New England Indians and Colonizing Pigs

NEW ENGLAND INDIANS AND COLONIZING PIGS ROBERT R GRADIE University of Connecticut Introduction The history of the Algonquian-speaking Indians of North Amer ica in the 17th century is one of rapid change. Some of thb change can be attributed to deliberate attempts by Europeans to alter Indian cultures. Much of it was the result of attempts by Indians to incorporate selected elements of European culture. However, at least some of thb change was not deliberate in the sense that it was desired by Indians or forced on them by Euro peans, but rather, was an unintentional result of environmental modifications caused by the introduction of European agricul ture, domesticated animab and diseases (Cronon 1983; Thomas 1976; Schlesier 1976:129-45). Cultural change induced by environmental modification has long been recognized as a major result of contact between two alien cultures (Barnett et al 1954; Dobyns 1983; Thomas 1976). The range of possible initiators of environmental change is large. In New England the introduction of new agricultural techniques and European dbease have been recognized as major environ mental modifiers. But European domesticated animals have rarely been considered as such agents. However, a growing but as yet Umited body of evidence suggests that early in the 17th century, one of these domesticated animals, the pig, became an increasingly important element in the Algonquian environment. For the Indian, the pig was an animal with both useful and 148 ROBERT GRADE destructive potential. Useful as a source of food and trade in come, it was potentially destructive as a source of European diseases and a potential source of inter-cultural mbunderstand- ing and conflict. As a European domesticate, the pig, in the context of European culture, came bound with a set of human and animal relationships which to the Indian were foreign and sometimes dbruptive. Further, when Europeans were present in settled communities they often demanded that Indians observe European customs of animal husbandry. Thus the response of the Algonquian to the pig presents a problem in culture change which ranges the spectrum of acculturative processes including elements of both directed and nondirected cultural change. Pigs The animal under consideration b Sus scrofa scrofa, a small cloven hoofed mammal of the famUy Suidae. Native to the Old World, it is a heavy long-legged lop-eared animal with a long mobile snout, thick bristly brown or black hide, and a short tail. This b not the modern European pig, which is an 18th century cross between S.a. Scrofa and S.s. vittatus or the Chinese pig. The traditional range of S.s. scrofa was the broadleafed decidu ous forests of northern and central Europe and its most common habitats were river valleys and marshy bottom land. It b omniv orous and will east most foods consumed by humans plus acorns, hazelnuts, chestnuts, juniper berries, slugs, insects, worms, fern roots, fungi, mice, voles, eggs, reptUes, clams and oysters, in ad dition to scavenging any carcasses that might be found (Clutton- Brock 1981:77; Zumer 1963:267; Cronon 1983:136). Of aU the major domestic animals S.s. scrofa b the most pro lific breeder and most long Uved. A boar can mate with up to 45 sows per year and the average sow can produce two Utters of between 7 and 13 piglets annually. Pigs are social animals with the basic social unit consbting of several sows and accompany ing young, making up a troop of 10 to 30 individuals; boars are solitary. Domesticated pigs aUowed to roam unattended in the woods sometimes travel in herds consbting of up to one hundred COLONIZING PIGS 149 animab including sows and young plus several boars. Boars are aggressive and wUl fight over sows but are not territorial and are easUy manipulated by man. This, plus the fact that the ani mal is intelligent and easUy trained, has often been exploited by farmers. The pigs are allowed to roam freely and a signal such as a call or loud noise b used to attract the animal periodically for feeding and, ultimately, slaughter. Such practices were common in 17th century New England and were stUl in use in parts of eastern Connecticut as late as the 1960s (McBride et al, 1981; Clutton-Brock 1981:74). Pigs in the New World There are two sources of information to document the intro duction of the pig into the New World: hbtorical records and archaeology. Both sources are at present few in number, limited in information, and often vague. But taken together it is pos sible to construct an outline of porcine adaptation and Indian response. As no suids are native to the western hemisphere, any pigs found in the New World are by definition immigrant, brought by Europeans for use as Uvestock. First brought to the western hemisphere by Columbus in 1493, they were put ashore on Hispaniola and within a year were roaming the bland unat tended. Brought to Cuba in 1510, they were by 1524 roaming in feral herds which were hunted for food. They were introduced into Mexico in 1524 in the wake of Cortez' conquest and into the southeastern United States by De Soto in 1539 (Towne and Wentworth 1950:70-76). De Soto began with 600 Europeans, an equal number of native bearers and 13 pigs. After wintering on the Atlantic coast of Florida the herd had increased by AprU 1540 to 300 pigs which were then driven inland with the expedition (Lewb 1907:171). In the three years that the expedition was travelling, the size of this herd seems to have fluctuated around a mean of 400; but it suffered several depletions due to Indian hostilities. De Soto had the habit of serving pork to various Indian leaders or caciques that he encountered. Some of these Indians sought to obtain j 150 ROBERT GRADE more animab and on several occasions there were attempts to steal pigs. At least one such attempt in 1541 resulted in the loss of approximately 300 animals when an assault scattered the herd. The result of these depredations was the addition of the pig to the local fauna but not any long-term reduction of the expedition's pork supply, for at De Soto's death in Arkansas in May, 1542, 700 pigs were listed among hb possessions. According to an account of one of the participants, by the time the expedition left the Mississippi VaUey in the summer of 1543 local Indians were selling pork to the Spanish "which were the breeding of some sows lost the year before" (Lewb 1907:199). Twenty years later, in 1565, Pedro Menendez de AvUes landed 400 swine in Florida to support local settlers. Many of these an imals were allowed to roam unattended and came into the hands of Indians who did not capture them but allowed them to re main feral and periodically hunted them. Jonathan Dickson on his trek from St. Augustine to Charleston in 1696 described thb practice near St. Simon Sound at the mouth of the Turtle River, in Georgia: "Some of our Indians went out a-hunting for deer and hogs of both which the Spaniards said there was plenty.... The Indians brought in several hogs and deer of which we had part" (Dickson 1944:91). A Portuguese settlement attempted in 1568 by Manoel de Barcelos on Sable bland off Nova Sco tia included herds of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Although the settlement itself was shortly abandoned, the anima-b were recorded as present in 1583 by Sir Humphry GUbert and were utilized by French explorers regularly between 1598 and 1603 (Quinn 1975:359). Pigs were brought to Virginia with the first settlement at Roanoke in 1585.They were purchased from the Spanbh on His- paniola where the Englbh expedition traded for horses, cattle, goats, swine and sheep. It b not clear what became of these ani mals. Ralph Lane the governor of the colony writing to Richard Hakluyt on September 3, 1585 implied that at least some were with the settlement at that date. Whether they were stUl extant when its residents were taken off by Sir Francis Drake in June COLONIZING PIGS 151 1586 and were allowed to become feral or had been lolled and consumed b not known (White 1967:136, 143). At least three sows and a boar were brought with the first settlers to Jamestown in 1607. In 18 months they had increased to more than 60 pigs (Smith 1910:471). Their numbers rapidly grew out of control and by 1617 swine were reported by Ralph Harmon to be roaming in herds in the woods, the property of anyone who could capture them (Bruce 1895:216). By 1627 pigs were either so numerous or so dbpersed as to be Usted as un countable in official reports and sufficiently feral to have become a serious nuisance to agriculture as weU as a source of food for the Indians (Smith 1910:885). In New Jersey pigs seem to have been equally uncontrollable. A 1684 letter from Gaiven Lowrie to a group of Scottbh proprietors discussing agriculture in the colony states; "Swine they have in great flocks in the woods". Peter Watson writing to his cousin in Selkirk in 1683 says of the Indians "they come and trade among the Christians with skins of Venison, or Corn, or Pork" (Scot 1874:426, 438). There may in fact have been a standard colonization kit which may have included certain easily maintained animals, such as pigs. Such a strategy b suggested by Richard Hakluyts' 1584 lbt of items to be included in new settlements (Hakluyt 1935:321).

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