User:Generalissima/Diet of American slaves

Depiction of an African-American barbecue, 1887

The diet of American slaves varied depending on region and the conditions of where they were held in bondage. Slaves rarely starved, but malnutrition was endemic in some regions. Slaves were typically dependent on rations from slaveholders, usually in the form of cornmeal and pork. While of varying quantity, these rations were almost universally of poor quality. Slaves often supplemented this with produce from herb and vegetable gardens, as well as various other food sources foraged, hunted, or bartered for. The withholding of food was often used as a punishment or form of control by slave owners, although consistently poor rations often led to resistance such as slowdowns, theft, and escape attempts.

The cooking and foodways of slaves drew significantly from West African cuisine, as well as the cuisine of Native Americans. Adaptations to the hardships of slavery heavily influenced later traditions of soul food and the broader cuisine of the Southern United States.

Food sources

Rations

Overseers were typically tasked both with maintaining stocks of plantation rations, and distributing these rations to slaves. Corn and pork formed the base of rations, and were thus the staple of slave diets. Pork was butchered, cured, and smoked in the winter, and stored in smokehouses until needed. When available, other products from the plantation would be rationed to slaves. These included dairy products, wheat, potatoes, meats (especially beef and mutton), fruits, and vegetables. Slave diets primarily consisted of eleven ingredients commonly available in rations. Due to dependence on corn rations, slaves ate relatively little wheat, which formed the staple for American freemen.

In the period following the American Revolution, slave rations increasingly began to include larger amounts of meat. By the 1810s, slaves were typically provided around a half-pound of pork per day, alongside two pounds of corn. Although this was a substantial quantity of meat for the period, it was almost universally low-grade. The meat ration was used to defend the practice of slavery, with slaveholders comparing it to a lack of meat in the diets of poor whites and many European peasants.

Young slave children were often fed soured milk. On plantations, food for these children was often prepared by a designated slave, an elderly woman referred to as an "old nurse". Many slave narratives recall groups of children fed from troughs filled with food. Often this was a wet mixture, such as pot likker with vegetables, or buttermilk with cornbread. With no set portions, children would compete to get the most food, a dehumanizing practice frequently likened to the diets of livestock.

House slaves typically had better rations than field slaves. Additionally, working in the home meant that they could readily steal food if poorly fed. At times, no set times were allotted for meals, and house slaves had to find moments to eat while working.

Gardening

Slaves commonly grew collards in their gardens.

Many slaves kept garden plots, where the grew produce to supplement their diets, as well as fiber crops for clothing. While these plots were worked on Sundays, they were tended to at night on other days of the week, with moonlight and improvised lamps used for navigation. Additionally, slaves were usually permitted to keep livestock such as chickens and pigs. While both men and women would garden, men would frequently hunt and fish during time away from work. Although gardens were an important supplemental source of nutrition, rations remained the most important source of food.

Plants grown included cabbages, collard greens, turnips, corn, tobacco, and cotton. The latter especially were often grown for profit, with slaves selling the produce in exchange for basic goods. Although these plots were not legally property of the slaves, they were generally recognized as such, to the extent that a North Carolina Supreme Court justice described it as established custom for slaves to own their produce. When the practice of slave gardens became established in a region, local slaveholders were often forced to allow "garden privileges" in order to increase morale.

Cuisine

Enslaved cooks developed a distinct culinary tradition, passed from generation to generation. Female cooks usually headed kitchens on plantations, but male cooks worked kitchens at inns and hostels. Many spices familiar in West African cuisine, such as sesame and chili peppers, were popularized in the South by Black chefs.

Dishes and ingredients

Slave cooking was noted for its spiciness, with red chili peppers in particular in common use. Sesame, introduced from Africa by the slave trade, was frequently used in sweets and deserts. Food such as chitterlings, collard greens, cornbread, and black-eyed peas are heavily associated with slavery, but quickly spread among southern whites.

Nutrition

Further information: Slave health on plantations in the United States

On average, slaves received comparable quantities of food to freemen. Economic historians Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman estimated an average slave calorie intake in 1860 average at 4,185 kcal per day, compared to an average of 3,741 for the general population in 1879. Compared to the general population, slaves received roughly equal amounts of meat, much less dairy, and significantly higher amounts of grain. In lieu of white potatoes, slaves primarily ate sweet potatoes, resulting in a much greater intake of both calories and nutrients. Their diets contained large amounts of calcium, iron, vitamin A, and vitamin C.

Slaves faced seasonal variation in food availability, due to limited food preservation technology.

Starvation

Rations were occasionally withheld as punishment by slaveholders, although this was a rare practice.

Legacy

The food of slaves formed the basis of later Black traditions of soul food, as well as cuisine of the South more broadly.

References

Bibliography

• Genovese, Eugene D. (1974). Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Fogel, Robert William; Engerman, Stanley L. (1995). Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: W. W. Norton.
• Kiple, Kenneth F.; King, Virginia Himmelsteb (1981). Another Dimension to the Black Diaspora: Diet, Disease, and Racism. Cambridge University Press.

Sources:

• Crader, Diana C. “Slave Diet at Monticello.” American Antiquity 55, no. 4 (1990): 690–717. https://doi.org/10.2307/281246.
• Vlach, John Michael. “Afro-American Domestic Artifacts in Eighteenth-Century Virginia.” Material Culture 19, no. 1 (1987): 3–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29763792
• Steckel, Richard H. “A Peculiar Population: The Nutrition, Health, and Mortality of American Slaves from Childhood to Maturity.” The Journal of Economic History 46, no. 3 (1986): 721–41. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2121481.
• Margo, Robert A., and Richard H. Steckel. “The Heights of American Slaves: New Evidence on Slave Nutrition and Health.” Social Science History 6, no. 4 (1982): 516–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/1170974.
• Cargill, Kathleen, Tyson Gibbs, and Leslie Sue Lieber. “SLAVE DIET AND EVIDENCE OF SUPPLEMENTS TO THE STANDARD ALLOTMENT.” Florida Scientist 43, no. 3 (1980): 160–64. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24319763.
• Gadpaille, Michelle. “Eating Dirt, Being Dirt Backgrounds to the Story of Slavery.” AAA: Arbeiten Aus Anglistik Und Amerikanistik 39, no. 1 (2014): 3–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43025867.
• Another Dimension to the Black Diaspora: Diet, Disease and Racism
• Cardell, Nicholas Scott, and Mark Myron Hopkins. “The Effect of Milk Intolerance on the Consumption of Milk by Slaves in 1860.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 8, no. 3 (1978): 507–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/202919.
• Lev-Tov, Justin S. E. “Implications of Risk Theory for Understanding Nineteenth Century Slave Diets in the Southern United States.” In Behaviour Behind Bones: The Zooarchaeology of Ritual, Religion, Status and Identity, edited by Wim Van Neer, Anton Ervynck, and Sharyn Jones O’Day, 1:304–17. Oxbow Books, 2004. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1kw29t4.37.
• Tuma, Michael W. “Ethnoarchaeology of Subsistence Behaviors within a Rural African American Community: Implications for Interpreting Vertebrate Faunal Data from Slave Quarters Areas of Antebellum Plantation Sites.” Historical Archaeology 40, no. 4 (2006): 1–26. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25617381.
• Rouse, Carolyn, and Janet Hoskins. “Purity, Soul Food, and Sunni Islam: Explorations at the Intersection of Consumption and Resistance.” Cultural Anthropology 19, no. 2 (2004): 226–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3651555.
• KARSKY, Barbara. “Sustenance and Sociability: Eating Habits in Eighteenth-Century America.” Revue Française d’études Américaines, no. 27/28 (1986): 51–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20873369.
• Hall, Robert L., 'Africa and the American South: Culinary Connections', in Douglas B. Chambers (ed.), The Past Is Not Dead: Essays from the Southern Quarterly (Jackson, MS, 2012; online edn, Mississippi Scholarship Online, 20 Mar. 2014), https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781617033032.003.0020
• Franklin, Maria. “Enslaved Household Variability and Plantation Life and Labor in Colonial Virginia.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 24, no. 1 (2020): 115–55. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48736598.

General sources:

Genovese, Eugene. Roll Jordan Roll (1974) New York: Pantheon Books

Smith, Julia Floyd. Slavery and Rice Culture in Low Country Georgia, 1750-1860 (1985) Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press

Morgan, Philip D. Slave Counterpoint. (1998) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press

Fogel, Robert. Engerman, Stanley. Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (1974) Boston: Little, Brown and Company

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (2 ed.) https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199734962.001.0001/acref-9780199734962

Peres, Tanya M. “Foodways Archaeology: A Decade of Research from the Southeastern United States.” Journal of Archaeological Research 25, no. 4 (2017): 421–60. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44984059.

The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South