Southern New England Algonquian cuisine comprises the shared foods and preparation methods of the indigenous Algonquian peoples of the southern half of New England, which consists of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, but also included portions of coastal New Hampshire and Long Island, now part of New York, as a cultural and culinary region. The peoples of the region historically shared related languages in the Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) division of the Eastern branch of Algonquian languages as well as related cultures and spiritual practices.Goddard, Ives. 1978. "Eastern Algonquian Languages." Bruce Trigger, ed., Handbook of North American Indians 15(Northeast), pp. 70–77. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Regional variations were slight, mostly based on small differences in times of abundance or availability of certain ingredients due to location and the variations in microclimate. The New England climate, with its marked seasons and long winters meant that seasonality of ingredients and preservation of foods to survive the coldest times of year when little food was available were important aspects of the cuisine. The diet mainly consisted of agricultural staples such as the 'Three Sisters' of maize, beans and squash, augmented with the additions of meat, shellfish, game and various plants that were foraged from the surrounding area.
The adoption of many of the foods and dishes by the English settlers had a pronounced effect on New England cuisine, and many dishes and foods enjoyed in the region today were the result of Native influences from SNEA cuisine. The Native peoples of the region in turn adopted and adapted many of the foods of the Pilgrim and Puritan settlers, and the cuisines of the Indians and the settlers merged. Foods such as clam chowder, baked beans, succotash and corn on the cob are part of the traditional repertoires of contemporary Native and non-Native households in the region.Stavely, K. & Fitzgerald, K. (2011). Northern Hospitality: Cooking by the Book in New England. (pp. 103-125.) Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
History Hunting and gathering
Before agriculture, hunting, fishing, and foraging were the only methods of sustenance. The earliest evidence of these activities in New England begin after 13000 BC when the Paleo-Indians followed the Pleistocene megafauna, such as the mastodon onto the newly exposed tundra in the wake of the receding Wisconsin Glacier. Over-hunting and warming climate led to the extinction of the megafauna, and sites throughout New England show heavy reliance on following herds of caribou, although smaller numbers of moose, deer, hare, fox and marine mammals along the coast were also taken. Foraged foods likely included tubers of marsh plants and the leaves and seeds of chenopods.Robinson, B. S. (2011). 'Paleoindian Mobility and Aggregation Patterns'. Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, Orono, ME.Jones, B. D. and Forest, D. T. (2003). 'Life in a postglacial landscape: Settlement-subsistence change during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in Southern New England' in Geological Archaeology in Glaciated Landscapes in the Northeast. Cleemens, J. L. and Hart, J. P. (eds). Albany, NY: University of the State of New York. pp. 75-90.
The start of the Archaic Period ushered in a very volatile time as the climate rapidly warmed. The tundra had transitioned into a shrubby, cold savannah, then an open forest and finally the mosaic of mixed deciduous and coniferous trees today. Sea levels rapidly rose due to the melting glaciers inundating some areas whereas isostatic rebound exposed new lands and raised the elevations of other areas. By 7000 BC, the migratory patterns of fish and birds and most of the species of flora and fauna associated with New England today had established in the region.Loring, S. (1980). 'Paleo-Indian hunters and the Champlain Sea: a presumed association' in Man in the Northeast. 19(1980). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 15-41.
The population increased in the Archaic Period, due to migrations of people from the southwest and because of the greater carrying capacity of the land due to numerous trees producing oily nuts, which were a major food source, and improved hunting technology.Bernie, D. J. (1993). Prehistoric Subsistence on the Southern New England Coast: The Records from Narragansett Bay. New York, NY: Academic Press. pp. 3-7, 147-148. The Archaic Period peoples adopted the atlatl, which allowed hunters to throw spears from a greater distance and with greater force, and had developed a more diverse set of stone points and carved hooks tailored to the species that were targeted. By the late part of the Archaic Period, most of the foods known to be gathered up until the arrival of the first settlers were utilized at this time, particularly shellfish as evidenced from the large shell middens that occupy numerous coastal sites in Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.
Even with the development of agriculture, which ushered in the Woodland Period around 1000 BC, the Southern New England Algonquian peoples continued to rely on long-held hunting, fishing, collecting and foraging activities to supplement their diets. Food preparation was facilitated with the adoption of ceramic pottery around 500 AD. The new pots were lighter in weight, easier to produce and heated faster than stone vessels. The adoption of the bow and arrow around 700 AD greatly improved hunting prowess, as bow-and-arrow hunting was more stealthy than traditional spear and spear-throwing methods.Chilton, E. S. (2012). 'The New England Algonquians: Navigating "Backwaters" and Typological Boundaries' in The Oxford Handbook of North American Archaeology. Petauket, T. (eds.) pp. 265-269. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. In areas such as the colder, rocky uplands and sandy shoals, where agriculture was greatly hampered, reliance on hunting and foraging assumed greater importance but even in the most fertile areas, these activities were elemental to survival when food stores were thin at the end of winter or when crops failed due to drought, pest or early frost.Bragdon, K. J. (1999). pp. 50, 78-80, 177-180, 246.
Adoption of agriculture
Agriculture developed in eastern North America independently with a series of domestication events, with the crops and methods of growing them spread by trade routes. Crops included starchy, grain-like seeds of little barley, maygrass, goosefoot (similar to quinoa) and erect knotweed, although the latter two crops were also eaten as leafy vegetables. Oils were extracted from marsh elder and sunflower seeds and the meal was added to bread. Other crops include the tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke and Cucurbita pepo, ancestor of various pumpkins, melons and squashes, but the first domesticated varieties were used mainly for gourds and edible seeds.Smith, B. D. (1989). Science. 246(4937) 22 Dec. 1989, pp. 1566-1571.
Around 500 AD, the tropical Three Sisters of maize, beans and squash originally domesticated in Mesoamerica had reached New England. By 1100 AD, these crops had replaced the earlier crops of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, although they continued to be gathered in the wild. The yields of the Three Sisters per acreage was significantly higher, but only after varieties adapted to the colder climate and shorter growing season. New varieties of C. pepo were introduced with edible flesh, now the familiar pumpkins, squashes and melons still grown in New England today.Crawford, G. W., Saunders, D. and Smith, D. G. (2006). "Pre-Contact Maize from Ontario, Canada: Context, Chronology Variation, and Plant Association" in Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize, Staller, J., Tykot, R. and Benz, B. (eds.) (pp. 549–559). New York, NY: Academic Press. Although foods hunted and gathered from the wild, fish and shellfish supplemented the diet, for coastal peoples, it represented a bulk of the caloric intake.
The adoption of the Three Sisters was spread by migrations of people originally from southern Ontario and western New York, corroborated by the spread of the Point Peninsula complex of pottery into New England from the west as well as the intrusion of Algonquian genetic profiles into the population during the middle Woodland Period around 200 BC.Fiedel, S. J. (1987). "Algonquian origins: A Problem in Archeological-Linguistic Correlation." Archaeology of Eastern North America. 15(Fall 1987). pp. 1-11. The inhabitants of New England during the Archaic Period shared genetic profiles more closely associated with Catawba and Waccamaw people, but had absorbed the Algonquian migrants adopting their culture. Later, migrations of Iroquoian peoples into what is now New York and the Great Lakes isolated the Algonquian peoples of New England from elsewhere, leading to the development of the Eastern Algonquian languages. By the Woodland Period, the culture and the ethnic divisions at the time were more or less still in place by the time of European contact.Malhi, R. S., Shultz, B. A. and Smith, D. G. (2001). "Distribution of Mitochondrial DNA Lineages among Native American Tribes of Northeastern North America." Human Biology. 73(1). February. Wayne State University Press. pp. 17-55.
Regional variation
The SNEA peoples shared most aspects of culture and related languages, and most distances between peoples were based on local effects of micro-climate, limiting the availability and abundance of certain foods. What differences did exist are only known anecdotally from colonial sources, for example, the Pawtucket of what is now northeastern Massachusetts and coastal New Hampshire, despite speaking a dialect of the Massachusett language, eschewed the eating of bread and preferred eating stewed corn kernels as a side dish, scooping up bits between bites of other food. The Pawtucket also did not thicken their stews with additions of grain and often served various meats slow-cooked and mashed together. The Massachusett, and the Nipmuc that lived just to the west of them, were said to make bread, but unique to these regions, the bread was often enriched with mashed beans or boiled beans in larger proportions or fashioned solely from beans. Although the addition of chestnut meal and fruits to oiled cornbread was common, the Narragansett were said to be in particular very fond of these dishes.Bragdon, K. (1999). pp. 102-104. As a general rule, the region can be divided into four regions, mainly coastal, inland, upland and insular.
The uplands, particularly the region of rocky hills common in the Nipmuc areas were lightly settled, having the shortest growing seasons in the cultural area and rocky, acidic soils of little fertility. Hunting, fishing and gathering of foods were more important for sources of calories. What this area lacked it made up for in plentiful maple syrup production—since maples did not grow as well along the warmer coastal areas, access to furs and greater abundance of large mammals such as deer, moose—which were uncommon in most other areas of southern New England and bears, highly prized for their fat stores.
The people of the interior generally clustered around large lakes and rivers, which provided access to water, more fertile lands for farming and fish. Rapids and river junctions were important meeting grounds during the spawning runs, and places such as Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River and many others featured many tribes gathering to partake of the plentiful food resource. Like the uplands, the interior regions were still less populated than the coastal areas, allowing for easier access to hunting and plentiful lakes, rivers and ponds for fishing or foraging freshwater shellfish.