Food and Identity Among Early Immigrants to Upper Canada
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Hist Arch https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-020-00237-5 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Maintaining Traditions: Food and Identity among Early Immigrants to Upper Canada Eric D. Tourigny Accepted: 17 September 2018 # The Author(s) 2020 Abstract A critical examination of the relationships abordar las formas en que la carne se incorporó a las betweenfoodandidentityisexploredamongearly primeras dietas de los inmigrantes. Los estudios anteriores British and American Loyalist settlers in Upper Canada generalmente coincidieron en que la carne de cerdo (southern Ontario) from the late 18th to the late 19th desempeñaba un papel dominante en la cocina del Alto centuries. This research synthesizes zooarchaeological Canadá y que los residentes que se establecieron por data from the region and interprets these alongside his- primera vez en el área dependían particularmente de los torical texts to address how meat was incorporated into recursos de carne silvestre. La evidencia arqueológica early immigrant diets. Previous scholarship generally sugiere que este no fue el caso. Los resultados y las agreed that pork played a dominant role in Upper Ca- discusiones resaltan la influencia de las tradiciones de la nadian cuisine and that residents first settling in the area clase trabajadora británica en las identidades del Alto were particularly reliant on wild meat resources. Ar- Canadá y el desarrollo de las cocinas regionales en el sur chaeological evidence suggests this was not the case. de Ontario. Se trazan aspectos paralelos con los estudios Results and discussions highlight the influence of Brit- antropológicos y sociológicos de las vías alimentarias de ish working-class traditions on Upper Canadian identi- los migrantes, alentando a los arqueólogos a considerar la ties and the development of regional cuisines in south- importancia del mantenimiento de las tradiciones ern Ontario. Parallels are drawn to anthropological and alimentarias en el examen de los primeros grupos de sociological studies of migrant foodways, encouraging inmigrantes. archaeologists to consider the importance of maintain- ing food traditions when examining early immigrant Résumé Les relations entre les aliments et l'identité parmi assemblages. les premiers pionniers loyalistes britanniques et américains dans le Haut-Canada (Ontario du Sud) à compter de la fin Extracto Se examinan críticamente las relaciones entre la du 18ème siècle jusqu'à la fin du 19ème siècle font l'objet comida y la identidad entre los primeros colonos lealistas d'un examen critique. Cette recherche effectue une synthè- británicos y estadounidenses en el Alto Canadá (sur de se de données zooarchéologiques collectées dans la région Ontario) desde finales del siglo 18 hasta finales del 19. pour ensuite les interpréter conjointement à des textes Esta investigación sintetiza datos zooarqueológicos de la historiques afin d'étudier les voies par lesquelles la viande región y los interpreta junto con textos históricos para a été introduite dans les régimes alimentaires des premiers immigrants. La recherche antérieure s'accordait généralement sur le fait que le porc jouait un rôle dominant * E. D. Tourigny ( ) dans la cuisine du Haut-Canada, et que les résidents qui se School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK sont initialement installés dans la région s'appuyaient e-mail: [email protected] particulièrement sur des ressources de gibier. Les preuves Hist Arch archéologiques suggèrent que tel n'était pas le cas. Les handful of case studies, describe faunal evidence from résultats et les discussions mettent en lumière l'influence European Canadian assemblages in Ontario (Ferris and des traditions de la classe ouvrière britannique sur les I. Kenyon 1983;Betts2000; MacDonald and Needs- identités du Haut-Canada et le développement des cuisines Howarth 2013). Most faunal analyses in Ontario are régionales dans l'Ontario du Sud. Des parallèles sont produced for the commercial sector, and, while many établis avec les études anthropologiques et sociologiques qualified zooarchaeologists are regularly analyzing and des régimes alimentaires, incitant les archéologues à reporting on historical assemblages, their reports remain prendre en compte l'importance de la préservation des hidden in the gray literature (Tourigny 2017b). The traditions culinaires dans l'étude des assemblages des pre- zooarchaeologists working in the province may have a miers immigrants. good idea as to what they expect to find in historical period assemblages; however, time and budget con- Keywords foodways . immigrants . identity. straints rarely afford them the opportunity to conduct zooarchaeology. Upper Canada proper comparisons or address broader research ques- tions aimed at synthesizing trends visible across a wider region or time period. Introduction This article collates zooarchaeological data from ear- ly immigrant and immigrant-descendent contexts exca- The foods people eat can be reflective of and used vated from across southern and eastern Upper Canada. toward an active negotiation of identity (A. Jones and Assemblages consist of household deposits associated Richards 2003;O’Sullivan 2003; Sykes 2004; K. Lewis with residents of British or American Loyalist heritage. 2007; Twiss 2007, 2012). Over the past few decades, Through a comparison of what people said they were archaeological studies linking food and social diversity eating with the physical evidence of the food remains, have become increasingly popular in North American this article explores the ways local foodways developed historical archaeology (Landon 1987b; Scott 1996; War- and came to represent early expressions of identity in ner 1998; Franklin 2001; Milne and Crabtree 2001; this part of the world. Did British and American immi- Groover and Homes Hogue 2014; Dappert-Coonrod grants (and their descendants) make efforts to maintain and Kuehn 2017). Foodways research does not simply foodways that were traditional to them? Or, did they look at what people ate, but represents a critical exam- develop new food traditions upon settling in the prov- ination of the ways people thought about and interacted ince? Focusing on meat-consumption habits, faunal data with food: how and why they obtained it, distributed it, are qualified and quantified in both time and space to prepared it, preserved it, and consumed it (Anderson highlight trends in consumption practices. Comparisons 1971:29). The usefulness of this concept as an interpre- are then made with contemporaneous foodways derived tive framework lies in its all-encompassing definition as from data gathered elsewhere in North America and in an interrelated network of decisions affecting the ways the United Kingdom. individuals eat. It helps archaeologists move beyond simply listing the foods people ate by recognizing that dietary components and food behaviors are influenced Upper Canada and Its Food History by a series of complex factors related to social diversity (ethnicity, gender, religious belief, socioeconomic sta- Established in 1791, the province of Upper Canada tus), thus contributing to an individual’sand/orgroup’s stretched along the northern shores of the Great Lakes, sense of identity (Landon 1996:3, 2002:247; Kuehn comprising what is now the southern part of the 2007:200; Twiss 2012:381). province of Ontario (Fig. 1). It was initially formed, Despite many zooarchaeological studies of the his- in part, to accommodate United Empire Loyalists as torical period published in the United States (for a refugees from the American Revolution (Taylor 2007). summary, see Landon [2009]) and a growing body of Prior to its establishment, few people of European work from Quebec and the Maritime provinces ancestry inhabited the area, which was claimed by (Cossette 2000; Cossette and Horard-Herbin 2003; the French until 1763. Taking over these claims from Hodgetts 2006;Bernard2012; Tourigny and Noël France, the British government created an English- 2013; Betts et al. 2014), few publications, apart from a speaking jurisdiction, separating Upper Canada Hist Arch Fig. 1 Locations of sites within Upper Canada. Numbers refer to sites listed in Table 1. (Figure by Nicky Garland, 2018.) (English) from Lower Canada (mostly the French- The current understanding of 19th-century Upper speaking, modern province of Quebec). An initial Canadian foodways is primarily informed by a series influx of Loyalist settlers arrived in Upper Canada of published historical accounts interpreted alongside between 1783 and 1789, following the end of the knowledge of 18th- and 19th-century British and Amer- American Revolutionary War (Taylor 2007). Immi- ican customs (U. Abrahamson 1967;Boyce1972;H. grants were encouraged to settle in the Canadas, where Abrahamson 1981; I. Kenyon and S. Kenyon 1992). they were offered free (or very affordable) parcels of These studies suggest Upper Canadian meals were land, the necessary equipment to establish new farms, slightly different from those in prevailing English cus- as well as two years of food rations to help them toms of the time, with a focus on dietary staples, such as through the initial settling period (R. Jones 1946:17; meats, breads, and tea (Traill 1846, 1857;Moodie1852, Russell 1973:15–16). Increased migration from the 1853). Local wild ingredients, such as maple sugar, United States later led to a second wave of “late maize, pumpkin, and a variety of wild fruits, were Loyalists” between 1792 and 1812, which saw Upper reportedly common at the Upper