By Anne Dealy, Director of Education and Public Information
Living in the Finger Lakes, it is impossible to miss the recent
emphasis on fresh, local, organic produce. People today examine and question
what they put into their bodies. It is an important element of the Finger Lakes region’s tourism business. Of course, this
is a problem that comes only when you have choices about what to eat and, in
the United States
at least, often an unlimited supply of things to eat. For most of human
history, the problem of food was ensuring you had enough to survive. Preserving
food when it was available was essential to surviving the long months of winter
when it was scarce. Traditional methods of preserving include drying; salting;
pickling in vinegar; smoking; fermenting; preserving milk products by making
butter and cheese; and preserving in sugar. More recently, canning,
refrigeration and freezing were added to the mix.
The first people
in the Finger Lakes to deal with the problem of preserving food were the Six
Nations of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois: the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga, Mohawk and Tuscarora. They
and their ancestors adapted to the lake environment over thousands of years.
They cultivated crops, foraged for wild plants, and hunted and fished wild
game. The primary crops they depended on were the Three Sisters: corn, beans
and squash. Native peoples gathered blueberries, strawberries, cranberries,
raspberries and blackberries. The corn they relied on was not the sweet corn we
love today, but a starchy white corn that could be dried for soups or ground
into meal. Once dry, it was stored in granaries, like the large palisaded fort
that was at Ganondagan [link to http://www.ganondagan.org/] in the 17th
century. From there it could be transported or traded. Fish and game were
plentiful, including salmon, deer, bison, turkey and other wildfowl. Most of
these foods were preserved by drying over a fire or by the sun and wind. Dried
strips of meat were pounded to shreds and then mixed with melted fat or lard, a
small amount of bone marrow, and some dried fruit to make a long-lasting food
that was easy to carry. Called pemmican, European explorers and frontiersmen
adopted this Native food to sustain them on long trips.
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| White corn grown as part of the Ganondagan State Historic Site White Corn Project |
Most of the earliest non-Native settlers were from New England towns. They had no experience living off the
land and wanted to reshape the environment to reflect their values and culture.
This meant taming the wilderness with neat houses, fenced livestock, and fields
of cultivated wheat. In 1852, Orsamus Turner interviewed some of the
remaining pioneers and wrote the History of the Phelps and Gorham
Purchase and the History of the Holland Land Purchase to
chronicle their efforts to transform Western New York.
His books include stories of privation and near starvation in the 1790s as
these families traveled to settle newly purchased land. Many immigrants underestimated
the provisions needed to survive the journey from settled parts of the state.
One New England family arrived in March at Colonel Seth Reed’s house in Geneva, “destitute of
provisions.” All Reed had to share with them was one loaf of bread. Fortunately
for them, a ship arrived that afternoon supplied with flour, which they
purchased for the remainder of their journey. Salt pork and corn meal were the
basis of a limited diet supplemented by whatever wild foods could be found or
hunted. When Nicholas Stansell’s family ran out of supplies in Lyons, they bought corn from the Onondaga and
relied for food on their cow’s milk, forest greens, and the abundant venison
and fish they caught.
These settlers brought traditional English food preferences with
them. This meant meals of boiled or roasted meat, soups or stews, boiled
vegetables, pickles, porridges, pies, puddings, breads, and cakes. With poor
transportation and no ready sources of salt, sugar or vinegar, most of these
dishes were impossible to make in the earliest settlements. Women accustomed to
using fireplaces and bake ovens to prepare food had to learn to cook over an
open fire with limited ingredients. Salt and other supplies had to be conveyed
west in Durham boats or bateaux, boats shallow
enough to navigate the rivers and streams of the Finger
Lakes and light enough to carry between navigable waters. It could
take weeks or months to get supplies from Schenectady
to Lyons or up the Susquehanna to Seneca Lake
and Geneva.
Then it was days more for a man to get his purchases from these outposts back
home.
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| Durham boats were used on New York’s inland waters until the canal era began in 1817. |
The first crops most families started were grain crops that
would supply bread and porridge. Storage crops of beans, potatoes and turnips would also have been
among the first planted. Some men visited their land and planted grains, hoping to have a
crop to harvest when they returned with their families. Others cleared enough
land to build a rude shelter and plant corn and potatoes anywhere the sun could
reach. The first livestock brought to the area were oxen to clear and plow the
land, cows for milk, and hogs for meat. Pigs could be left to roam the woods
and feed themselves, and then hunted for food. Cows’ milk carried families
through lean times and could be preserved by making butter or cheese, even in
difficult circumstances. One early immigrant made her cheese on a tree stump,
using a stone for her press. Another woman with an outdoor press lost her
cheese to a bear.
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| Instructions for drying fish and beef appeared in cookbooks like the 1798 American Cookery and 1838 Virginia Housewife. |
Drying was probably the first and easiest method of preserving
food because it could be done with as little as fire, wind or sun. Grains and
legumes could be easily stored if kept dry, while fruits, vegetables, meat and
fish required more attention. Once transportation became a bit more reliable
and salt and vinegar were readily available, families would brine their meat
and pickle vegetables to preserve them. Meat had to be rubbed in every crevice
with salt and packed in a tub of salt for 10 days. Then it would be put into a
barrel of brine. Cookbook author Mary Randolph’s recommendation was 15 quarts
of salt to 15 gallons of water to one pound of saltpeter. Then before cooking,
the meat had to be soaked for a day to release the salt and make it tolerable
to eat.
By the first decade of the 1800s, the earliest homesteads began
to resemble the third stage of settlement illustrated in Turner’s History of the Holland Land Purchase.
The forest is seen only in the distance and a frame house stands next to the
old pioneer cabin. Fences enclose the yards and sheds and a barn protect the
livestock. An extensive garden is planted next to the house, while the corn
grows neatly in the field and a small orchard is laid out to provide more fresh
food and greater opportunities for preserving it.
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| Turner’s History of the Holland Land Purchase includes illustrations of farms through four stages of development in Western New York. |
By this time, 1791 traveler Elkanah Watson’s vision was being
realized of the day “when the waters of this lake will be stripped of nature’s
livery and in its place ruck [zig-zag] enclosures, pleasant villas, numerous
flocks, herds, etc., and inhabited by a happy race of people enjoying the rich
fruits of their own labors, and the luxury of sweet liberty and independence
approaching to a millennial state.”
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