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Feast and famine for Jamestown colonists, Powhatan Indians
Feast and famine for Jamestown colonists, Powhatan IndiansDate published: 12/5/2004 By JENNIFER MOTL IMAGINE trying to feed yourself on a day when all the supermar- kets are closed, the public water supplies are foul, power and natural gas are cut off and roads to other communities are destroyed. This is the modern-day equivalent of what English colonists in Jamestown faced in 1607. Without supermarkets, running water, stoves or microwaves, they still managed to make delicious meals--when food was available. Food and nutrition were vastly different in Colonial times, as historical interpreters demonstrated last weekend during Jamestown Settlement's annual Foods and Feasts of Colonial Virginia festival. During good times, extravagant feasts featured succulent roasted fish, duck, and pork; lavish amounts of butter and lard, pies and bread; and mouthwatering sweets and puddings. People routinely ate 4,000 to 8,000 calories a day to fuel their heavy labors, according to staff at the settlement. (For comparison, modern Americans need about 2,000 calories a day.) But during bad times, people starved. One winter began with 500 colonists; by spring there were only 60. Foods were scarce at certain times of the year and abundant at others. The water in the James River was so foul and brackish that even the colonists' children drank beer instead. Insects pillaged stores of flour, and starving colonists had to wait for ships to come in with basics such as flour and then-exotic oranges, lemons and pineapples. Your options for dinner were: grow it, kill it, or hope an Indian or a boat arrives with it. Ships came in every four to six months. Indians fed the BritsOne thing is sure, the colonists would not have survived without the help of the Powhatan Indians, although their relationship was rocky. We know little about Powhatan cooking. "Everything we know comes through English eyes, and they make mistakes," said Lynn Powell, a historic interpreter at the Jamestown Settlement's festival. "The Powhatan women are not going to be trading their domestic secrets with these strange men," said Anastasia Triantafillos, another interpreter dressed in fringed buckskin tending a wood fire. Triantafillos used a stick to push coals in the fire around a clay pot. "I call it the original Crock-Pot," she said, adding that her soup of pumpkins and squash eventually would come to a simmer.
Date published: 12/5/2004
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