High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America - Jessica B. Harris [18]
Our manner of living is entirely plain; for as yet the natives are unacquainted with those refinements of cookers which debauch the taste: bullocks, goats, and poultry, supply the greatest part of their food. These constitute likewise the principal wealth of the country, and the chief articles of its commerce. The flesh is usually stewed in a pan; to make it savoury we sometimes use also pepper, and other spices, and we have salt made of wood ashes. Our vegetables are mostly plantains, eadas, yams, beans, and Indian corn …. They are totally unacquainted with strong or spirituous liquors; and their principal beverage is palm wine. This is gotten from a tree of that name by tapping it at the top, and fastening a large gourd to it; and sometimes one tree will yield three or four gallons in a night. When just drawn it is of a most delicious sweetness; but in a few days it acquires a tartish and more spirituous flavor.
Several scholars today question whether Equiano was as he advertised himself: an Eboe from Essaka. It has been argued that his autobiography is a composite one made up of the reminiscences of a number of enslaved or even that it is a work of pure imagination. No matter what the final verdict, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano remains a moving account of the trade that ripped millions from their homeland and transported them to another hemisphere for more than five centuries. Equiano speaks for the millions of individuals who departed captives and arrived enslaved with no families, no friends, and no possessions—nothing except the fading memories of their distant homeland and perhaps, like Equiano, a fleeting memory of the sweetness of palm wine on their tongue.
CHAPTER 3
THE POWER OF THREE
Arrivals, Encounters, and Culinary Connections
Aquinnah, Martha’s Vineyard—
Aquinnah, on the westernmost tip of Martha’s Vineyard, used to be called Gay Head until relatively recently, when younger folk became sensitive about the contemporary implications of the name that had referred to the multihued cliffs that are the town’s trademark. In years past, excursions down the russet, terra-cotta, and gray clay cliffs were a highpoint of any trip around the island, but the fragile ecology means that they are now closed to the public and the descent is only a thing of memory to islanders of my vintage. Parts of Aquinnah are tribal land, and the area itself is the home of the Wampanoag, the tribe that greeted the Pilgrims when they landed in Plymouth in 1620. On a Wednesday, I received a call from one of my many Up-Island friends asking me to a local event and offering me the thing that is more precious than gold to the nondriving New Yorker that I am—a ride.
As we drove along the twists and turns of the tree-shaded Up-Island roads that I have known for more than fifty years, I stared out of the window. I found myself looking at the tall oaks and the underbrush covered with poison ivy and blueberry bushes as though seeing them for the first time. The forest was dense; the light was dappled as we headed toward the setting sun. I thought back to the Hawthorne that I had to memorize decades ago, and the lines came flooding back:
This is the forest primeval.
The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of old, with voice sad and prophetic.
This, though, was not a first-growth forest; this forest was of more recent vintage, but the land was rich with history.
It was curious that after so many years of journeying to the island’s tip for sundowner drinks or luncheon stops, I had