“For pottage and pudding and pies
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies,
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it were not for pumpkins we should be undoon.”
—Pilgrim verse, circa 1633
In a letter written in 1784 to his daughter Sarah Bache, Benjamin Franklin gave his reasons why the turkey, rather than the bald eagle, should be chosen as the national bird: “For in Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America. He is besides, though a little vain and silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard in a red Coat on.”
The stories of the first Thanksgiving dinner in New England feature turkey as the main course, yet evidence suggests it was venison. Though the turkey lost to the bald eagle as national bird, it has won as the main course at Thanksgiving over the deer.
The vegetables eaten at the first Thanksgiving are based, of course, from plants cultivated in the New World by Native peoples. A unique inter-planting of three main food crops was used in New England. The three sisters—corn, beans, and squash—were grown together in a mound of soil. The corn grew tall; the beans climbed the cornstalks; and the squash trailed below and kept weeds down. The planting was often fertilized by burying a dead fish in the planting hole. All three foods kept well to provide sustenance throughout the winter.
A seventeenth century American dessert, Indian pudding, was based on the English hasty pudding. Whereas the British dish used wheat flour, the colonists had cornmeal, or Indian meal, and molasses from rum production in the Caribbean.
Our word “squash” comes from the Narragansett “askutasquash.” Plants of the family Cucurbita have been cultivated in the Americas for at least 12,000 years. Acorn squash, Cucurbita pepo variation turbinate, was grown in New England when Europeans arrived. Butternut squash, C. moschata, was developed from traditional squashes only recently. One claim is that horticulturalist Robert E. Young was the originator, in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1944. Another claim attributed its origin to Charles Leggett in Stow, Massachusetts, whose widow said that the name came from his observation that the squash is “smooth as butter, sweet as nut.”
Our orange pumpkin is just another squash variation. “Pumpkinheads” was a nickname for New Englanders, and is thought to have derived from haircuts shaped by placing a pumpkin shell over the head. I find this lore difficult to accept. I’m not sure anyone would sit for a haircut with a slimy pumpkin fitted over one’s head.
The cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is a member of the heath and heather family, which grows in bogs and was an important food and source of vitamin C for Native peoples. The berries were eaten fresh and dried, and the leaves were used to make a tea or smoked as a tobacco substitute.
“What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow.”—A. A. Milne
Potatoes, Solanum tuberosum, have been cultivated in the Andes Mountains in South America for thousands of years. The Inca grew, ate, and worshipped potatoes and even buried them with their dead. In 1532, Spanish conquistadors encountered potatoes in the Andes, and by the end of the century had introduced them to Europe via Spain. Often the plant was considered weird and poisonous. An edict in Besancon, France, stated: “In view of the fact that the potato is a pernicious substance whose use can cause leprosy, it is hereby forbidden, under pain of fine, to cultivate it.” Sir Walter Raleigh made a gift of potato plants to Queen Elizabeth I. Her cooks served the stems and leaves, which are poisonous. Everyone became ill and potatoes were banned from court. Irish legend holds that in 1588, ships of the Spanish Armada were wrecked off the coast of Ireland and potatoes washed ashore. Two hundred years later, the potato had become the national food that kept the Irish alive under British subjugation.
“Only two things in this world are too serious to be jested on, potatoes and matrimony.”— Irish proverb
Our legends of the first Thanksgiving are stories of co-operation and peace between peoples of different cultures. Native Americans passed along their knowledge of food cultivation to the newly transplanted Europeans, which helped them to survive. This peace was a fleeting moment in history.
November 2017
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