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A leftover Halloween pumpkin, photograph by the Author.
While
this article is mostly intended to be lighthearted romp,
it can be used by
experimental archaeologists, re-enactors or historical trekkers of
the late 18th and early 19th centuries, or by anyone who
is interested in survival, since in these days of rising prices, doing more
with less means survival! – Author’s note.
It
is “pumpkin-spice” everything right now, so it must be almost Thanksgiving1! And since it is almost Thanksgiving, I
thought we would have some fun and talk about pumpkins. You probably still have some leftover,
uncarved pumpkins decorating your house and your porch, right? So, what are you going to do you do with them
now that Halloween is over?
“Eat
the pumpkins”, you ask?! Yes, eat the
pumpkins, but first let’s talk about the history of the pumpkin and how it got
its name.
The History of the
Pumpkin...
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An Excerpt from A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which was first published in 1785, page “POS”.
Today
Boston is called “Beantown”, 250 years ago it would have been called “pompkinshire”
and if you lived in or around Boston you would have been called a “pompkin”,
by your British cousins of the late 18th century. Hmm...I guess name calling is nothing new,
but where did pumpkins and the word “pompkin” come from?
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An excerpt from, United States A History, by John Clark Ridpath, showing where the Massachusett and Wampanoag tribes originally resided.
Pumpkins
were first domesticated and cultivated by Native Americans between 5,500 to 3,500
BCE2 and the modern English word “squash” comes from the Native
American Massachusett word “askutasquash”, which means “eaten raw or
uncooked”. The neighboring Wampanoags,
who spoke a similar dialect, called pumpkins, “pôhpukun”, pronounced “ponh-pu-kun”,
which means “grows forth round”, which is the origin of today’s US
English word “pumpkin” 3.
But
by 1620, when the Pilgrims came to the shores of what is today the state of
Massachusetts, the English were already growing pumpkins and they called them “pumpions”
or pompions”, just as the Pilgrims would have. Pumpkins were one of the earliest food items
that the European explorers brought back to Europe from the New World, they
were first mentioned in 1536, and by late 1500s they were being grown in both England
and France. The word “pumpions”, as
the English knew them, derived from the Greek word “pepon”, which means
“large melon”, which was translated into French as “pompon”,
which the English translated from French as “pompion” or “pumpion”4.
It
is an interesting coincidence how the English word for pumpkin, “pumpion”,
sounds so very similar to the Wampanoag word, “pôhpukun”.
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Pumpkins, cucurbita pepo, the two bright orange ones in center right, and all the others are squashes, cucurbita maxima, by George Chernilevsky, September 11, 2011, from Wikimedia, HERE.
Today
the word “pumpkin” is used to describe a number of different squashes in the
genus “cucurbita”, such as “cucurbita maxima”, “cucurbita pepo”
and “cucurbita moschata”.
When
the European’s first began to colonize the New World there were just two types
of squashes that were grown throughout North America, the “c. moschata”
and the “c. pepo” types. The “c.
moschata” type of squash is a late growing winter squash with a hard rind,
which can be stored a long time, if kept in a cool, dry spot. The “c. pepo” variety of squash is a
summer squash and are eaten before the rinds and seeds have fully matured and hardened.
The
other type of squash which today is frequently called a pumpkin, is the “c.
maxima” squash, which originated in Northern Argentina near the Andes
mountains and had not been carried into Central and North America at the time
of the initial colonization of the New World.
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Pumpkins, photograph by the Author.
Today,
the pumpkins that most people associate with Halloween and Thanksgiving are a
variety of carving pumpkins, which are usually sold to be decorations or to be carved
as jack-o-lanterns5. The
carving pumpkin is a variety of the c. maxima species that was first developed
during the early 1970s. Since carving
pumpkins are grown for size, shape, durability, and a thick stem, but not for a
good taste, they are not as good for eating as eating pumpkins, although they
are edible, and you can still eat them.
Today
there are both eating and carving pumpkins and most people today are only
familiar with carving pumpkins. While today,
other than in pumpkin pie, pumpkins are not eaten often, this wasn’t always the
case. During the 17th, 18th,
and 19th centuries there were only eating pumpkins, and they were a common
food of the Native Americans, the early European colonists and later the
American farmers of the Old Northwest Frontier and New England.
The
pumpkins that Native Americans6, European colonists and later,
American farmers of the 18th and 19th centuries grew,
were eating pumpkins. This type of
pumpkins was sweet and tasty, and the Native Americans, European colonists and later
American farmers ate pumpkins baked, roasted, boiled, mashed, stewed, stuffed,
dried, or raw. They were eaten either as
a main dish, a side dish, or as a dessert.
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An excerpt from Danville, Montour County, Pennsylvania: page 44, by D. H. K. Brower.
Also,
American farmers of the 18th and 19th centuries fed
pumpkins to their livestock. In fact,
pumpkins as a winter feed for animals allowed farmers to keep more livestock,
such as horses, cattle, sheep, and pigs, alive over the winter. This is why the Great Pumpkin Flood of October
1786, which my ancestor Daniel Ogden would have experienced, was such a
calamity and as Ben Gelber, in The Pennsylvania Weather Book, noted “...the
river was covered with floating pumpkins.
The loss was severely felt and many cattle died the following winter for
want of sustenance”.
Baked, Boiled, Mashed, or in
a Stew...
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An excerpt from the “New England Ballad”, circa 1630, from The History of Lynn, by Alonzo Lewis.
So,
let’s cook and eat those pumpkins that are decorating your houses, in an
authentic antique way. Now most, if not
all, of the pumpkins sold today around Halloween are carving pumpkins and therefore,
they won’t be quite as tasty as the eating pumpkins of the 17th, 18th,
and 19th centuries, and so they might need some extra spices and
sugar.
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An over-ripe pumpkin in whose flesh is separating from the rind, don’t eat this one, throw into the mulch pit! Photograph by the Author.
The
first thing to do is to make sure that your pumpkin isn’t over-ripe. Over-ripe pumpkins might have rinds that are
soft and mushy, or their flesh might be separating from their rind. Also black, rotten spots on the outside of
the rind are a definite sign of a bad pumpkin!
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What you will need to get started, from top right to left, a crock pot, a pumpkin, a knife, a large spoon, a cutting board, a bowl for the pumpkin seeds and a bowl for the pumpkin “guts”. Photograph by the Author.
During
the 18th and 19th centuries you would eat your pumpkins either
baked, roasted, boiled, mashed, stewed, or stuffed. I decided that I would cook my pumpkin in a 17th
century way that would have been familiar to both the Pilgrims and the Native
Americans of that very first Thanksgiving dinner, and so I baked it7.
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An excerpt from Camp Cookery, by Horace Kephart, page 55 to 56, on how to bake in a hole.
Now,
instead of baking my pumpkin in a fire-heated, stone lined hole, which was how they
would have done it in 1621, I cooked mine in a crock pot, the modern equivalent
of a fire-heated hole.
Start
by cutting off the top of your pumpkin and then, using a large spoon, remove
the seeds and the “guts” from inside the pumpkin shell.
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Photograph by the Author.
After
emptying the pumpkin shell, place it into a crock pot set on low and cook it
for four hours, or until soft. When the
pumpkin is done cooking, remove it from the crock pot and drain off any liquid
that has accumulated, inside the pumpkin shell.
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A Native American sauce, which in the 17th century would have been made with bear’s fat, but that I made with bacon grease and maple syrup, photograph by the Author.
While
the pumpkin is cooking, you might want to make a sauce to sweeten it. I used a recipe for a Native American sauce that
I had read about in An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and
Travels of Colonel James Smith, which described his life with the Native
Americans of the Old Northwest Frontier during 1755 to 1759. This sauce was commonly used for dipping
roasted meat in, but perhaps it was also used on baked pumpkins.
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An excerpt from An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of Colonel James Smith, by James Smith, page 44.
Since
I was fresh out of bear’s fat, I used bacon grease instead, mixing one
tablespoon melted bacon grease with two tablespoons of maple syrup.
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Pumpkin seeds fried in bacon grease, photograph by the Author.
Also,
while the pumpkin is cooking, don’t forget to separate the pumpkin seeds from
the “guts”, so that you can cook them too.
Pumpkin seeds can be baked, fried, or in these modern times, even
microwaved. In the past I have baked
them, and they come out very crisp and quite tasty. However, this time, in keeping with the 17th
century method of cooking the pumpkin, I fried them since in the 17th
century baking was a time intensive cooking method and frying was easy to do
over an open hearth. Personally, I
thought that the fried pumpkins seeds, while they tasted very good, were
soggier than the baked ones I had made in the past. Maybe I used too much oil, next time I will
try parching them in a dry frying pan.
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Ready for the taste test, photograph by the Author.
I
cooked two pumpkins, a white one and a larger orange one, to see if they tasted
different. The inside of the white one, when
I scooped out the “guts”, seemed more like the inside of a butternut squash,
while the orange pumpkin was stringier inside.
Now,
to find out how they tasted, go to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube and watch
“Pumpkins...Boil ‘em, Mash ‘em, Eat ‘em in a Stew!©”, HERE.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “The Top Ten Wilderness
Survival Skills...Number Six©”, where we will talk about starting that oh, so
important fire!
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1
American Thanksgiving celebrated on November 25th.
2 Nate
Barksdale, “The History of Pumpkin Pie” and University of Missouri, “Pumpkin: A
Brief History”
3 From
“Squash Named from an Indian Word” by Aggie Horticulture and "Fun
With Words" by the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project.
Additionally, both
the Massachusett language and the Wampanoag language are part of the Southern Algonquian
language group, and some linguists consider them to be the same language, while
other students of languages consider them dialects of the same language.
4 “The History of Pumpkin Pie” by Nate Barksdale
5 “Squash Named from an
Indian Word” by Aggie Horticulture
6
For and excellent article on how Native Americans cooked and preserved
pumpkins, read “Squash: The Prized ‘Ground Fruit’ of the Eastern Indigenous
Farmers”, by Jessica Diemer-Eaton, HERE.
7
For those of you who would like to use a more modern 20th century recipe, try
the one below, it is delicious, and I use the leftovers from my taste test to
make a side dish for my family.
Sources
Aggie
Horticulture, “Squash Named from an Indian Word”, [© Texas AgriLife Extension
Service, Texas A&M System], https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/publications/vegetabletravelers/squash.html, accessed November 8,
2021
Barksdale,
Nate; “The History of Pumpkin Pie”, Originally, November
21, 2014, Updated: August 31, 2018, [© 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC.], https://www.history.com/news/the-history-of-pumpkin-pie, Accessed November 8,
2021
Brower,
D. H. K.; Danville, Montour County, Pennsylvania: page 44, [Lane S.
Hart, Printer and Binder, Harrisburg, PA, 1881], page 44, https://books.google.com/books?id=zzYVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA44&dq=great+pumpkin+flood+of+1786&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFw4Hvrob0AhWZknIEHddGA7IQ6AF6BAgDEAI#v=onepage&q=great%20pumpkin%20flood%20of%201786&f=false,
Accessed November 15, 2021
Colonial Williamsburg, “Some Pumpkins!”, CW
Journal, Autumn 09, https://research.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Foundation/journal/Autumn09/pumpkins.cfm, Accessed November 16, 2021
Diemer-Eaton, Jessica; “Squash: The Prized
‘Ground Fruit’ of the Eastern Indigenous Farmers”, [first published with
Yahoo!Voices in 2011, updated 2014 & 2020], http://www.woodlandindianedu.com/squash.html, November 17, 2021
Gelber, Ben; The Pennsylvania Weather Book,
[Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 2002], Page 175, https://books.google.com/books?id=34RKv9fMFo4C&pg=PP197&dq=great+pumpkin+flood+of+1786&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjFw4Hvrob0AhWZknIEHddGA7IQ6AF6BAgHEAI#v=onepage&q=great%20pumpkin%20flood%20of%201786&f=false, Accessed November 15, 2021
Kephart,
Horace; Camp Cookery, [The Macmillan Company, New York, NY, 1941], page
55-56
Lewis, Alonzo; The
History of Lynn, Second
Edition, [Printed by Samuel N. Dickinson, Boston, 1844], page 71, https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_History_of_Lynn/aUehQrAgP-8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22stead+of+pottage+and+puddings+and+custards+and+pies%22&pg=PA71&printsec=frontcover, Accessed November 17, 2021
Ridpath, John Clark, LL.
D; United States A History, Columbian Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
[The United States History Co., Boston and New York, 1891], page 131, https://books.googleusercontent.com/books/content?req=AKW5QafVv8CqrD1zBayaWu70BRt9h5QsUJ0ifRZwdEG3U_jd3i8Ae6riCfkja8mk6wxrHKQ3Lv5jZW0XjFS66_ox74GdMDeAVsuQy8ijZQ1LnRzkzuspeT4QgxjuiHLsu_T4-OUdupbPjLgUeyzJURJUAYkgh1jKL038AudEL0D2kXHUFg-m1aFEW4QFno1yhCt7TripZhNvpafSntIrs5hkc_jqm9nzv24qwiDa4Blb2wdSXw6f2y3uQ3neX9r2knFT3jXok97b,
accessed November 15, 2021
Smith,
James; An Account of the Remarkable Occurrences in the Life and Travels of
Colonel James Smith, [Greg & Elliot, Philadelphia, PA, 1834], page 44, https://books.google.com/books?id=QlbzAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA44&dq=the+way+we+commonly+used+our+sugarwhile+encamped+Colonel+Smiths+captivity&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjq0avX8KH0AhUEAp0JHT2lCzc4ChDoAXoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=the%20way%20we%20commonly%20used%20our%20sugarwhile%20encamped%20Colonel%20Smiths%20captivity&f=false,
Accessed November 18, 2021
University of Missouri, “Pumpkin:
A Brief History”, October 4, 2013, [© 2020 Curators of the University of
Missouri], https://ipm.missouri.edu/meg/2013/10/Pumpkin-A-Brief-History/,
Accessed November 8, 2021
Wikimedia,
“Cucurbita_2011_G1”, by George Chernilevsky, September 11, 2011, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cucurbita_2011_G1.jpg,
Accessed November 17, 2021
Wôpanâak
Language Reclamation Project, "Fun With Words",
October 22, 2020, [© 2021 WLRP], https://www.wlrp.org/fun-with-words, Accessed November 8, 2021
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