A Revolution in Eating by James McWilliams. This 387-page work not only chronicles the methods of surviving, sustaining, growing and thriving in the early years of Colonial America and the West Indies, but it also shows the strategies of the different regions in creating their agriculture and economies. 

First Contact

As (mostly) British immigrants arrived in the New England colonies, they were helped by Native Americans to survive the first cold winters. Before they could plant crops and raise livestock, the colonists were at a loss as to how to elude starvation. But the Native Americans showed them how to hunt, forage, and fish. Many of the British knew how to hunt but thought of it as sport only. Hunger pangs convinced them to think and act otherwise. In addition to foraging for greens, roots, nuts, and berries, the Native Americans showed the newcomers how to reap a harvest from the seas and waterways during all seasons of the year. 

Kindness and Trade

McWilliams quotes the journal of Gabriel Archer, who journeyed up the James River in 1607. Archer recounts how a small group of Native Americans followed their boats for about six miles carrying baskets of dried oysters, mulberries, nuts, fruit, corn, beans, and mulberries. They traded these to the travelers in exchange for metal objects, beads, and cloth. Forty miles later down the river, Archer's party "found our kind Comrades againe" and were well supplied. 

Still later, the party embarked to watch a Native American man planting corn, beans, peas, "tobacco, pompions, gourds" and more. A feast with the chief Powhatan featured roast venison, a land turtle, and cakes made from the tuber "tuckahoe" (pictured at right), which was somewhat like cassava. Everywhere, food could be had. The skies teemed with geese, duck, and other game birds, and fat turkeys roamed. In the waterways, there were abundant fish populations such as herring and shad, and shellfish such as mussels, crabs, and lobsters.

Accounts like this opened my mind to the fact that a wealth of biodiversity existed at the time of the coming of the colonists. By supplying food during winters and shortages as well as teaching the settlers how to sustain themselves in the New World, Native Americans often made the difference in whether settlements succeeded or failed. 

Accepting New Foods

The book's early chapters divide the Colonies into regions and explain the distinctive cultures and practices that emerged. In New England, settlers worked hard to transplant British practices, planting wheat and orchards, raising traditional British cattle and sheep. But they also found it necessary and were eager to accept certain foods of Native Americans, primarily corn and game animals. 

 

Fishing operations in the Chesapeake Bay region. Credit: Smithsonian

 

In the West Indies, the economy grew up around the cultivation of sugar cane, with large plantations established by the immigrants. These plantations were labor-intensive, leading to the enslavement and importation of many people from the Western part of Africa. These workers were often given plots of land to farm for their own use, so they planted crops from their homeland and developed a cuisine that grew from the one they had left behind. 

The other two regions of Colonial America, Chesapeake Bay and the Mid-Atlantic, were hybrids of the two extremes of New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Tobacco became the sugarcane of the Chesapeake, and although many other crops could be grown, their use was neglected in favor of the lucrative leaves. The Mid-Atlantic region took the same path with rice. 

The book has been exhaustively researched with a 20-page bibliography. I'll probably be referring to this book for the rest of my life, so I'm glad I purchased it! 

 

 

Cornelius Galle: Hunting Geese with Pumpkins