The Americas

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1of 11

TH E AME RICA - - -- - -'-:::-°\

===~'---- 2.03

they were right; unless zamia pulp is e ithe r intensively washed or else
_I5- fermented, it can be toxic.
In Cuba the Spaniards found a more acceptable bread, cassava,
THE AMERICAS although it, too, was made from a plant that was poisonous when
raw, the bitter variety of manioc, which contains cyanide. The tech-
nique here was either to boil the roots very thoroughly and then mash
them, or to pee! and grate the roots, and then squeeze out the juices
The 'Indies' where Columbus made his landfall were in fact the under heavy pressure.''· The pulp was sieved, shaped into Aat cakes,
~a ha mas,* islands 'full of green trees and abounding in springs' with and cooked slowly on a griddle. ·
gardens that were as beautiful as Castille in May'. Although relieved Soft ~nd flexible when fresh, cassava hread could he dried and kept
to find the inhabitants a 'gentle, peaceful and very simple people' who fo_r two ·or t_h ree years. The Spanish, and later the French, adopted it
gratcfully accepted the 'little red caps and glass beads' he bestowed on w1th en~hus1asm; there were even sorne who claimed it to be superior
them, he soon realized 'that this was not the land he sought; nor did it to wheaten bread. Manioc was to be introduced into Africa by the
offer such promise of riches as to hold him there'. 2 Portuguese during the sixteenth century, where its lack of protein was
In search of better things the Spanish ships cruised south during the more than compensated for by a virtual immunity to locusts and an
months that followed, touching at many of the Caribbean islands, ability to remain in the ground foras muchas two years after maturity
looking for spices and gold, surveying the territory, learning a little w1thout deteriorating, making ita valuable insurance against scarcity.t
abotn the peoplc and - of nccessity - more about their food. As well as objectionable insects and breads of dubious provenance,
thc people of the Caribbean ate 'cooked roots that had the Aavour of
Sorne of the things they ate appeared revolting to rhe F.uropeans,
chesmuts' 6 - probably sweet potatoes - beans in variety, wild birds,
unaccusromed to 'large far ~iders, white worms rhat brced in roncn
fish, and crabs in abundance. In Panama they wrapped a particular
wood, and other decayed objects'. 3 Tropical America, of course, had
kmd of small fish in !caves 'as apothecaries roll electuaries [medicinal
always been short of food animals, s~ there was a long tradition of
powd~rs] :': paper, and after being dried in the oven the fish keep for a
earing, instead, the insects that abounded. The agave worm (meocui-
long time . There were also a great number of fruits, from which
lin), considered a great delicacy at the court of the Aztccs, rcmains
fermented drinks were made.
one in Mexico today.t
Among the groups of tri bes · the Spaniards cncountcred was the
Taino, which suggests thac rhe 'other decayed objeccs' may have MAIZE
included a speciality of theirs, zam_ia bread, whose preparation was by
Of ali the new foodstuffs Columbus found in the Caribbean, maize
no means unsophisticated. lt was made by grating the stems of the
was to be the most important in later history . Europe now knows ir
zamia plant, then shaping the pulp into balls and leaving them in the
by a version of its Taino name (mahiz), but the Pilgrim Fathers in
sun for two or three days until they hegan to rot and turn black and
seventeenth-century North America first learned of it from local
wormy. When sufficiently ripe, the balls were Aattened into ca_kes and
I~dians; th~n, as now, 'corn' was a catch-all English word for any
baked over the fire on a griddle. If the bread was eaten befare it kmd of gram, so they called it 'Indian corn' .
became black and wormy, said the Taínos, 't~e eaters will die'. In this
"The juices, boiled hard, were used to make cassareep sauce and also rhrew a
srarchy sedirnenr rhat, dried, was to become rhe bane of generarions of Euro-
" Ar a spot recenrly identified by rhe Nacional Geographic Sociery's compurer pean children, tapioca.
(with 98 per cent certainry) as sixry-five miles sourh-easr of San Salvador on t Though not infallibly. In 1_1orrhern Mozambique as recently as 1981 :2n acure
Samana Cay.' , . water shortage resulred in sorne rnanioc nor being preparcd as rhoroughly as
t Mexican gourmers have rheir worms . In France rhe great new delicacy of it should be; more than a rhousand people suffered parcial paralysis as a
4
1986 was snails' eggs (selling ar roughly f35 per 1 ¾-ounce jar) . resulr. 5
2.0 4 - - - - - T HI- l ' A NDING WORLD 1492. - 1789 ------4--1--• 205

of gold dust, but he seems also to ha ve carried rna JZe seeds in his
\Xthcn Columbus first sightcd America, its inhabitants had already
baggage. Soon afrerwards the Spaniards began distributmg maize
devt.:lopcJ more rh:rn 200 types of maize - onc of the rnost _rernarkable
a round the Mediterranean, although it was the Venetians who took it
plan t,. brecding achicvcmcnts in history . C?n his early v1s1ts to C_uba
to rh e N ear East, from which it travelled up to the Ba!kans and also
Columhus n ore<l rh at ir was 'rnost tasry boiled, roasred or ground _m_ro
back to France, Britain a nd Holland. For a time Britain, Germany,
fl ou r '." Whcn he arrived back in Spain, his rnost popular exh1b1ts
H olland and Russia called it 'Tu rkish wheat'. In parts of France it
fro m rh c New World were a few specirnen 'lndians' and sorne handfuls
was Rh o d es, Spanish or Barbary corn; in Italy, Sicilian or Turkish
corn. And in Turkey? 'Roums corn' - foreign corn.
When, in 1519, Magellan set out on a new Spanish arrcmpt ro reach
the Spice Islands by a westward rome, he took maize with him. 1c was
known in the Philippines soon afrer, and by 1555 was sufficiently
important in sorne parts of China to rate a mention in a regional
hisrory of the province of Hcnan (Honan). 9 In che seventeenth cen-
tury ir was to transform agricultura! life in Yunnan and Sichuan
(Szechuan) and become alife-saving crop for migranrs forced out into
the hills from the overpopulated Yangtze delta.
To Portugal, however, belongs the dubious crcdit for having intro-
duced maize farming to Africa to provide ships ' seores for the slave
trade. Among hi srory's many ironi es is che fact rhat a cheap food
designed to feecl African sla\' CS on thcir way 10 America should have
resulrcd, in Afri ca itse lf, in a population increasc subsranrial cnough
ro ensurc that th e slavers would never sail empty of human cargo.
Maize was accepted quickly in Africa because, in comparison with
other grains, it grcw rapidly and its cultivation was undemanding
(which is not, howevcr, true of rhe modern, heavy-cropping varieties).
A woman working alone could planr her seeds, leave them to grow
and harvcs t che crop as an<l when she nee<lcd it; when onc parch of
soil bccamc c x haus1cJ, she moved on to another. lt was poor agricul-
ture, but ir susraincd life and madc fcw demands.
In time che hcalth of the Old World peoples who adopted rnaize as
rheir staple began to deteriorare. Africa today is still on!y too familiar
with the 'di sea se of the mealies', otherwise known as pellagra, which
results from eating too rnuch maize and not enough foods containing
rhe vitamin C and nicotinic acid that maize lacks. In much of the
African interior, except in banana-growing regions, useful fruits and
vegetables were in shorr supply until the American inrroducrions
(including manioc, rhe sweet potato, groundnuts and French beans)
became widely established, while in Europe foods with a high nicorinic
acid content were not, with the exception of cheese, easy for rhe poor
to come by, especially when they were unaware of the need for them .
. d h coascs C:f che Medicerranean As a result, maize soon lost much of its inicial popularity in Europe (if
. ·1 enough roun e e
By 156 3, maize was talm~ ia_r ·n his paincing of 'Sum~er'.
for Arcimboldo co inc u e ir •
206
- THE .ANDING WORLD 1492-1789

not in Africa, where the options were fewer) and did not regain it
until a wider-ranging diet became common.
THE AME RICASª•--- - - - --•.,__ _

Spaniards, better informed, called it tomate (from the Aztec tomatl)


and adopted it as readily into their diet as they did all other introduc-
207

tions from their American empire.


Italy also acquired a taste for it sorne time later, when two Jesuit
BEANS, TOMATOES ANO PEPPERS
priests brought a red variery back from America. 'Apples of Love',
In Central and South America pellagra was rare because the de- reported the Quaker merchant Peter Collinson in 1742, 'are very
ficiencies in maize wcre amply remedied by other items in the diet - much used in Iraly to purt when ripe inro their Brooths & Soops
tomatoes, avocados, beans, capsicums and fish. giving ita pretty Tart Tast. A Lady Just come from Leghorn says she
Beans, which provided useful protein when eaten in conjunction thinks it gives an Agreeable tartness & Relish to them & she likes it
with maizc, wcre usually boiled, though if they were young and small Much.' 1 º Tomato sauce as an accompaniment to pasta pur in an
they may have been caten raw. The refrito beans that are a speciality appearance a few decades later.
of Mexico today - boiled, mashed, fried and served with a topping of Not until the twentieth century did Britain acquire a · taste for
grated cheese - evolved only after the Spaniards introduced the cow tomatoes - and, with it, a passion for tinned tomato soup - and
and other domesticated animals to Central America. Before that, there America was almost equally slow, possibly influenced by the same
seems to have been no reliable supply of fat or oil; what little fat thcre arguments thar discouraged the peoples of northern and western
was carne from dry-fleshed game animals or birds, and although oil Europe. ''· Tomatoes were described as being an extremely 'cold' food
was sometimes extracted from groundnuts, maize or sunflower seeds, (in terms of the four humours), a cause of gout and lacking in borh
there is sorne academic doubt as to whether technology was far enough nourishment and substance.
advanced for this kind of extraction to be practised on any scale. The Central American capsicum 'pepper', which like the tomato has
Tomatoes had made their first appearance as weeds in prehistoric a high vitamin C content, bore no family relationship to the piper
times, but careful cultivation had enormously increased both yield nigrum of India, but the Spaniards were swift to apply the old name
and varieties by the time Cortés and_his 400 Spaniards reached Mexico pimienta to the hot-tasting capsicums they found in Mexico - an
in 1519. Like maize, toma toes were utilized at every stage of growth; excusable piece of wishful thinking, on the whole, since it was the
thin shavings of the green and unripe fruit were incorporated in many search for pepper that had taken them to the New World in the first
dishes, while the ripe fruits were mixed with chillis to make a strong- place.
tasting sauce to go with cooked beans."' The inevitable confusion over names and classifications of peppers
The tomato introduced imo Europe in the sixteenth century may has not diminished with the centuries but, loosely, chilli peppers -
have been an orange-yellow variety, which would account for one of which come in various sizes and shapes, the small ones being mosr
the early na mes, 'golden ápple', although apples can seldom have familiar - are used for seasoning; rhe gamur of flavour runs from
been as heavily ribbed and misshapen as tomatoes were until the inflammatory to blistering (and the seeds can in fact, bum). Sorne are
beginning of the twentieth century. Another name was ')ove apple', dried to make chilli powder or the more refined cayenne paper, sorne
which derived either from the fruit's reputation as an aphrodisiac or pickled in vinegar for Tabasco sauce, and others can be used in sauces
from thc French pomme d'amour, itself a corruption either of pomi di and chutneys, oras direct flavourings in meat dishes. The large, sweet,
Mori ('apple of the Moors'),t or of pomodoro ('golden apple'). The fleshy bell pepper is the one that is used, green, yellow or red according
to ripeness, as a vegetable or in salads. Special varieties of it are dried
* Mexico's 'sauce to go with rhe beans' was an exact reflection of the Euro-
to make the mild spice known as paprika, which has none of the
pean 's companaticum and the Indian's karj. , searing pungency of rhe chilli.
t In the sixteenrh cenrury northern Europe was very hazy about ,whei;e ali the
new foods were acrually coming from and, from lo~~ centuries é>f habit,
tended ro attribure rhem ro the eastern end of the Medits:rranean, and call ,. The Unired States (as distinct from the narive Americas) were at first pre-
them Turkish (see p. 210); occasionally, if a Spantsh conn~pí:ion was suspected, dominantly WASP, or white Anglo-Saxon Prorestant, and took much of their
rhey compromised on Moorish. / culture and many of their attitudes from the Old World of their ancestors.
208 - - - - THE -ANDING WORLD I492-I789 .-'te---------- 1
TH E AME R IC . 2 99

The 1:'eople of tropical America used, and still use, capsicums with When the conquistadors reached the Aztec capital, Tenoch t itl a n ,
everythmg. In early post-Columbian times capsicums went into soups, and saw the market there, one of them, Bernal Diaz del Castillo,
stews~ sauc_es and vegeta ble preparations, sometimes four or five differ- reported how astonished they were 'at the number of people and the
ent kmds •~ che same dish; they were dried and pickled, too, as a quantity of merchandise that it contained, and at the good order and
po~table rehsh for travellers. In the early seventeenth century it was control that was maintained ... Each kind of merchandise w a s kept
est11~ated that there were at least forty varieties of capsicum;11 in by itself and had its fixed place marked out.' Sorne stallholders sold
Mex1co today there are said to be ninety-two. 'beans and sage and other vegeta bles and herbs', sorne 'rabbits, hare,
deer, young ducks, little dogs [bred for the table] and other such
creatures', sorne f_ruit, sorne salt, sorne honey and sorne 'cooked food,
Fooo IN MEXICO dough and tripe'. 12
In Aztec times most Mexicans breakfasted long aftcr they had begun The 'cooked food' would consist of stews, spiced maize porridge
the day, stopping only at about 10 a .m . fo La bowl of maize porridge and stuffed tortillas; the 'dough' would be tortilla paste. Tortillas
fl a voure d with h o n e y or capsicums, which sustained them until the were Mexico's daily bread. Kemels of dried maize, boiled in water
m a in m ea ! t a k c n in t h e ea d y afrern oon, when it was too hot to do with a little charcoal or lime to loosen the skins, were crushed to a
a n ythin g el se. T his co mmon ly consisted of tortillas, a dish o f b ean s paste with a stone roller. The paste was then kneaded and slapped
a nd a sa u ce m ade from tomatoes or peppers. into thin round cakes, and cooked on a special hotplate, the comalli,
that rested over a small fire.
Tortillas could be rolled and stuffed, when they were known as
cacos (or enchiladas), or che mixture could be made into tamales, in
which che uncooked dough was plastered onto com husks, spread
with a mixture of beans, capsicums, green tomato shavings and
shreds of mear or fish, folded like an envelope and then steamed.
The result, after che husk was stripped off, was a portable individual
pie, Mexico's answer to Scotland's Forfar bridie and China's spring
rol!.
When Berna! spoke of 'tripe' he probably meant 'tripes', or offal,
since tripe (in th c g astronomic as distinct from che polirical scnsc )
refe rs Lo thc s L0111 ac h lining of ruminant animab, and the only ~1cxican
ruminant in the early sixreenth century was che wild deer, which was
probably not slaughtered in sufficient numbers to keep a tripe seller in
business. There would, however, have been business enough and to
spare for a vendor of giblets, because although game animals were
scarce, there were great seasonal migrations of ducks, geese and other
wildfowl, and birds were trapped in considerable numbers.
There were sorne foods that gave the conquistadors pause, especially
those drawn from the lakes on which the capital was built. As well as
convencional pond life such as frogs and freshwater shrimps, there
were tadpoles, water flies, larvae, white worms and a curious froth
A Mexican girl learning to make tortillas. She grinds the boile<;I kernels on ·a
from the surface of the water that could be compressed inco a sub-
saddle quern (metate), moistening the paste with water ás,--sJte works. Then
she will knead it and pat it into tlat cakes to be cooked _P.ó the comalli, an stance not unlike cheese. At the court of Montezuma, a variety of
earthenware platter resting on three hearth-stones. 1 newt peculiar to Mexico (the axolotl) was something of a delicacy and
210 e..,.
_____
THE EX.DING WORLD 1492-1789
THE AMERICAS--
~ - - -~ - -~ - - 21 l

so, too, were winged ants and the large tree lizard, rhe iguana, which
rurkey except the Egyptians, who ought to have known better (dík-
even Columbus's sailors had thoughr 'white, soft and tasty'.' 3 That
~umi, the 'fowl of Turkey'). No one else called ita guinea -fowl , either,
other luxury, the agave worm or maguey slug, was often served with
-except - regrettably - Linnaeus, the eighteenrh-century Swedish
guacamole, the sauce that even in Aztec times was made with
boranist who undertook the superhuman rask of giving a Latin title
tomatoes, capsicums and avocados - rich in protein, far and A, B, C
and E viramins. and classification to everything in nature. On the turkey he bestowed
rhe generic name of meieagris, which had been Classical Rome's name
Mexico's only domesticated livestock were the turkey and the dog,
;for the guinea-fowl.
which was regarded as a useful but inferior mear. 'The turkey mear
· Elsewhere in Europe there was confusion of a different kind. In
was put on top and the dog underneath, ro make it scem more. ' 1 •
France rhe name most generally favoured was coq d'Jnde ('cock of
Afrer the Spanish conquest and the introduction of European carde,
India'; not, it should be noted, 'of the Jndies'), which was later cor-
the dog began to lose its usefulness as a food animal, but the turkey
entered on a wider stage. rupted to dinde or dindon. In Italy ir was gaile d'Jndia; in Germany,
indianische Henn. The sex of rhe names might vary, but rhe princi-
pie was the same, and ir was, on rhe whole, reasonable enough that
THE TURKEY the bird should have been attributed rC: India - even (or perhaps
e~pecially) by the Turks, who called ir hindi. The New World srub-
lt is possible - just - to make sense of how the turkey got its name.
bornly remained 'rhe new Indies' long afrer rhe error had been
The bird irself seems ro have reached England soon afte r its first
discovered.
arrival in Europe (in abour 1523-4) through rhe agency of th e Levant
or Turkey merchants, who usually rouch ed in ar .Sevillc on rheir way to But ir was a pity that rhe Germans, Durch and Scandinavians should
and from rhe eastern Mediterranean. Not familiar with its Mexican ha ve chosen to embroider furthcr on rhe Indian theme, producing che
name, uexolotl, or undersrandably relucrant to pronounce it, rh e E ng- calecutische Hahn, the Kaikoen and the Ka/kan thar suggesr an origin
lish solved rhe problem in rhe usual way ar;id called it rhe 'turkie cock'. in Calicut, the place where da Gama firsc landed on the south-wesc
Unfortunarely, in about 1530 the Portuguese brought the guinea- coasc of India. The Persians also had a contribution to make, calling
fowl back to Europe from one of its homelands in Wesr Africa, and the turkey the filmurgh or 'elephant bird' - wirhour specifying whether
ir was an Indian or an African elephant rhey had in mind. No doubt
the Levant merchanrs seem to have picked ir up, too, and transponed 1 they simply meant 'large'.
it onward ro an England rhat had forgotten it since Roman tim es .
Confusion ensued. The guinea-fowl was not unlike a miniaturized As if ali this were nor enough, in India irself the bird beca me known
version of the rurkey in looks and in its relucrance ro fly, and ir seems as peru, which was geographically a good deal closer to the mark than ·
ro have been assumed thar they belonged to the same family. But most, even if still a few hundred miles out. The bird, as it happened,
although sorne sources claim that in sixreenth-century England any was no more Peruvian than it was Turkish (or Indian) . lt seems ro
reference ro 'turkey' really meant guinea-fowl, this is not the case. have reached India, as something new and exotic, in rhe second decade
When Archbishop Cranmer framed his sumptuary laws of 1541 he of the seventeenrh century, probably by way of the Philippines, a
Spanish possession ruled direct from Mexico.
classed rurkey-cocks wirh birds of the size of crane and swan, nor - as
he would have done wirh guinea-fowl - wirh capons and- pheasants. Ar leasr one rhing ali rhese names do make clear: the turkey estab-
At much rhe same time a certain Sir William Petrc was keeping his lished itself quickly and firmly on mosr of the rabies of rhe Old World.
rabie birds alive until wanted in a large cage in his Essex orchard,
'partridges, pheasants, guinea-hens, rurkey hens and such like'. 15 And CANNIBALISM
rhe heraldic arms grantcd in 1550 to William Strickland of Boy'nron-
on-the-Wold - the cresr 'a turkey-cock in his pride ·¡,r-0,per' - show a There was one among rhe wealrh of new American foodsruffs rh:i r
bird that is, withour doubr, a turkey proper. 16 · . '
failed to recommend irself to rhe Spaniards, and indeed gave rhem an
None of the other nations of the Old World catled the turkey a ineradicable dislike for rhe whole of Aztec civilizarion. Ceremonial
I cannibalism carne to rhem as a profound culture shock.
212 THE -ANDING WORLD 1492-1789 THE AME RIC.,11--1--------tl--t- 2 ~3

Rumours of it had started with Columbus, who, misled by the che symbolic power of anthropophagy, the Caribs were u nfortunate
'gentle, peaceful and very simple' Tainos of his first encounter, had enough · to have their name and reputation immortalized in seve ra!
been totally unprepared for che Caribs, the red-painted, cannibal European languages by che Spanish transliteration of Carib into Calib
Vikings of those sunny waters. lt did not take long for the legend of into Canib, whence the word 'cannibal'.
che Caribs to grow and be improved on, so that when the Spaniards When the conquest of Mexico began just ovcr twcnty years latcr,
che Spaniards discovered a wholc nation where 'che sacrilegious de-
secration of che human body' was an instrument of government. The
human body was desecrated in Spain, too, of course, but although the
Spaniards exec uted their own prisoners and criminals in the most
barharous fashion, they killed them in the name of Christianity and
did not ear them afterwards.
lt is difficult today, more than 2,000 years after Judaism's final
commutation of human into animal, and rhen into spiritual, sacrifice,
to understand a belief in the literal offering of the human heart to che
gods, and it wa s no easier for the sixteenth-century Spaniard, especially
when faced wirh extensive evidence of the ancillary belief that man
could increa se hi s ow n stre n gt h by con s uming, equally literally, rhe
screngch of someo ne who h a d been a wonhy a dversary in barde.
All a long the way ro Tenochritlan Cortés a nd his men counted rh e
neac piles of s kull s in eve r y te mpl e forecourt, until rhey became con-
vinced th at ch ey rhe m selv es were a lso desrined for che pot. 'How
anxiou s th ese tra ito rs are' , sa id Cortés, who , interloper rhough he
was, too k an engagingly one-sided view of the enterprise in which he
was inv o lved , 'ro see u s amo n g ch e ravines so that they can gorge
themse lves on our Aes h .. . In return for our coming to crear them like
broth e rs, a nd te ll the m che co mmands of o ur lord God and the king,
A barbec u e in s ixt ee nth-ccnrury Bra z.il.
they w e re planning to kili us a nd eat our Aesh, and had already
captured four anonymous islanders and discovered that they 'had h a<l prepared the pots with salt and peppers and tomatoes. ' 18
thcir virile members cut off', they deduced that che Caribs castratcd The Aztec blood-sacrifice rationale was highly sophisticated and in
their captives 'as we do to fatten capons, to improve their taste'. Thc its own way perfectly logical, 19 bur the Spaniards, their eyes on che
Caribs were believed to <leal with the carcasses as coolly as any Euro- skull racks of Tenochtitlan, would have been incapable of understand-
pean butcher, 'guts and limbs eaten, and the rest salted and dried like ing it even if it had been explained to them. Ali they knew was that
our hams'.<· 17 A further gloss was that the Caribs were not only the Aztec gods demanded the living heart of their sacrifices; local wars
cannibals but connoisseurs, though their preferences depended largely were fought for the sote purposc of taking prisoners, who werc ripped
on che fancy of the chronicler. According to one (a Frenchman), thc open alive by thc priests so that their hearts could be taken out still
Caribs thought the French were delicious, the English so-so, the Dutch beating. Afterwards, the head was hung on a skull rack, onc thigh wa s
casteless and the Spaniards so tough as to be virtually inedible. presented to thc supreme council and other choice cuts to various
No more, in truth, than a primitive tribe with an age-old belief in nobles. Th~ remainder of the body was returned to the victim 's captor,
who took 1t home and had it cooked into tlacatlaolli (maize-and-man
• In fact, che peoples of the Caribbean knew nothing about salting until they stew), which was _reverently consumed by ali the family .
learned the technique from the Europeans. -' The true extent of cannibalism in the Aztec world is a subject on

l i
1 .
r '
214 • - THE EXPANIG WORLD 1492-1789

which anthropologists cannot agree. Sorne, interested mainly in re-


ligion, ignore the lethal consequences. Others, obsessed by {largely
THE AMERICAS
-
ducing them to the Malay archipelago. (From there, before 1600, the y
travelled on to China to become second only in importance to the soy
215

unreliable) figures, are convinced that famine and meat-hunger were bean.) But the potato was something entirely new - •a da incy dish
of predominanc importance. But even if the true figures run inro even for Spaniards', admitted one of the conquistadors. 21
thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands sometimes quoted,
they were far from negligible either in their immediate or, since most
of the sacrifices were of young, fertile males, their long-term effect.
lt was the ritual acceptance as much as the blood that appalled the
conquistadors, beca use Europe had nothing to learn from the Aztecs
~--}~::_:· ~·~:".~~QA:¡ "~..... >j ·::-Jt ·,
as far as death ,vas concerned. \Vhen Cortés l:mded, it is estimated
that Central Mexico had a population of 25 million. Thirty years later ~-=- rf"~.],~~,
+,·
tt~l-/
.... t
ª==--:: :-~=:== -.
. :;.;- ·-
J
it had been reduced to a little over 6 million. By 1605, less than ninety
years after the conquest, just over I million remained.' 0 War, economic .=:-- _. --·· < .,...

upheaval, forced religious conversion, exploitation, new diseases to


which the peoples of Central America had no resista nce - all these had íit -- -.~- -- -~
combined to produce one of the most comprehcnsive human cata-
scrophes in che hiscory of che world . Bue thcre w e re many at the tim e
. -.,,v,,,,_.,, '
who saw it, coldly, as God's justice. U-

THE INCA OF PERU

Cortés had gone north from the Caribbean , to M exico. Francisco


Pizarro went south on an even more extraordinary voyage of discovery.
In Peru he found the dream of ali adventurers - a land where e'.'lleralds
were to be had for the asking and temples were panelled in gold.
There was a richness of food, too , wich an abund a nce of fi sh along
che coascal strip :rnd in th e mountain w a te rs of L ik e Tiri caca , while
communal game hunts tracked deer, wild llama and guanaco, bear,
puma, fox and the large rodent ·c alled vizcacha . Guinea pigs were Digging and bagging potatoes in Peru.
raised in almost every household, and ducks seem also to have been
domesticated. The royal Inca disapproved of eating dogs, but cheir Climatically, Peru and its neighbouring Andean regions were very
subjects had no particular aversion to them. different from Mexico and the islands. In lowland regiJns maize was
Even so, most Peruvian food was vegetarían, with fish and mear an the staple food, cooked without much refinement; Peruvians did not
occasional luxury. Maize and potatoes, squash and beans, manioc trouble with the boil-and-bake process needed for tortillas, but simply
and sweet potatoes, peanuts, tomatoes, avocados and chillis were the ground the dried kernels inco flour and boiled 1t in water to make a
foundations of the diet. The beans, peanuts and avocados supplied porridge not unlike polenta.
protein. Vitamin A carne from winter squashes, tomatoes and avo- Above 11,000 feet, where maize would not grow, the main crops
cados; B from peanuts and avocados; and C from tomatoes, peppers were potatoes or one of the other tubers such as oca and quinoa,
and, in smaller quancity, from potatoes. , which were never to travel beyond their Andean homeland. With
Peanuts were already familiar to the Spaniards, who had en- severa) thousand years' experience behind them, Peruvians knew how
countered them in Haití and were soon to be instrumer;ical in intro- to make the most of the potato and had even discovercd how to
216 --~--,._ THE EX-DING WORLD 1492-1789 THE AM ERIC ./le-..-------1--.._ 2!.7

preserve it by a process of freezing and drying. The harvested crop In Burgundy, on the other hand, potatoes were banned in 1619
was spread out on the ground and left overnight in the biting air; next because of a belief that 'too frequent use of them caused the leprosy',
day, as if at sorne chilly vintaging, everyone gathered to tread out the and this was an idea that persisted in France until well into the
moisture. This process was repcated every day for four or five days, eighteenth century. In the mid-1700s they were still thought of as
by which time the potatoes had given up most of their water content fodder for animals, not for men - except for peasants. As Diderot 's
and were in a state to be dried and stored. Known as chuñu, preserved Encyclopédie put it, 'However it is prepared, this root is tasteless and
potatoes were of the greatest importance to the highland peoples. starchy. One would not include it among the agreeable foods, but it
The usefulness of the pota to as a food for the masses did not escape <loes provide plentiful and sufficiently healthful nourishment for men
the conquistadors. In the silver mines ar Potosi the workers subsisted who do not require more than sustenance. The potato is correctly
almost entirely on chuñu, and befare long speculators were stretiming held responsible for Aatulence; but what is flatulence to the vigorous
over from Spain to buy up supplies from the producers in the moun- digestions of peasants and workers?' Even Switzerland, an early con-
tains and resell them at an inflated price to the mineworkers . vert, still blamed the potato for scrofula.
Except in the countries where it became popular soon after its
introduction, and a few other places like Ireland where its cultivation
EUROPE ANO THE POTATO
precisely met contemporary needs, it took well over 200 years for the
Once the wealth of the Peruvian mines began to be shipped to Europe, potato to become widely distributed, and even then people could
Spain adopted potatoes as ba s ic ships' stores; as a res ult thcy were sometimes be remarkably obdurate. In 1774 the hungry citizens of
being cultivated in Europe soon a ft e r the conquest. By 1573 they wcre Kolbcrg rcfused to touch it when Frederick rhe Great of Prussia sene
common enough for the Huspi ra l d e la Sangre ar Seville to o rde r rh c m rhem a wa gonload to relieve famine, and had to have their minds
in ar the same rime as other stock s," and from Spain rhey took ch a ngeJ by che milicia. In 1795 when Count Rumford was making a
passage to Iraly where, by 1601, people no longer even treared them a s scientific e xperiment into feeding rhe poor as well as possible for as
a delicacy, but cooked them 'wirh mutton in the same mann e r a s rhe y lirtle as possible, he concluded that barley soup was the answer
do turnips and the roots of carrots'. 23 thickened with poratoes and peas, seasoned with vinegar and served
Fortunatcly (in the matter of name), the Turkey merchants failed to wüh pieces of srale bread to encourage rhe steady chewing rhat, he
pick up the ncw vcgctable at Seville. Insread, it reached England direct beheved, seemed 'very powerfully to assist in promoting digesrion'. 27
from the Americas when Sir Francis Drake, on the way to Virginia in But the poor of Munich were strongly resistant to rhe potatoes in
1586, pur in ar Carrage na in th c C a ribhean ro revicrual and broug ht Counr Rumford ' s soup and ir was sorne time befare they could even
sorne home with him. Evcn so, rhere was confusion. Because of the be persuaded to taste ir. In Russia in 1840 rhe government ordered rhe
description in Gerard's Herbal ir was thought for centuries that the peasantry to planr potatoes on common lands and found itself
patato had originated in Virginia, and ir was not until the 1930s that with a number of pitched battles on its hands and major riots in ten
the geneticist N. l. Vavilov showed this to have been impossible. 24 lt provinces. 28
seems, in fact, not to have been known in Virginia until English Although that energetic advocate Antoine-Auguste Parmentier -
settlers took it there. 't~e Ho_me_r, ~ir~il and Cícero of the potato' 29 - is usually credited
In the early days opinion in Europe was divided . Dr Tobías Venner w1th brmgmg tt mto fashion in France, his real efforts were directed
claimed that the nourishment yielded by potatoes, 'though somewhát towards persuading bakers to substitute patato flour for wheat flour
windy', was 'very substantial, good and restorative', 25 and William in bread. In truth, increased usage of the potato was attributable not
Salman thought they stopped 'fluxes of the bowels', were foil of to ?ºe man.' but to severa! decades of experimenting by gentlemen
nutrients and cured consumption. 'Being boiled, baked or roasted,' agr~culturahsts, followed by a levelling up in post-Revolutionary
he went on, they 'are caten with good butter, salt, juice' of oranges or soc1ety that caused the · food of the poor to take on a democratic
lemons and double refined sugar ... They increase se~d arid provoke glamour. 30
lust, causing fruitfulness in both sexes. ' 2 ' In 1806 Antaine Viard included severa! patato recipes in Le Cuisinier
• 1,.18
-
THE EXPANDING WORLD 1492-1789

lmpérial, and in 1814, with Antoine Beauvilliers' L' Art du cu1szn1er,


the potato achi·e ved full acceptance. In hurried deference, perhaps, to
TH E AME RICA S-=---------E-__
work for 'half a year together night and day like horses' . 35 In 15 50
there were five sugar plantations in Brazil. By 1623 there were 350. 36
21 9

the nacion that had just defeated Napoleon, Beauvilliers included such It was at this stage that the Dutch began to take a hand in the game,
traditional British delights as Woiches rabettes, plomb-poutingue and invading and occupying the whole northern part of Brazil and then
machepotetesse." wresting the Gold Coast from Portugal's grasp. Although they held
Brazil for only nineteen years, they learned a good <leal about sugar
production and their knowledge soon filrered chrough to the English,
SUGAR AND THE SLAVE TRADE
French and Danes, who had independently acquired severa) of t he
Sugar a nd the slave trade became incerdependent very soon after che Caribbean islands.
Jisco11ery of the N e w World, first in che Caribbean a nd thcn in The dem::ind for slaves rocketed. lt is estimaced that during the

l
Brazil. course of the sixteenth cencury fewer than a million blacks were
By as early as 1506 Spain h a d beg un culrivating s ugar in the Greater landed in the Americas; in the eighteenth century it was seven times
Antilles, the string of islands dominated by Cuba and Hispaniol a, but that figure. 37 By then, of course, labour-intensive cultivation had
the decline in the native population after the conquest soon led to a proved its worth and spread to the North American mainland, where
labo ur s horta ge . Spain solved the probl e m in the u s ual w ay. In Europe tobacco and cotton raising followed roughly the same pattern as
slaves were common enough; rich Spanish families ow n ed as m a n y as 1 sugar.
fifty, sorne of the m Greeks, Russi a ns, Albanians or Turks bought at Countries a nd colonies d ependent on the culrivation of a single
the famous slave m a rkec of Caffa o n the Bl ack Sea, but m ost of them crop could not feed rhemselves . Brazil and the West Indies were
blacks from Africa. 32 So it was Afri ca the N ew -W o rld pioneers went perhaps the firs t socieries in world history to be d e pendent on imporrs
to when they n eed ed more workers in C uba . for ali food beyond rhe barest n ecessities. In 1783 Bricain sent 16,5 76
lt w as n o t long, h o w e ver, before Spain bega n to be m ore interested tons o f salt pork and bcef, 5,188 flitches of bacon, and 2,559 tons of
in gold and s il ver than s ugar, and it fe ll to the Portuguesc to di scove r tripe to the Wesr Indies, n o t ably Jamaica. In Brazil the slaves lived on
what profit could be m a d e from combining s lavi ng in Africa with tons of cod from Newfoundland and tons of dried mear broughc in
sugar production in Brazil. They had papal authority for ir. Nicholas from che souch . 38
V h a d n o t only given them leave, but accually ordered t h em to 'attack, Competition over sugar brought an end to che firsc phase of im-
s ubj ect and reduce to perpetua) s lavery th e Sa race n s, pagan s and pe ria li s m, which had b egun wich competition over spices. At the b eg in-
or h er cncmics of C hri s t so urhw ard from Capes Bad::i jor and Non, ning s uga r h ad been of little imporrance, :1 min or luxury, bur chere
including a li che coast of Guinea.' 33 Better still, che m o narc h s and came a ra dical change when supplies of Europe's traditional sweetener,
merch a nrs of the Gold CoasÍ: w ere only too anxious to exchange honey, began to fall off - partly as a result of che Reformation and the
people they didn't wanc for ch e cloth, firearms, hardware and s pirits campaign against the monasteries, whose need for beeswax candles
that the y did . had placed them among the foremost honey producers. When sugar
Occas ionally, there was a murmur of protest. In 1526 Mbemba became readily available, it also became popular - aad even more
Nzinga of Congo, an ardent Christian converr, compl a ined to his popular when it was discovered (about 1600) that fruir could be pre-
brother monarch in Portugal that merchants were 'taking every day served in ic and (sorne time before 1730) jam made with it.
our natives, sons of the land and sons of our nobleme n and vassa ls By the 1670s sugar was a trading commodii:y of such importance
and our re latives' - kidnapping ·t hem, in effect. - so as to exchange that the Dutch yielded New York to England in exchange for ch e
them for European goods. So busy were they that 'our country is sugar lands of Surinam, while in I763 France abandoned t he whole of
being complerely depopulated, and Your Highness should not agree Canada to the British for the sake of Guadeloupe. But nor evcn rhe
with chi s nor accept it as in your service.' 34 But che, voice of the most optimistic eighteenth-century sugar merchant could ever h ave
Congolese ruler was too faint to compete wrth che ,d emands of the foreseen that by the 1980s the British would be consuming 80 pounds
Brazilian s ugar producers. More and more slaves were required, to of it per head per year, or the North Americans I26 pounds.n
220 ----''lle_. THE EX-DING WORLD 1492-1789
TH E AME RI _ ____ __...9_._ 2c 1·

THE SETTLING oF NoRTH AMERICA

The potato, the tomato, maize, avocados, pineapples, haricot, kidney


and butter beans, lima beans, scarlet runners, 'French' beans,
chocolate, peanuts, vanilla, red peppers and green peppers, tapioca
and the turkey, not to mention gold and silver, tobacco, rubber,
chewing gum and quinine - what the Arnericas contributed to Europe
added up to a formidable list.'' Most of it carne frorn rhe sourh,
however; from rhe north, there was nothing new, only fish, furs and
timber. Ali were valuable.
The early explorers of North America were still hoping to find sorne
great waterway cutting right across the continent to rhe Pacific and
thence to che Spice Islands. The Spaniards ventured, with disastrous
results, into Florida. The French sent Jacques Carrier to take a look ar
Canada. But ir was rhe English who madc rhe mosr imrnediate profit
frorn their forays after rhey disparched rhe Cabots (in 1496) to 'seek
out, discover and find whatsoever isles , countries , rcg ions or provinces
of rh e h e athen and infidels wheresoever they be, which before chis
time have been unknown to ali Christians'.• 0 Th e Ca b o t s Ji scove rcd
no hearhen provinces vvirhin rhe meaning of th c Act, but re p o n ed thc
existcnce of grear cod-fi s hin g banks off the coast of Newfoundland .
From rhcn on, fishin g fleers from Englai1d, Fra ncc, P o rtu g al a nd
Holland haunred rhe shores of Newfoundland, using che is la nd a s a
base where rhey could dry rheir catch for tran s pon back to Euro p e.
The abundance of cod wirhin e asy range of wh:1t was to beco me Ncw
England later gave ch e infanr c olony a useful start in life .
In 1607 , :1fte r rw o ca rasrro phi c e a rlie r attem prs , En g hnd m a n :1ged
to land sorne colonists in Virginia who proved capable of survivin g -
though only just. 'They chased out a few Indians', gossipcd rhe
Antwerp agent in London, 'and put up a three-sided fort, and plan-
ted .. . adjoining land with [grain], on which they could live a long
time. ' 41 Ir was a picture that did not stand up to closer inspection.
Two years later an arriving settler found many of his predecessors
'dispersed in che savages' towns, living upon their alms for an ounce

* The Americas also benefited. Columbus took vegetable seeds, wheat,


chick-peas and sugarcane to che Caribbean on his larer voyages; _C olombia's
second governor introduced che first cows rhat had ever been seen rhere;
An Amerindian town in what was later to be known as Virginia. At che
settlers took bananas, rice and cirrus fruits; yams and cowpe;s crossed che
top, a tobacco field; on the right, fields of maize sown serially, so as ro
Atlantic with che slaves. Coconucs were introduced ro che Bahámas, breadfruit
supply a choice of green, semi-mature and mature ears.
ro che Caribbean, and coffee to Brazil.
.llt22 - - - - -- -
THE EXPANDING WORLD 1492-1789

of copper a day, and fourscore lived twenty miles from the fort, and
fed upan nothing but oysters eight weeks space, having no other
TH E A M E R I C A S - - - - - - - - = - - -

In Spanish che greenwood lattice was called barbacoa, which ulti-


mately became 'barbecue'.
223

allowance at ali, neither were the people of the country able to relieve The once-fa miliar pattern of easr-coast American eating - the food
them if they would. ' 42 whose mention still brings a sentimental tear to che ali-American eye -
The Jamestown settlers, according to ali accounts, were argu- was laid down in rhe early days. Hominy (ripe maize, whole or reduced
mentative, incompetent and ignorant, workshy, ill-equipped with tools to grits), succotash (fresh or dried kernels cooked with beans), and
and material s and over-conscious of their dignity. The land was rich compone (a thick, unleavened maize pancake) were rhe colonists'
in game, the waters alive with fish, the woods full of edible berries, basic grain dishes . Shad, terrapin and oysters were not too hard to
but if it had not been for the generosity of the Indian s chey would find, and th ere werc canvas back duck and wild geese when they could
ha\'e starved. catch them. Deer were so plentiful that they yearned for a plain joint
Fortunately, the Pilgrim Fathers who landed on Plymouth Rock in of mutton, although it was rhe pig rather than the sheep rhat settled
1620 were made of sterner (if no less argumentative) stuff. They had down most happily when domesticated livesrock were imported from
brought wheat and rye seeds with them, but these proved difficult to Europe, irrepressibly surviving the attentions of wolves, bears and
grow on rough land, whereas maize was easy. From the Indians they the American Indian s, who discovered an unhallowed passion for
learned not only how to cultivare it - being from northern Europe, pork.
none of them had seen it befare - but also how to cook it in a variety In Virginia espec ially, pigs found both climare and food so congenia!
of ways, as porridge, flatbread and a kind of frumenty. They were that larders began to burst a r rhe seams with pork a nd hams . Indeed,
pleased, too, to recognize the turkey. Tru e to tradition, there was said William Byrd II in che 1720s, che people th e m selves beca m e 'ex-
so rne confusion over the bird's n ame, bue chi s time it wa s un acco unt- tremely hoggi sh in their tcmper .. . and pronc to g runc rath cr than
ably slight; the setrl e rs' 'turkey' was the Indians' furkee. speak'. 43
Also from the Indians they di scovcred how to havc a seacoast
clambake by digging a pit, lining it with flat stones and lighting a fire
on them. When che stones were white-hot, the embers were brushed
away and replaced with a !ayer of seaweed, on which went alternate
layers of clams and ears of maize, interleaved with more seaweed.
When the pit was full, it was cov e red with a blanket of w e t cloth or
hid e, which was kept moi st through ou r th e hour or so of cooking
time. This characteristically Polynesian technique may have reached
America from the Pacific. The Maoris call ir umu (earth oven) or
hangi; in Honolulu it is luau. .
From Caribbean sources, directly or indirectly, the colomsts also
discovered how to barbecue. The northern part of Hispaniola, one of f
the Spanish islands, had never been properly settled, the early pioneers
having done little more than ship in sorne cattle and ~igs. These, le~r
to their own devices, had flourished, so · that when sh1p-wrecked sa1-
lors, runaway servants and other kinds of vagabond began to take
refuge 011 rhe island, the food supply presented no problems. Fr?m
surviving Caribs rhey learned the old island trick o~ smoke-drymg
mear on greenwood lattices erected over a fire of an~?Ial bones _and
hides. The Caribs called the technique boucan, w ,h,Jth .passed mto
French as boucanier and gave rhe ourcasrs their na?1e of buccaneers.

You might also like