Agricultural journals and plantation records burst with strategies and advice. "Everybody needs to keep in touch with their ancestors, and through food is one of the best ways to get close," she says. But Bailey says her favorite way to eat the peas is in a traditional dish with stewed meat and okra, another plant that originated in Africa. I also love adding greens to stews like my West African Peanut Butter Curry Stew. In fact, okra is what helps thicken gumbo. There, hed steal some of boiled Indian corn kernels used to feed the cows and pigs. Carolina Housewife. Some of this produce and meat supplemented their rations. The author of the letter (slave owner Robert W. Gibbs) is described in the newspaper article as one of the most intelligent physicians of the South and a gentleman of the highest personal character and consideration. In the actual letter Gibbs also establishes his own qualifications for speaking about the treatment of southern slaves by stating that he has cared for several thousands of slaves in his lifetime. Keeping the traditional "stew" cooking could have been a form of subtle resistance to the owner's control. The slaves then had to adapt their African rice dishes to fit the limited ingredients they had in America. Underneath the slave ship's decks, Africans were held chest-to-chest and could not do much moving. These large homes marked a moment of transition, when English cultural norms took hold on the Virginia landscape. My favorite plant-based recipe for Carolina Gold rice is Southern Collard Dolmades. altogether different situation "us have plenty of good food to eat too. But to openly wear or use purloined goods was to risk detection and punishment. For the slave laborer, the routine started all over again. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Information about diet and food production for enslaved Africans on plantations. Purchased clothes were garish and gaudy, they scoffed. Prohibition on the College Campus Bob Payne, Sorghum Production during the Great Depression, Suspension of All UNC Dances During Prohibition Era, Goochs Cafe Advertisement featured in the Yackity Yack, 1925 Alison McKinney, The Dramatic Closing of the Tar Heel Cafe, The Daily Tar Heel Persuasive Article on the Success of the Prohibition, January 26, 1932, A Recipe from Marion Browns The Southern Cook Book, Tar Heel Investigates Local Food Situation As Price Panel Releases Violation Decisions, Extensive Effects of Food Rationing on UNC Students, Carolina Alumni Review Article Discusses GI Bill and Changes in Lenoir Dining Hall, Restaurants in Chapel Hill- The Carolina Inn, Leaflet written by the participants of the Holy Week fast. What slaveholders valued as durable and hearty, bondpeople often characterized as rough and plain. By some estimates, it is said that some ten million Africans were brought to the Americas. 30. Serve immediately, with pepper sauce if desired. Before long these enslaved cooks took the roles that had once been occupied by white indentured servants. In a world where masters doled out rudimentary food and raiment, enslaved people most often spent cash to augment allotments, introduce variety to clothing or diets, and, sometimes, to acquire goods or participate in activities otherwise banned. This red pea, which originated in Africa and is the original ingredient in the region's quintessential rice-and-beans dish Hoppin' John, is just one of the many heritage crops from the African continent receiving new attention from farmers, chefs, scientists, and food historians. Yet, this technique draws directly from Africa. But to be an American is to live in a place where contradictions are the very fibers that bind a complicated heritage divided sharply by race. Vegetable patches or gardens, if permitted by the owner, supplied fresh produce to add to the rations. Joyner Library, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina 27858. And, ground corn continues to appear on menus in everything from cakes to breading on fish. 84. eBook. % Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite foods. Then, other foods made available to slaves are listed, including: bacon, molasses, potatoes, poultry, and eggs. The stories of enslaved cooks teach us that we can love our country and also be critical of it, and find some peace along the way. One of Earth's loneliest volcanoes holds an extraordinary secret. In cotton and tobacco regions, enslaved people more often worked from sunup to sundown under the close eye of a driver or overseer. However, grilled and roasted okra make delicious side dishes. Choosing to buy control of ones own body affirmed a slaves status as chattel, even as that commodity transaction broke the chains of servitude completely. But from the 1820s onward, we see planters strategizing further, introducing choiceor the illusion of choiceas a way to tamp down long-term discontent. Organization of American Historians What did slaves eat on plantations? The food was to ensure that the slaves were able to eat while traveling to their new way of life. Blacks wasted their money, masters opined, or bought goods impractical for their lowly lives. What is wind chill, and how does it affect your body? [i] Rutledge, Sarah. A reason many did not make it to the colonies at all was disease and illness. Perhaps the easiest way to monitor slave spending was through the operation of a plantation store. Copyright 1996-2015 National Geographic SocietyCopyright 2015-2023 National Geographic Partners, LLC. I know versions of his diary exist elsewhere, but the war time entries can be found, Thank you for sharing that, Adam. However, they closely resembled the yams harvested in West Africa. 8LX It is often smoked or roasted at Fall Pumpkin festivals. 2, 149; Ibid., 12, pt. The slaves working the sugar plantation were caught in an unceasing rhythm of arduous labor year after year. In 1786, Washington noted that his plantation produced enough woolens to satisfy his needs. Advertisers leaned on characters like Aunt Jemima and Rastus, stereotypical black domestics, drawn from minstrel song. Your email address will not be published. Africa supplied slaves for the plantations; the New World produced raw material for industries in Europe. During the 18th century Cuba depended increasingly on the sugarcane crop and on the expansive, slave-based plantations that produced it. Robert Allston. NNDB. Heres why each season begins twice. Such paradoxes troubled more than a few, but practical concerns and a desire for labors just reward pushed them to work extra hours, save cash, and put plans in motion to make freedom theirs. What did the slaves eat? You also see evidence of this multi-cultural transformation in so-called receipt books, handwritten cookbooks from the 18th and 19th centuries. The word gumbo comes from the Bantu word for okra, ki ngombo. What foods did slaves bring to America? Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Alicia Cromwell is a doctoral student at the University of South Carolina. Which travel companies promote harmful wildlife activities? In a burgeoning market society, finding goods for sale was not terribly difficult, as store merchants were more than happy to take slaves cash. They lived in the kitchen, sleeping upstairs above the hearth during the winters, and outside come summertime. In 1836 the Southern Cabinet reported that some South Carolina slaveholders stocked plantation stores with goods most likely to be in request among the negroes, selling them at cost to enslaved consumers. All de possums and rabbits and fish and such wer jus dat much more"(5) Clothing for slave children was in general very basic and generally consisted of a smock like garment worn by both boys and girls. They intentionally brought it to provide sustenance to slaves during the journey. 2, 297. :"Zc35I*Ga^ Up every day before dawn, they baked bread for the mornings, cooked soups for the afternoons, and created divine feasts for the evenings. Number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population) 3,323 million. Tableware, too, attracted slave cash, as did toiletries, watches, and tools.[7]. Traditions surrounding dining and maintaining a grand household were part of those norms, and the white gentry began seeking domestic help. This made the plantation system reach a profound crisis, until it was changed from being forcing slave labour to being mainly low-paid wage labors who contained a smaller proportion of forced labour. There is merit to this argument, as slaves consumer behavior tied slaveholders in knots. She earned admirationand job offersfrom Presidents Garfield, Arthur, and Cleveland, who sampled her fabulous meals of terrapin and canvasback duck, Lynnhaven oysters and crab salad, hominy cakes and fabulous confections, prepared when Jones worked as a cook at New York clubs in the late 1870s. [10] Agricultural Survey of the Parish of St. Matthews, Southern Cabinet, 1 (1840), 202; Thomas S. Clay, Detail of a Plan for the Moral Improvement of Negroes on Plantations (1833), 2122. "It's important to continue this conversation, about who brought what [to America] and why we eat what [we eat]," he says. Sugar plantation in the British colony of Antigua, 1823. theamericanhistorian@oah.org, 2023 Organization of American Historians, Masters, Slaves, and Exchange: Power's Purchase in the Old South. So why cant we, as Americans today, look at this history for what it was? Food was often used as a form of control. Serve in slices, or mash it up with a little salt. As Frederick Douglas recounts I have often been so pinched with hunger, that I have fought with the dog. Yet even the most thriftless and impoverished must have cherished the thought of that most conspicuous and politically subversive form of consumption. The word gumbo comes from the Bantu word for okra, " ki ngombo ". Terms of Use Seemingly unimportant trades ruined old relations and wove together new webs of economic, social, political, and cultural life in a thousand stressed communities. In turn, we still enjoy many of the foods they embraced. Ultimate Plant-Based Thanksgiving Dinner Holiday Recipes, 7 New Years Food Traditions from Around the World that you Can Celebrate with a Healthy, Plant-Based Diet, Peppery Southern Grits with Sweet Heat Tomato Jam and Caramelized Chard, Southern Collard Dolmades with Smoky Sweet Potato Puree. Our work has been featured by the New York Times, TIME magazine, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Smithsonian, Mental Floss, NPR, and more. Both unprocessed and processed corn was used, but well go with the hominy version of it for our recipe. More troubling to slaveholders, enslaved people also bought stolen goods in a thriving interracial network of underground exchange. Old cells hang around as we age, doing damage to the body. His great-great-great grandfather Jupiter Gilliard, the man who purchased the farm, was born a slave in 1812. Weekly food rations usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour were distributed every Saturday. 2 tbsp (30 ml) bacon fat, Add: In a highly racialized and segregated America, still grappling with its guilt over slavery, white people created a myth that these cooks wereand always had beenhappy. What enslaved men and women did with that cash or creditand what it meantchallenged the institution of slavery. Something I said, or perhaps everything I said, upset her. They may well have also added greens like collards, but this is really quite a nourishing meal. (n.d.). On a plantation with more than 100 slaves, the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and farming implements. For Trinidadians, Callaloo is one part of their national dish: Crab and Callaloo- a dish which was created by the African slaves sometime around 1530 when the island was under Spanish occupation. Learn how your comment data is processed. . For decades she has used an image of okra on her business cards as a symbol of her family's African roots and her own connection to the continent's cuisine. They also sold items at the weekly market in Alexandria to earn small amounts of money. Advertising Notice Over 400 years, nearly 13 million Africans were kidnapped and imprisoned on European slave ships bound for the Americas. X11ej9G}R)\.}F5aj??*? Typically slave labor on the plantation was divided into two broad categories: house servants and field hands. %PDF-1.4 In the mill, the cane was crushed using a three-roller mill. For decades, the bang of the gavel had broadcast both triumph and tragedy in Virginias capital as propertylivestock, furniture, human soulstraded in the citys busy auction houses. By the Civil Wars last weary winter, Confederate Richmond, had become accustomed to the pounding of artillery echoing across nearby fields. Manufactured goods, of higher value, were then sold both to Africa and the New World. Thank you very much!! Edit View history The health of slaves on American plantations was a matter of concern to both slaves and their owners. The struggle to get by in a regime of growing instability engendered webs of unregulated exchange and distribution. But how could slaveholders take advantage of the consumer process while maintaining some semblance of control? At this time, Europe was starting to industrialize, and it needed a lot of materials to manufacture goods. Offerings such as pepper pot, okra stew, gumbo, and jambalaya became staples on American dining tables. As consumers, slaves challenged slaveholders looking to maintain mastery. But as the green, finger-shaped vegetable pops up on menus across the United States as an emblem of southern American cooking, the true narrative of the plant is at risk of disappearing, Harris says, speaking at a recent conference on food culture and history at the University of North Carolina in Greensboro. Early receipt books are dominated by European dishes: puddings, pies, and roasted meats. Some indentured servants were also leaving to start their own farms as land was widely available. Your Privacy Rights The Bantu people originated in Central Africa, near Nigeria and the Congo. I did find references to collard greens and cabbage in the course of my research, yes. The 100 Best American Revolution Books of All Time, Family Dinner: Soup, Molasses Bread & Jeffersons Meringues, Perspectives on the Ten Crucial Days of the Revolution, This Week on Dispatches: Gene Procknow on Ethan Allen and Revolutionary-Era Newspapers. One or more sweet potatoes or yams. They also had to feed every free person who passed through the plantation. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA Collection. For men and women so bent on control, slaves with cashand vendors ready to take itposed risks far beyond the material, however. The cooking traditions of the slaves were, as with most newcomers to these shores, a creative amalgamation of what they knew from their homelands and what was available to them here. [3]. Enslaved people at Mount Vernon generally wore clothing made from cloth produced on the plantation that was sewn together by enslaved or hired tailors. One formerly-enslaved woman remembered that she and her family aint had nothin but de coarsest food an clothes. Educator and former slave Booker T. Washington commented on clothing in particular, recalling shirts that were stiff and coarse . 2, 23; Ibid., 3, pt. Still others performed extra labor for their mastersoften called overworkor for other white people in the community, earning precious cash or credit for purchases of their choosing.