High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America - Jessica B. Harris [26]
The division of labor was another tradition shared by Native peoples and African captives. Europeans, especially those in Virginia, with its patrician progenitors, were appalled to see the hard labor done by the Native American women. While Europeans were used to seeing indentured and, later, enslaved women toil in the fields, European women did not work outdoors, and it seemed to them to indicate laziness on the part of Indian men. This was not so to the Africans, who were used to gender-specific roles within the agricultural realm, with the women having tasks as well as the men.
As a result of these and myriad other culinary confluences and cultural communalities, relationships between Native Americans and Africans began with a sense of a common bond. Seventeenthand eighteenth-century accounts are rife with mentions of escaping Africans finding refuge with Native Americans. Africans had interacted with Native Americans since the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century, and the welcome that Estebán Dorantes initially received was mirrored multifold. Most of the Africans who arrived early on mainland America were culturally fluid and used to existence on their multicultural and multilingual home continent. They were attuned to nuance in ways that Europeans, for the most part, were not. Their future and often their lives depended on an ability to intuit meaning and interpret language and gesture. For this reason, they were often appointed as linguists aboard ships (even slave ships) and as translators of language and manners, like Estabán was. Equally, Native Americans would have been predisposed to acknowledge arriving Africans without the prejudices that were inherent in the European worldview of the period. Intermarriage and sheltering of escaped slaves by Native Americans was common in early years of settlement, though this all changed as the number of blacks increased and race-based chattel slavery became the law of the land.
Africans and their descendants in the English colonies that would become the thirteen original states grew in number throughout the seventeenth century as the trickle of African slaves became a tidal wave. In 1675, there were only five thousand African slaves in the British North American colonies compared with one hundred thousand in the British West Indies. But the numbers grew, and as early as 1708, black slaves in the Carolinas outnumbered whites, both free and bonded, for the first time.
However, as Africans and Native Americans began to see their common cause, Europeans realized that their joining together threatened European sovereignty. Indians had freedom. Africans had knowledge of European ways and could give Indians not only military knowledge but also information about the day-to-day workings of the colonies. The wedge of distrust placed by the Europeans split the groups asunder. Africans were demonized to Native Americans, and slave-catching bounties were paid to those Indians who returned Africans to European masters. Yet, despite centuries of calculated division and incited mistrust, a bond somehow remained. It is witnessed by the numerous black branches of eastern tribes and the high percentage of African Americans who boast Native American blood in their veins. It is seen even today at powwows and gatherings. When seated around communal tables piled high with dishes that share our many common tastes, the descendants of the Africans and those of the Wampanoag, the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Seminole, and others can finally sit back, relax, and share a complicit smile.
MAROON FOODS: FROM CIMARRÓN TO SEMINOLE
Jamaicans celebrate the Maroons, and Nanny of the Maroons is a national hero. Afro-Brazilians thrill to thoughts of the Quilombo of Palmares and of Ganga Zumba and Zumbi, its leaders. And Cubans research the