The Chris Moeller Archives

Teaching the Pilgrims progress

We all get it, right? That the aboriginal people of present-day Massachusetts, the Wampanoags, bailed out the Pilgrims in those years surrounding the first Thanksgiving in 1621? It was an English tradition to have a feast to celebrate the fall harvest, but the first Europeans to arrive in this area at this time were woefully unprepared for the New World. They were religious separatists-- ministers, teachers, radicals of a sort, bounded together by a faith. What they were not necessarily was the either of hunter-gatherers or farmers.

This was the land of plenty, but they were starving. Des Moines native Bill Bryson wrote about it years ago in his book Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States. Without the natives, our holiday dinner fare would be something along the lines of salt pork, hard tack (a severely baked, almost impenetrable biscuit), dried peas and beans. John Winthrop, a lawyer, wrote home that all he could find to eat in the new colony was oysters, duck, salmon, and scallops when he sorely missed his mutton.

But the newcomers were not just ignorant because they were newcomers. The reality is that they found a more sophisticated agriculture here than existed anywhere in Europe. In today's America, we still all flock to restaurants that serve us the traditional foodstuffs of England, Ireland, Belgium, and the whole of Scandinavia, those great culinary outposts (sarcasm), it shouldn't surprise you to know how sophisticated the Native Americans would have seemed to them. The Indians were enjoying more than two thousand different foods, an unimaginable number to Europeans living in the 17th century. Bryson lists white and sweet potatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, squash, persimmon, avocados, pineapples, chocolate and vanilla, cassavas, chili peppers, sunflowers, tomatoes, and (king) corn. And typically what both continents of people enjoyed on their plate, the North American version was superior-- strawberries and green beans.

It wasn't just the advantage of climate or a rich soil. The natives knew more about nutrition. They knew that balance in diet was the key to living healthier. They effectively taught the whole of Europe about the concept of crop rotation. Planting beans among the corn, for example, replenished the nitrogen to the ground that corn would take away from it, and Iowa farmers still practice this strategy of sharing in the ground. The Europeans sometimes took the product, but not the lesson. The white potato became a staple with the Irish, but it's likely that a lack of genetic diversity surrounding the crop led to the Irish Potato Famine of the 1800s. And then onto the boat came even more Europeans, bound for the New World.

The natives also had much to teach about food preparation. Boston baked beans? Native American. New England clam chowder? Native American. Virginia's Smithfield ham? Native American. Succotash, corn pone, cranberry sauce, johnnycakes. The Puritans preferred deep boiling, lack of seasoning, served lukewarm. Probably in line with a religious tradition of deprivation.

So great was the Wampanoegs' surplus of food in 1621 that they could share it, in Bryson's words, with "a hundred helpless, unexpected visitors for the better part of a year." Without this bounty, who knows if more Europeans would have even followed in the Pilgrims' wake? The "land of plenty" had to be demonstrated and explained.

posted by CM @ 3:14 PM