High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America Part 3

From its inception, urban enslavement in the North was no different from its Southern counterpart. Despite curfews and strict laws governing their presence on the streets and in the marketplace, those enslaved in towns and cities began to make their presence felt in the business of food. They became workers in taverns and eateries and sold prepared foodstuffs, vegetables, and other goods on the streets, usually at the bidding of their masters. Indeed many foreign visitors commented on the number of people of African descent on the streets and on their raucous behavior. It seemed that they treated the thoroughfares as their own a.s.sembly areas and did not hesitate to be insubordinate and unruly. After emanc.i.p.ation in the North, many former slaves continued to run taverns, eateries, and other dining establishments. On the upper end of the culinary spectrum, they served whites, set trends, and created fortunes from their labor. In both the South and the North, on the more humble end, blacks both free and enslaved and their descendants continued a tradition of street vending which had its roots in the African continent and displayed an entrepreneurial spirit that even enslavement couldn't tamp down. Food provided a path to independence for many blacks, especially in the port towns on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

In the early 1800s, most African Americans were emanc.i.p.ated in the North, and many got work in taverns and ale houses, finding more opportunity in those realms than in others. In the North, free people of color occupied a sizable spot in the food market, but the tale of African Americans' finding fortune and fame in the kitchen began even earlier, before the nation was declared. In Providence, Rhode Island, Emmanuel "Manna" Bernoon, a free black, opened that city's first oyster and ale house, in 1736, the year of his emanc.i.p.ation. He would later own a catering business and a tavern. The state also gives us the story of Charity "d.u.c.h.ess" Quamino, who was born on the African continent-the sonorities of her name indicate that she may have been from the area today called Ghana. Captured at age fifteen, she was brought to the United States in 1753 and became the property of John Channing of Newport, Rhode Island. There she was put to work in the kitchen, where she remained for more than four decades, cooking for not only Channing but his son as well. In her free time, she began to cook for others. She established a catering business and became known as the best pastry chef in the prosperous town; her frosted plum cakes were renowned. Throughout this time she remained a slave, working under the aegis of her owners. She received her freedom only in the later years of her life. Bernoon and Quamino are examples of the possibilities of culinary entrepreneurs.h.i.+p evidenced by both enslaved and free.

By the early years of the nineteen century, the African American presence was diminis.h.i.+ng in northern cities like New York, where the population of blacks dwindled from 10 percent in the 1800s and 1810s to 7 percent in the '20s and '30s and continued downward. As the cities grew, the proportion of blacks in the urban mix decreased: African Americans were being subsumed by the increasing wave of northern Europe an immigrants. Nevertheless, they continued to dominate the street commerce and still remained major players in the culinary industries of the republic.

Philadelphia was a pivotal city for the growth of African Americans in the food-service industry. Blacks in culinary service had long been the norm there. It was, after all, a city that had seen the culinary likes of Was.h.i.+ngton's Hercules and Jefferson's James Hemings. Pre-Civil War Philadelphia was a port city that depended on the money, s.h.i.+pping, and patronage of Southerners. Many from the Old South wintered in the city and enjoyed its cultural attractions. In the early years of the nineteenth century, Philadelphia was also a place that beckoned to African Americans; its Quaker heritage made it a potential safe haven for those fleeing from the South. The city continued to maintain connections with the Caribbean, and following the Haitian Revolution of 1804, it received an increase of immigrants from that island, both white and black, free and enslaved, many of whom joined the blacks working in the food-service industries of their adopted city. In 1810 it was estimated that there were eleven thousand free blacks living in Philadelphia and at least another four thousand fugitive slaves seeking asylum in various ways. The city's black community grew by more than 30 percent in the decade between 1820 and 1830 alone. But by the 1830s, the conditions were not as welcoming: The free black community was at odds with the city fathers about political and social rights, though a growing abolitionist community mitigated some of the difficulties. Food and significant African American success in the service industry also helped smooth the way.

In Philadelphia, it was said, "if you're in catering, you're in the swim; if not, you're in the soup." This was because of a group of individuals who saw a niche in the market and filled it. In the North, with no slaves to staff midsize or bachelor house holds, a public butler, often a free person of color, was frequently engaged by those too small or too frugal to have their own servants. Unlike a private butler employed by a single family, a public butler organized meals and waited on a number of different house holds. Robert Bogle created the role of the caterer from that of the public butler, although the term "caterer" did not come into wide usage until the mid-nineteenth century. Bogle worked as such a butler and also as an undertaker. On occasion, he could be found presiding over a funeral during the day and a party later that evening with equal aplomb. Bogle also functioned as a waiter, and possibly purveyed meals, and provided staff as required for house hold events. From these multiple occupations and with his diverse talents, Bogle became the first of Philadelphia's major black caterers. Soon black caterers became the norm in the city. They formed a union that was, in the words of sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, "as remarkable a trade guild as ever ruled a medieval city. [The caterers] took complete leaders.h.i.+p of a bewildered group of Negroes, and led them steadily to a degree of affluence, culture, and respect such as has probably never been surpa.s.sed in the history of the Negro in America." Bogle opened a catering establishment on Eighth Street in Philadelphia. According to Du Bois, he was "the butler of the smart set, and his taste and eye and palate set the fas.h.i.+on for the day."

Bogle became so famous that, in 1829, Nicholas Biddle, a prominent white Philadelphian, penned a multi-stanza ode t.i.tled "Biddle's Ode to Bogle." It began: Hail may'st thou, Bogle, for thy reignExtends o'er Nature's wide domain,Begins before our earliest breath,Nor ceases with the hour of death;Scarce seems the blus.h.i.+ng maiden wed,Unless thy care the supper spread;Half christened only were that boyWhose heathen squalls our ears annoy.If, service finished, cakes and wineWere given by any hand but thine,And Christian burial e'en were scantUnless his aid the Bogle grant.

Bogle's origins are unclear, but he is listed in the 1810 census as living in Philadelphia's South Ward, where most of the city's African Americans then resided. When he died, in 1848, he was a beloved figure among Philadelphia's elite, known for his able handling of all social situations-from weddings, christenings, and banquets to funerals-as well as for the meat pies that he sold at his restaurant.

Bogle set the groundwork, but the catering fame of Philadelphia also resulted from the expertise of the French West Indian immigrants who arrived in the City of Brotherly Love following the Haitian Revolution and were trained in the French culinary arts and service. One of them was Peter Augustin (sometimes given as Peter Augustine). His additions to Bogle's basics put Philadelphia caterers on the map of high-society families throughout the country. Augustin established a restaurant on Walnut Street after he arrived in the city from Haiti. He and his family not only provided dining facilities but also warehoused materials-chairs, linens, and other service items-that could be used for various catering events. They also trained waiters, as had Bogle, to work at various venues. The Augus-tins were joined by the Baptistes, another Haitian family with catering and restaurant businesses. The families intermarried and soon established an enterprise of such renown that they purchased a railroad car with a kitchen that dispatched waiters and goods up and down the East Coast. Tastemakers for the upper cla.s.ses, the Augustin family and its staff were noted for their sophisticated cuisine and served dishes like creamed terrapin and oyster fritters to prominent families as far away as New York and Boston. The Augustin family enterprises continued to grow throughout the nineteenth century; by the late 1870s one of the restaurants was reputed to be the "Del-monico's of Philadelphia." The Augustins continued to intermarry with others from Haitian catering families, like the Dutrieuilles, and their catering business continued until 1967 as the oldest continuously managed black family business in that city.

Bogle and the Augustin family were the first generation of what would become a tidal wave of African American caterers, who had a lock on Philadelphia's entertaining in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their inheritors banded together in enterprise to share resources and facilities and to consolidate their buying power, purchasing ingredients in bulk and sharing the cost of equipment. They not only catered private affairs in the homes of wealthy clients, providing food, waiters, crystal, silver, napery, and more; they also opened dining rooms that functioned as restaurants and catering halls. The caterers, adept at business and with finely honed social skills, became the black elite of the city. While many of the catering families were of Haitian origin, the most renowned Philadelphia caterer of the nineteenth century was undoubtedly Thomas Dorsey, a former slave.

Dorsey was born on a plantation in Mary land in the early decades of the nineteenth century and escaped to Philadelphia in adulthood. He was captured and returned to his owner, but during his brief sojourn in Philadelphia he had made friends among the free blacks and abolitionists who were able to raise the sum necessary to purchase his freedom, and he was able to return to the city a free man in the late 1830s. Like many of the newly arrived blacks from the South, he apprenticed at a trade and is listed as a shoemaker in the Register of Trades of the Colored People in the City of Philadelphia and Districts Register of Trades of the Colored People in the City of Philadelphia and Districts, a pamphlet published by the Philadelphia Abolition Society in 1838. The privately published Philadelphia City Directory Philadelphia City Directory, which appeared annually between 1793 and 1940, lists him for the first time as a waiter in 1844 and it seems that he rotated among several different eating establishments in the city until i860. He made his first appearance in the listing as a caterer in 1862. And by the middle half of the nineteenth century, Dorsey was well established as one of the pillars of the catering network that provided the food, servants, and accoutrements for the upper-cla.s.s soirees and dinner parties in Philadelphia. Dorsey served only the upper crust and had a reputation for excellent fare. At one meal, served on December 27, 1860, the menu included such delicacies as oysters on the half sh.e.l.l, filet de boeuf pique filet de boeuf pique, canvasback duck, charlotterusse, ladyfingers, and champagne jelly! Other dishes that formed the edible display at prominent Philadelphia banquets included lobster salad, deviled crabs, terrapin, and chicken croquettes. Dorsey and his fellow caterers, like those who followed them in later decades, based their reputation on serving excellent European-style food. They set culinary standards and were powerful arbiters of style, with enough clout to launch modes and fads.

Although born enslaved, Dorsey was revered. Twenty-one years after his death, a commentator who went under the sobriquet "Megargee" wrote in the Philadelphia Times Times that he "possessed a naturally refined instinct that led him to surround himself with both men and things of an elevating character." He prided himself on having hosted such notables of the period as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and prominent blacks like Frederick Dougla.s.s. When Dorsey died in 1875, the that he "possessed a naturally refined instinct that led him to surround himself with both men and things of an elevating character." He prided himself on having hosted such notables of the period as abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and prominent blacks like Frederick Dougla.s.s. When Dorsey died in 1875, the Philadelphia Press Philadelphia Press referred to him as "the negro feast furnisher ... who spread the tables for the marriage supper, or the ball, or the reception; he ... gave character to any entertainment, and [his] presence was more essential than the honored guests." referred to him as "the negro feast furnisher ... who spread the tables for the marriage supper, or the ball, or the reception; he ... gave character to any entertainment, and [his] presence was more essential than the honored guests."

The caterers of Philadelphia had such societal preeminence that they became leaders of the city's African American community, creating jobs for black waiters, cooks, and others within their enterprises and generally working to raise the standard of living among the newly freed who arrived in the city following the Civil War. At a time when the entrepreneurial advances of African Americans were being threatened and more often than not thwarted by increasing numbers of immigrants from Europe, the catering business arose from what Du Bois termed "an evolution shrewdly, persistently and tastefully directed, [which] transformed the Negro cook and waiter into the public caterer and restaurateur, and raised a crowd of underpaid menials to become a set of self-reliant, original business men, who ama.s.sed fortunes for themselves and won general respect for their people." The caterers proved that blacks had not only the culinary talents but also the business ac.u.men to produce wealth. It was a lesson that would be proven over and over again in the North.

While Philadelphia was the nexus of the phenomenon, other northern cities also had their black culinary entrepreneurs. Joshua Bowen Smith was a Boston-based caterer who served meals at Harvard and catered for the state of Ma.s.sachusetts; James Wormley was a caterer, restaurateur, and hotel owner in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. New York, too, had its black culinary elite. The city, after all, was for decades home to the second-largest black population in the country (after Charleston, South Carolina) and had received a number of Haitian immigrants. Culinary business leaders there included Henry Scott, whose pickle establishment did business with many of the vessels sailing out of the port of New York, and restaurateurs like the Van Rensselaers, George Bell, and George Alexander, whose eating establishments served all rungs of the social spectrum. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the African American culinary entrepreneur who was as renowned as Philadelphia's caterers was Thomas Downing, one of New York's black leading citizens.

Downing was the son of free people of color, born in the last decade of the eighteenth century in Chincoteaque, Virginia. He, like many African Americans from the Virginia and Mary land sh.o.r.e, grew up with an intimate knowledge of the region's fauna and flora. Terrapin, clams, crabs, and oysters held no mystery for the young Downing, and when he arrived in New York City in 1819, he discovered that this knowledge was his most marketable skill. At the time, New York was indulging in a citywide oyster obsession-the consumption of oysters was a virtual pastime. In 1810, the city directory listed twenty-seven oystermen, of whom, notably, sixteen were people of color. The oyster trade offered a range of job possibilities. At the lower end of the spectrum, oyster luggers offered their wares at watering holes that served free people of color and to the roustabouts who lived in the notorious Five Points area of the city. Others sold the mollusks on the streets to those who gulped them down on the run.

Although not an oysterman, Downing aimed even higher. He began by renting s.p.a.ce on Pell Street in downtown Manhattan and searched for his own oyster beds. According to a biographical sketch written about him by his son, he would get up at two A.M. A.M.and, by the light of a lantern, make his way by boat to the New Jersey oyster fields to harvest fresh oysters daily to offer to his customers. His hard work paid off, and by the time the 1823 city directory was published, he was able to number himself among the city's oystermen. His establishment continued to grow and prosper. By 1825, he opened an oyster "refectory" at 5 Broad Street, at the corner of Wall Street, where he offered raw oysters on the half sh.e.l.l as well as roasted oysters that were cooked over a fire of oak shavings. His eatery grew in popularity and began to lure the elite with its fare. Downing's was one of the few places considered acceptable for women who arrived with their husbands or with their chaperones. Soon, as described by his son it was fas.h.i.+onable for ladies and gentlemen, whole families-the most respected of the city-to ... enjoy a repast which would cause their sons and daughters ... to long for frequent repet.i.tions. Ladies and gentlemen with towel in hand, and an English oyster knife made for the purpose, would open their own oysters, drop into the burning hot concaved sh.e.l.l a lump of sweet b.u.t.ter and other seasonings, and partake of a treat. Yes, there was a taste imparted by the saline and lime substances in which the juice of the oyster reached boiling heat that made it a delicate morsel. Truly, one worthy to be borne to the lips that sipped from the sh.e.l.l the nectareous mite.

By 1827, Downing constructed an oyster vault: a holding s.p.a.ce in which the bivalves could be stored in salt.w.a.ter. His business had grown so large that he could no longer supply his own oyster needs, and so he became a major client of the city's other oystermen, earning their respect for his fairness in dealing and his knowledge of the product. Unlike many other oyster refectories, Downing's was upscale and considered "the model of comfort and prosperity, with its mirrored arcades, damask curtains, dine carpet and chandelier," according to a review. Downing catered to the elite, and the creme de la creme came. Newspapermen and financiers were regulars. Charles d.i.c.kens dined at Downing's, as did the earl of Carlisle and Philip Hone, who was New York City's mayor from 1825 to 1826. Downing's refectory offered more than just raw oysters; it served the mollusks in many forms: scalloped oysters, poached turkey stuffed with oysters, fish in oyster sauce, and oyster pie, among other delicacies.

In 1842, New Yorkers were oyster mad and consumed about six million dollars' worth of them. Downing grew richer. Along with owning the restaurant, he became a prosperous caterer and was the man to call for government and society events. He was so well thought of that he was asked to cater the Boz Ball, at which d.i.c.kens and his wife were presented to New York's aristocracy. For this event alone he was paid the royal sum of $2,200. Downing s.h.i.+pped oysters to Paris, s.h.i.+pped pickled oysters to the West Indies, and even s.h.i.+pped some of his finest to Queen Victoria.

Even though he had been born free in Virginia and was a prosperous businessman, Downing was what would later be called a "race man." Mindful of the fate of his enslaved brethren, he was an ardent abolitionist. In 1836 he helped found the all-black United Anti-Slavery Society of the City of New York and served on its executive committee for three years. He was also a trustee for the New York Society for the Promotion of Education Among Colored Children, which started two elementary schools for black children. He worked on voting rights campaigns in an effort to guarantee equal suffrage for African Americans.

Downing was succeeded by his son, George Thomas Downing, who continued the culinary legacy and opened his own restaurant in New York in 1842. In 1846 he established a branch of the family business in Newport, Rhode Island, where in 1854 he opened the crowning glory of his culinary empire, the Sea Girt Hotel. Ironically, but representative of the times, the five-story building was restricted to a white clientele. The hotel also included Downing's residence, a restaurant, a confectionery, and a branch of his catering business. A fire on December 15, 1860, destroyed the building, causing him to suffer an estimated loss of forty thousand dollars. The son's career did not end there. A "race man" like his father, he was keenly interested in the treatment of African Americans, especially Civil War soldiers. This concern led him to Was.h.i.+ngton, where he became the manager of the dining room of the House of Representatives, a position that he held for twelve years, during which time he worked for the pa.s.sage of public accommodations laws in the capital city.

When Thomas Downing, the father, died in 1866, the oyster craze was still going strong. New Yorkers consumed fifteen thousand dollars' worth of them daily, and more than one thousand boats plied the waterways in search of the bivalves. In 1855, the New York Evening Post New York Evening Post wrote of Downing, "His private character is above reproach; he has made a large fortune as the keeper of a refectory, which is frequented daily by throngs of the princ.i.p.al bankers and merchants of Wall and Broad streets and their vicinity." Through his skill as an oysterman and his ac.u.men as a businessman, Downing became the elder statesman of black New York in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like the Philadelphia caterers, he understood the value of catering to the white elite in his career and used his position to create his personal fortune as well as to provide jobs for other blacks. wrote of Downing, "His private character is above reproach; he has made a large fortune as the keeper of a refectory, which is frequented daily by throngs of the princ.i.p.al bankers and merchants of Wall and Broad streets and their vicinity." Through his skill as an oysterman and his ac.u.men as a businessman, Downing became the elder statesman of black New York in the first half of the nineteenth century. Like the Philadelphia caterers, he understood the value of catering to the white elite in his career and used his position to create his personal fortune as well as to provide jobs for other blacks.

With their understanding of the formality of service and their mastery of the manners of others, the caterers-whether in Philadelphia, New York, or elsewhere-in serving a white upper cla.s.s, demonstrated the same cultural fluidity that had been evidenced by African Americans since their entry into the country. Their ability to seamlessly flow between several cla.s.s and cultural levels was a testimonial not only to their culinary abilities and their good taste but also to their finely honed social instincts and their well-developed survival skills. That they used these talents to contribute to the growth and uplifting of the entire African American community of their period is testimony to their humanity.

Most African Americans in the North were free by the time that Bogle, the Augustins, Dorsey, and the Downings were operating in Philadelphia and New York. Their enslaved urban brethren in the South may have demonstrated the same culinary skills, but they garnered little or no pay for their labors. While caterers in cities in the Northeast oversaw lavish entertainments and created personal wealth, in cities in the South gala events were directed by house slaves who were unacknowledged and unpaid. Free blacks did occasionally work in catering, but with houses staffed by unpaid slaves, there was scant money to be made in the field. Money could be earned by blacks vending fresh produce and prepared goods in the street. It was a track that blacks had used for decades in the North.

As early on as the colonial period, women of African descent had cornered the street-food market, selling goods that they'd created from homegrown ingredients; a black woman sitting on a small stool selling sweetmeats or savories was a ubiquitous sight. Free, they worked for themselves; enslaved, they worked for their masters and mistresses and were occasionally allowed to keep a small portion of their earnings. More often than not, slaves were hired out by their masters, who were paid for their services; they received little or no remuneration, hence the term "slave wages." Blacks, both free and enslaved, dominated street vending until newly arriving European immigrants made inroads in the mid-nineteenth century. African Americans street vending in both the North and South gave the fledgling city streets an African air, as vendors hawked their wares with loud cries designed to lure customers.

As early as the late eighteenth century, "Humanitas," a social commentator in the New York press, complained of the nuisance created by noisy street vendors, or hucksterers. He grumbled that the oyster stands and numerous tables of eatables made walking down the streets all but impossible. Indeed, in certain areas of the city, from early morning until late at night, cries such as "He-e-e-e-e-e-ere's your fine Rocka-a-way clams" and "H-a-u-r-t Ca-irrne" [hot corn] were common and created a distinctively African American soundscape.

Throughout the country, newspaper articles criticized the auditory nuisance of the black vendors. Nowhere was this criticism livelier than in Charleston, South Carolina, where street vendors had been a fixture in neighborhoods since the city's inception. African American vendors approached their task with a cacophonous zeal and were often argumentative, insubordinate, and rude. On March 26, 1823, a letter to the editors of Charleston's Post and Courier Post and Courier, signed by "A Warning Voice," noted: The public cries should be regulated. The negro should be taught to announce what he has to sell and to suppress his wit. A decency and humility of conduct should pervade all ranks of our colored population.

For centuries, Charlestonians' victuals came to them from street vendors, who brought their wares in baskets that they carried on their heads or over their arms. Indeed, each vendor had a specific cry that extolled his or her wares, like the cries so evocatively captured in the twentieth century by George and Ira Gershwin in their folk opera Porgy and Bess Porgy and Bess at the beginning of act 3: at the beginning of act 3: Oh dey's so fresh an' fineAn dey's just off the vineStrawberry, strawberry, strawberry.

Street cries were typical in most major cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Old etchings show various Parisian street vendors like the chocolate seller, the chestnut vendor, and the notions peddler, who had their distinct cries-as did Ireland's Molly Malone, who sold her "c.o.c.kles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!" Charleston's street cries, like those in New York, offered an African twist on an Old World theme. In regions of the continent's West Coast, market women have long had not only the power of the purse but have wielded considerable political power as well. In earlier times, they were the region's economic foundation. It is certain that their verbally challenging manner of vending arrived in Charleston, where the majority of street vendors were of African descent. Freedmen, the newly emanc.i.p.ated, and the enslaved all brought with them a wit, a verve, and an aggression to marketing their wares that was all their own. By the end of the seventeenth century, a visitor commented on the city's African appearance and the fact that blacks outnumbered whites: How strange the aspect of this city! Every Street corner and door sill filled with blacks; blacks driving t[he] drays & carriages, blacks carrying burdens, blacks tending children & vending articles on t[he] sidewalks, blacks doing all.

The cultivation of the Lowcountry's major agricultural products-rice, indigo, and cotton-was based on a task system, allowing the enslaved to use the time after their tasks were accomplished as they wished. Many of the enslaved raised vegetables on small plots of land to supplement their rations and to trade with their masters for privileges and even cash. By 1800, the Charleston city council had ordinances on the books regulating the age of slave vendors (they couldn't be under thirty years of age) and the goods sold ("milk, grain, fruit, victuals, or provision of any kind"). Although slaves worked out of their master's home in urban areas throughout the South, in Charleston, slaves who were hired out wore a metal badge at all times. The square piece of copper, bra.s.s, zinc, or tin was inscribed with a number and the slave's profession and signaled the legality of his or her presence and served as a license to sell goods and services. By 1806, the annual badge fee for sellers of fruits, cakes, and other items was a whopping fifteen dollars, higher than the cost of a badge for fishermen, washerwomen, and even porters. The higher fee was designed to strictly regulate fruit vendors, as they had more freedom of movement and could carry money. (The fee was reduced to five dollars in 1813.) Owners had to register their slaves, and the city kept track of the master's name, address, and the number of slaves hired out, as well as each slave's age and job.

Charleston's vending system was not unique. In New Orleans and other port cities, slaves were hired out by their masters to work in building trades, as cooks and seamstresses, and as vegetable sellers. In July 1846, the New Orleans Daily Picayune Daily Picayune mentioned "Green Sa.s.s Men" who traveled through the neighborhoods selling small quant.i.ties of figs, melons, and other produce from used champagne baskets balanced on top of their heads. They were older slaves who had been sent into the city by their masters to sell surplus produce from outlying farms. This peddling was strictly regulated. In an 1822 ruling, the Conseil de Ville (Town Council) required that peddlers have licenses from the mayor in order to sell merchandize on public squares or streets. Slaves could not be given licenses, but free people of color could purchase them and specify a slave to do the actual selling. The record books are filled with licenses for vendors and journeymen butchers, including the name of the license holder and that of the slave who actually did the work, as well as the street for which the license was granted. Peddlers of bread, vegetables, milk products, and fodder were, however, exempted from the provisions of the law. mentioned "Green Sa.s.s Men" who traveled through the neighborhoods selling small quant.i.ties of figs, melons, and other produce from used champagne baskets balanced on top of their heads. They were older slaves who had been sent into the city by their masters to sell surplus produce from outlying farms. This peddling was strictly regulated. In an 1822 ruling, the Conseil de Ville (Town Council) required that peddlers have licenses from the mayor in order to sell merchandize on public squares or streets. Slaves could not be given licenses, but free people of color could purchase them and specify a slave to do the actual selling. The record books are filled with licenses for vendors and journeymen butchers, including the name of the license holder and that of the slave who actually did the work, as well as the street for which the license was granted. Peddlers of bread, vegetables, milk products, and fodder were, however, exempted from the provisions of the law.

Further regulations in 1831 continued the ban on slaves' selling items without the written permission of their owners specifying the articles to be sold. Anyone caught disobeying the law was subject to "twenty stripes for the first offense and forty stripes for the second, or any subsequent offence." Etienne de Bore, a large sugar planter whose plantation was in the area that's now Audubon Park, purchased licenses for his slaves, and in return made thousands of extra dollars. (One year, de Bore made more than six thousand dollars from his vendors.) It is not recorded if the slaves received any part of this money for their work.

In New Orleans, street vendors became so typical of the city that they became archetypes: the praline seller, the cala cala vendor, and others. They were drawn by visiting artists and featured in newspaper articles of the day. Artist Leon Fremaux was one of the first to capture the images of the peddlers. His drawings and watercolors, made as early as the mid-1850s, depict those who would become representatives of the city. In one, a vendor sells vanilla ice cream from a freezer balanced on his head. Another depicts a vendor, and others. They were drawn by visiting artists and featured in newspaper articles of the day. Artist Leon Fremaux was one of the first to capture the images of the peddlers. His drawings and watercolors, made as early as the mid-1850s, depict those who would become representatives of the city. In one, a vendor sells vanilla ice cream from a freezer balanced on his head. Another depicts a cala cala (rice fritter) seller with her fritter batter and her bowl precariously perched atop her (rice fritter) seller with her fritter batter and her bowl precariously perched atop her tignon tignon (head tie). She carries a small brazier and a cloth-covered basket of the final product, which Fremaux opines are "coa.r.s.e and greasy." (head tie). She carries a small brazier and a cloth-covered basket of the final product, which Fremaux opines are "coa.r.s.e and greasy."

The cala cala is a cla.s.sic New Orleans dish. It was sold on the streets, but especially in front of St. Louis Cathedral, where those leaving Ma.s.s, in the days when Communion was only taken after fasting, could purchase a nibble to tide them over until they could have a more substantial meal. The cries of the is a cla.s.sic New Orleans dish. It was sold on the streets, but especially in front of St. Louis Cathedral, where those leaving Ma.s.s, in the days when Communion was only taken after fasting, could purchase a nibble to tide them over until they could have a more substantial meal. The cries of the cala cala vendors are recorded in the cla.s.sic collection of Louisiana folk tales vendors are recorded in the cla.s.sic collection of Louisiana folk tales Gumbo Ya-Ya Gumbo Ya-Ya, by Lyle Saxon, Robert Tallant, and Edward Dryer, who also state that cala cala could be found in two versions: a rice version and a cowpea version. Both have their origins in Western Africa: the rice version in Liberia and the black-eyed pea version among the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. Both versions point to the intriguing fact that the street foods sold by African American vendors often had culinary connections harking back to a continent long forgotten by those who sold them. could be found in two versions: a rice version and a cowpea version. Both have their origins in Western Africa: the rice version in Liberia and the black-eyed pea version among the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. Both versions point to the intriguing fact that the street foods sold by African American vendors often had culinary connections harking back to a continent long forgotten by those who sold them.

While the enslaved black hands in the Big House kitchens of the rural antebellum South helped to Africanize the palates of whites, the street vendors in the country's Northern and Southern urban areas kept some of the cultural and culinary connections alive as well, by purveying snack foods and fried tidbits that were New World variants on cla.s.sic African culinary atavisms.

Whether at the upper end of the social scale, like the caterers of the North, or more humble, like the cala cala sellers and street hawkers of the South, blacks in urban areas, North and South, both free and enslaved, kept alive traditions of manners and of vending that originated on a continent that they neither knew or claimed. Increasingly, whether free people or those with a view toward freedom, they were Americans moving toward dreams of full citizens.h.i.+p who had become a major force in the urban food-disburs.e.m.e.nt chain. sellers and street hawkers of the South, blacks in urban areas, North and South, both free and enslaved, kept alive traditions of manners and of vending that originated on a continent that they neither knew or claimed. Increasingly, whether free people or those with a view toward freedom, they were Americans moving toward dreams of full citizens.h.i.+p who had become a major force in the urban food-disburs.e.m.e.nt chain.

A GENTLEMAN'S GENTLEMAN Now my young friends, you must consider that to live in a gentleman's family as a house servant is a station that will seem wholly different from anything, I presume, that ever you have been acquainted with; this station of life comprises comforts, privileges, and pleasures which are to be found in but few other stations in which you may enter; and on the other hand many difficulties, trials of temper &c, more perhaps than any other station in which you might enter in a different state of life.

So writes Robert Roberts in the introduction to his book, The House Servant's Directory; or, A Monitor for Private Families: Comprising Hints on the Arrangement and Performance of Servants' Work The House Servant's Directory; or, A Monitor for Private Families: Comprising Hints on the Arrangement and Performance of Servants' Work. Published in 1827, it is one of the first books by an African American to be issued by a commercial press. Today, Roberts may seem to be a conundrum: a free man in the early part of the nineteenth century extolling the virtues of a life in domestic servitude. However, he was a man of his time. His pioneering book and the world that it reveals doc.u.ment the lifestyle and traditions of African Americans in domestic service in both the North and the South.

It is not known whether Roberts was born slave or free, but it seems that he was born in Charleston in the late 1700s. He arrived in New England in 1812 as a free man with the ability to read and write and with the skills at keeping house that would bring him great wealth and renown. It is thought that he arrived in Boston in the employ of Nathan Appleton, a Boston merchant and politician who'd visited Charleston from 1802 to 1804. Shortly after Roberts's arrival in Boston, he met and married Dorothy Hall, the daughter of a black Revolutionary War hero from Exeter. Although Roberts was listed in 1820s Boston city directories as a stevedore, that may be an error, for during that decade and earlier, he had worked as a butler for Appleton and for Kirk Boott, a Ma.s.sachusetts industrialist. Some scholars believe that Roberts may have gone abroad with Appleton between 1810 and 1812 and met Boott in En gland; in his book, Roberts states that he had served some of the finest families of France, England, and the United States.

Roberts's fame as a butler came between 1825 and 1827, when he worked for Christopher Gore, a former Ma.s.sachusetts governor. Roberts worked in the British tradition of the trusted majordomo and ran the well-to-do house hold with Gore's supervision. The first edition of The House Servant's Directory The House Servant's Directory, published shortly after Gore's death, includes a posthumous note from the ex-governor: "I have read the work attentively, and think it may be of much use."

Roberts's directory is written in the style of English house hold manuals of the time but distinguished itself by being written to two hypothetical butlers in training, Joseph and David. Roberts is candid in his discussion about the travails of being in service and advises his imaginary disciples to be accommodating at all times and to observe and understand the temperament of their employers. He also admonishes the young men to "be very cautious of what company you keep." The House Servant's Directory The House Servant's Directory instructions for carving roasts, placing dishes on the table, and setting out the sideboard may seem dated today. However, one piece of advice Roberts gives to Joseph and David rings as true almost two hundred years later as it must have in 1827: "Remember my young friends, that your character is your whole fortune through life; therefore you must watch over it incessantly, to keep it from blemish or stain." instructions for carving roasts, placing dishes on the table, and setting out the sideboard may seem dated today. However, one piece of advice Roberts gives to Joseph and David rings as true almost two hundred years later as it must have in 1827: "Remember my young friends, that your character is your whole fortune through life; therefore you must watch over it incessantly, to keep it from blemish or stain."

O FREEDOM!.

Jubilee Jubilations On Friday, April 12, 1861, the world changed for all residents of the United States, enslaved and free. Before sunrise, shots were fired on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, from the Secessionist batteries. The Civil War had begun. During the four years of battle, brother fought brother, families were disrupted, and more men died than in any war before or since. The War freed the enslaved, but it also rent the country asunder and divided North and South in ways still felt more than a century later. It was a time of trial on all fronts. Despite the fact that many of the country's aristocrats and most influential men were Southerners, the agricultural South was ill-prepared for the War. As it dragged on for years, they felt the privations more acutely than did those in the more industrialized North. The War Between the States, as the conflict is still known in the South, was the United States' coming of age, and it was a b.l.o.o.d.y brutal transition.

Initially the enslaved were kept in ignorance of the politics of their day and duped by masters into believing that the Yankees were demons who would maim or otherwise harm them. However, as the war progressed, the truth of the situation was gradually accepted. It was a complex time of confusion, during which the enslaved in the South suffered along with their masters. Fear and uncertainty were daily fare, along with reduced rations. Indeed, most of the enslaved were unclear what the War was and how it would directly change their lives. Only as it progressed did the flickering hope dawn that the War might end their enslavement. Testimonies of the time from the former enslaved were rife with memories of the first glimpse of Yankee soldiers. Those who had been children remembered receiving candy or kind treatment from blue-coated soldiers marching through the South. The Union soldiers eventually arrived in Southern towns and hamlets, where the enslaved still went about their daily tasks. There were crops to plant and maintain and harvest, and as the fighting dragged on, the annual drudgery of the seasons repeated itself relentlessly, with mistresses taking over for the menfolk away at battle. The slave communication network that had so baffled and terrified owners throughout the period of enslavement, though, was at work. And then one day it came.

It began as a whisper that old Abe Lincoln, up in that place in the North known as Was.h.i.+ngton, where the white men sat in government, had made the decision to free the slaves. At first it seemed like just another of the rumors that made their way across the Southern states, giving hope to the overburdened and bringing the glimmer of possibility to those for whom each day was a fight against what others had imposed on them and called their destinies. It started on September 22,1862, as a trickle, a corner of hope. Word slowly spread. Discussions were overheard by house servants in Virginia plying heavy silver ladles and proffering elegant fare on bone china platters, and this was pa.s.sed along to unheated cabins where moss and rags plugged up the holes to keep out the winds of the upcoming winter. In North Carolina, it was silently signaled as folks picked bugs off tobacco leaves. In Georgia, it was whispered over bowed backs in cotton fields. In Louisiana, it was shared in the steaming heat of the boiling houses over vats of bubbling cane juice. President Lincoln had issued a proclamation that gave the seceding states one hundred days to abandon their pro-slavery positions. Could it be?

Then, on January 1, 1863, the day of the Jubilee finally arrived. President Lincoln signed the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. As magnificent as the tidings were, news of the Proclamation didn't travel with the speed of today's modern information. Instead it made its way slowly across the American South. Many plantation owners felt it best to withhold the information until the crops had been gathered. Some of the former enslaved, however, took it upon themselves to hasten the spread of the news and formed what was called Lincoln's Legal Loyal League, or the 4-Ls; their mission was to bring the news of Freedom. And, like a rising tide that enveloped the land with the sureness of inevitability, the word pa.s.sed through the tobacco fields of Virginia, through the rice-growing marshlands of the Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry, through the cotton fields of Mississippi and Georgia, and out to the indigo plantations of the Sea Islands. It sped along the cane breaks on Louisiana's sugar plantations, where some of the slave owners were black themselves, and eventually arrived in the Texas outlands. Finally, all those who had worked in slavery's fields could lay their burdens down.

Jubilee brought freedom and momentary rejoicing to the formerly enslaved, but while the War raged on, it offered little plan or solution for the newly freed. Illiterate for the most part and raised in a culture of dependency, they had no resources on which to depend. Many, known as contrabands, sought out the Yankee army and followed the soldiers, relying on them for food, clothing, and shelter. Others set out on their own, looking for a new way of life. Still others elected to remain with their masters and the security of the only world that they'd ever known.

Confederate General Robert E. Lee's enslaved cook, William Mack Lee, followed him for the entire four years of the War, cooking and working as his butler. William Mack Lee recalled that the only time he'd been chastised by his master during the entire course of the war was when he'd killed a laying hen to provide a meal for a "crowd of generals" that his master had invited to dine before the Battle of the Wilderness. He dispatched General Lee's black hen, "picked her good, and stuffed her with bread stuffing, mixed with b.u.t.ter"-feeding the generals what he deemed an appropriate meal for men of their rank. Like William Mack Lee, those who remained used the resourcefulness acquired during enslavement to help their former masters and mistresses survive the War and its aftermath.

In this manner, the Southern culinary symbiosis between black and white continued throughout the War until its end. Then, in an ironic coda, there was one final act of generosity. After Appomattox, the last rations distributed to the Louisiana regiment as they marched in defeat to Burkeville Station to take the train for the last journey home were several hundred ears of corn that they received from a freed black, who offered it saying, "They's the last I'll ever see." Each man was given two ears and a cup of sorghum: a grace note to the interwoven reliance of whites and blacks for sustenance during the entire period of enslavement.

General Lee's signing of the surrender at Appomattox did not signal the end of privations for the Souths former enslaved. Rather, it heralded the beginning of new difficulties and challenges. With no master responsible for their care, the newly freed, who had deliberately been kept ignorant and illiterate, now found themselves without jobs, housing, and food. The shock of liberation combined with the lack of preparation for the momentous event killed many of the former enslaved. Others starved, and still others persevered, using the ingenuity and survival skills that they had learned in their long years of enslavement. Thomas Ruffin, a former North Carolina slave who was interviewed by the Works Progress Administration, remembered "We used to dig up dirt in the smoke house and boil it dry and sift it to get the salt to season our food with. We used to go out and get old bones that had been throwed away and crack them open and get the marrow and use them to season the greens with." Ingenuity prevailed.

Following Emanc.i.p.ation and the War's end, separated and disconnected families attempted to find each other, and the black newspapers of the time were filled with advertis.e.m.e.nts looking for long-lost kin. Mothers and fathers were united with sons and daughters; husbands located wives; sisters discovered brothers who had been sold away. Others found no one. All went on facing the new dawn, working their way to a new future in freedom. They all relied on the skills that they had demonstrated so creatively during the period of enslavement: dressmaking, barbering, agricultural pursuits, metalwork, carpentry, and more. Large numbers of them would create new lives out of their knowledge of and abilities in the world of food.

CHAPTER 7.

WESTWARD HO!.

Migrations, Innovations, and a Growing Culinary Divide

Dallas, Texas- Everything seems bigger in Texas. Just driving along in a taxi on the road from the airport into town, I noticed the flags decorating the used-car dealers.h.i.+ps appeared to be four times the size that they are elsewhere in the country. The weather is definitely twice as hot in June. Driving around the city with my new friend, a whippet-thin seventh-generation Texan, I was surprised at how Dallas seemed familiar. It fit into the pattern of many Southern cities that I knew. Shotgun houses huddled together, claiming their territory as if defying the troubled history of urban renewal that had also destroyed black neighborhoods, North and South. I could guess which of the old theaters had once housed thriving blues clubs.

I understood the cla.s.s stratifications that were still evident in the proudly well-kept homes, differentiating between the substantial brick homes of the elite and the rickety clapboard ones of the less financially able. I could see the pentimento of a cla.s.s divide that had always existed in the African American world but that became more firmly entrenched following Emanc.i.p.ation. There was a familiarity that came from living in a black neighborhood, albeit in the North, and from understanding that the migrations had transported blacks out of the South. We continued to drive, skirting the interstate that bisected the old 'hood like a snake eating away at its vitals. There was a stop at a barbecue place that, Texas style, included beef in its offerings and a trip to the black bookstore for black-related local books, and then it was time to move on. For I was in Dallas with a purpose: I'd been invited to speak at the African American Museum's Juneteenth celebrations.

Juneteenth is a Texas state holiday that celebrates the state's late acceptance of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation. Black Texans observe their red-letter day with special fervor. At their inception, the Emanc.i.p.ation celebrations were times of reflection and featured prayer meetings and religious services giving thanks for deliverance from bondage. Gradually the heartfelt prayers of thanksgiving offered up by preachers in sonorous tones became secularized, and by the early twentieth century, Juneteenth was a time of cakewalks and parades with lots of high-stepping horses. Now celebrations are more likely to include beauty compet.i.tions and baseball games than the sermonizing of the past.

Throughout it all, though, the backbone of Juneteenth festivities has always been the table. In the early years, those who had toiled in sorrow's kitchen commemorated their liberty with some serious eating. Picnics and barbecues were the hallmarks of the early celebrations, and groaning boards covered with bright cloths offered specialties like barbecued ribs and fried chicken and myriad variations on summer produce like black-eyed peas, peaches, and watermelon.

Dallas's African American Museum is located on the state fairgrounds. There, despite a hazardous-air alert and temperatures of over ninety degrees, folks had come out to spend the day. Coolers were unpacked, lawn chairs pulled into convivial circles, and portable grills fired up. People gathered to listen to blues music, sample several types of homemade barbecue, slurp down gallons of super-sweet red soda, and enjoy a celebration of their freedom. Walking through the booths with the museum's director of education, I was struck by the longevity of African Americans in Texas. Later, as I ducked the torpid temperatures with periodic walks through the museum, I began to have a hint of our importance in Texas history. There were rooms devoted to the African antecedents of the cowboy culture and to those who had been enslaved in the northeastern part of the state. There was even a section devoted to Dallas's lost black neighborhoods, with cases filled with memorabilia from demolished homes and long-forgotten clubs: faded photographs in tarnished frames, cups and saucers from long-dismantled sets, fragments of programs from shuttered theaters.

As I strolled through the galleries, I realized that the vast open lands of the West seemed to naturally appeal to those who had lived in bondage in the Southeast. Although the first Africans arrived in the area that would become the American West in the sixteenth century as slaves of the Spanish, with the Emanc.i.p.ation and Jubilee that Juneteenth celebrated, African Americans' westward migrations began in earnest. The West offered s.p.a.ce for adventurers and settlers, entrepreneurs and laborers-room so that the African American experience could expand in all its diversity.

Pre-and post-E manc.i.p.ation African Americans longed for a place where the past didn't hang over their heads like live oaks dripping Spanish moss. They wanted out of the South, and the new lands of the West beckoned. The country was moving westward and the region loomed large in the national consciousness as a place where adventurers of all races could find a stake and be evaluated on their merit and their hard work, not on their family lineage or the color of their skin. This look westward occurred at a time of increasing racism. The early de cades of the nineteenth century were marked by the removal of Native peoples from the Southeast into the area of the country that would become known as "Indian Territory." They were an era of anti-black violence that lasted up until the Civil War and was characterized by race riots and repression. The West was a place where the past was eradicated and new beginnings could be made. Texas would become the gateway to the West in the final de cades of the nineteenth century, but in fact, the migration from East and Southeast to West started earlier.

One unlikely starting point was the city of Philadelphia. In 1800, the City of Brotherly Love had the largest free black population in the country and was home to more than four thousand free blacks. In 1833, while Robert Bogle was catering to Philadelphia's upper crust, he and his fellow free African Americans in the city were searching for a way out of the problems of continuing racism in the United States. The third annual Convention for the Improvement of the Free People of Color proposed moving to western Africa, but after lengthy debate, it settled on immigration to Texas as a solution. Texas in 1833 remained a part of Mexico, a country with its own long history of enslavement of Africans. (Between 1521 and 1824, the date of the abolition of the foreign slave trade in Mexico, approximately two hundred thousand Africans were transported there.) Emanc.i.p.ation, though, had come early to Mexico, decreed in 1829 by mixed-blood president Vicente Guerrero. For free blacks at the Philadelphia convention, the neighboring country's abolition of slavery must have seemed attractive indeed, and hundreds migrated to the northern area of what is now Texas. But their expectations and hopes were dashed in 1836, when Texas became an independent slaveholding republic, a profile it kept through 1845, when it became a pro-slavery part of the United States. It remained slaveholding right up until Emanc.i.p.ation and was one of the last states to formally announce the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, in 1865.

Another group of African Americans also arrived in the West in the early 1830s. They, though, traveled with the Native Americans and were blacks who had melded with members of the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Muskogee-Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole) either as family members or as their slaves. They were a part of the forced marches to Indian Territory on the harrowing series of journeys known as the Trail of Tears. For these blacks, it began in 1831 with the first phase: the voluntary removal of the Choctaw Nation. It continued until 1838, when sixteen thousand Cherokees were forcibly taken from Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia and resettled in what is today's Oklahoma. In 1832, George W. Harkins, a Choctaw, wrote in A Farewell Letter to the American People A Farewell Letter to the American People, "We as Choctaws rather chose to suffer and be free, than live under the degrading influence of laws, which our voice could not be heard in their formation." Surely his words resonated with the African Americans who traveled westward with the Indians and with all those enslaved in the South.

Two years after the 1848 Gold Strike in California that began the Gold Rush, the West continued to look best for yet another group of African Americans. California was admitted to the Union in 1850 as a free state. That year only one thousand blacks lived in the state of California, but by 1860, three thousand more had joined them, settling in the San Francisco and Sacramento areas. However, the compromise that admitted California to the Union as a free state resulted in harsher fugitive slave laws that contributed to greater repression of blacks enslaved and free in the North and the South. In the decades leading up to the 1860 secession of the Southern states and the Civil War, the country was increasingly polarized over the question of slavery, and the division was being played out in the western territories that were open for settlement.

California was free, as were Oregon Territory and Was.h.i.+ngton Territory; the issue was unresolved in the territories of New Mexico and Utah, and the question of enslavement in the Kansas and Nebraska territories was to be determined by popular sovereignty. Freedom was not guaranteed, as laws changed and territories filled with white settlers of varying political views.

Yet, blacks continued to trickle westward; they headed for Oregon Territory and journeyed to Colorado for the Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859. Following Emanc.i.p.ation, the trickle became a steady flow, including the cowboys, those who worked on the railroads that connected the again-reunited country, the homesteaders, and the Buffalo Soldiers who protected them. By the last decades of the nineteenth century, the westward migration had swollen to a wave. Relocating blacks found jobs and created employment in the areas of service where once they had toiled in bondage. They worked in fields, where their ingenuity and cultural flexibility allowed them freedom. They worked on the nascent railroads and in hotels and in boarding houses. They catered to miners and homesteaders, settlers and outlaws, and opened restaurants and saloons in the small towns and cities that were springing up along the routes west. Along with their omnipresent desire for equality, the African Americans brought with them in their heads, their hands, and their hearts the African-inspired and American-inflected tastes of their former Southern homes.

Among the first to arrive in the western territories were the black cowboys who had worked in Texas and the Indian Territories before the Civil War. They had come as slaves, brought by their Anglo masters after 1845, when the in dependent republic was folded into the United States. A second wave of ranch hands, single, able-bodied men, came post-Emanc.i.p.ation. Both groups found work moving cows down the cattle trails, which emerged at the end of the Civil War, as routes of commerce expanded and central slaughterhouses were developed at burgeoning rail hubs that would take the meat to the rest of the country.

Interestingly, an archetype as quintessentially American as the Western cowboy may owe more than a little debt to the African continent. One of the many skills that arrived in the fetid holds of the slave s.h.i.+ps was the knowledge of working with cattle. Nomadic Fulani herdsmen lived in Western Africa, in an area that went from Senegambia to Nigeria and from Mali and the Niger River regions to the Sudan. They were accustomed to cow herding and had an understanding of animal husbandry. After their arrival in Virginia in the early days of the colonies, they began transforming the way that cattle were kept in the United States. Descriptions of herding in the Fulani-occupied regions of Western Africa closely resembled later ones in the South Carolina hinterlands and included patterns of seasonal north-south migration that are still used in Texas.

At the end of the Civil War, following this African-inspired system, cowboys black and white herded cattle off southern Texas ranches to the markets that lay to the north along routes that had developed over time. The most popular of the trails led from the Rio Grande to Abilene, Kansas. There, an entrepreneur named Joseph G. McCoy had established a hub where cattle could be penned and s.h.i.+pped to eastern markets on the Union Pacific Railroad. By 1867, the thrum of hoof beats could be heard seasonally along the route. That year, thirty-five thousand cattle were herded along the trail. By 1871, the number had swollen to seven hundred thousand, but by then the area was well settled and grazing lands were becoming scarce, so the loading of cattle was moved farther west.

Whether on the Abilene Trail or on any of the other routes that developed later, herding cattle was a lengthy, dusty, and arduous undertaking. For the entire journey, the only individuals that a cowboy saw were the other members of the crew. The average crew was made up of no fewer than eleven men-usually consisting of a trail boss, eight cowboys, a wrangler, and a cook. The trail boss was often the owner of the herd and had complete authority; the cowboys were in charge of keeping the cattle in line. The wrangler was usually the youngest member of the crew and the lowest in the pecking order. He was responsible for the cowboys' horses and for aiding the cook by collecting wood for the fire, loading and unloading the chuck wagon, and was.h.i.+ng the dishes. The most important member of the crew, however, was the cook, who often became confidant and mediator for the entire crew, who depended on him for nourishment. The creation of meals to suit the varied tastes of the crew from dried ingredients, fresh-killed meat, and foraged greens demanded a skilled hand, and the job was often a thankless one. Yet because of the relative freedom offered by the task, there were a sizable number of black cowboy cooks.

On the early cattle drives, a cowboy carried his own food and prepared his own meals. By the time the trails were in place and the drives had become larger, each crew had its own cook, who had many duties and was responsible for enforcing discipline in camp and having meals prepared on time. His mobile kitchen, known as the chuck wagon, developed over time to suit the needs of a traveling commissary. The chuck wagon was a st.u.r.dy vehicle designed to carry water for two days and food supplies for the journey, including such staples as flour, beans, sugar, bacon, salt pork, coffee, mola.s.ses, and the omnipresent canned tomatoes, which flavored many of the meals. It also held minimal medical supplies and cooking utensils, including the indispens