Herrmann-Dissertation-2013
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Copyright by Rachel Beth Herrmann 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Rachel Beth Herrmann Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Food and War: Indians, Slaves, and the American Revolution Committee: Neil Kamil, Supervisor Carolyn Eastman, Co-Supervisor Erika Bsumek Elizabeth Engelhardt Robert Olwell James Sidbury Food and War: Indians, Slaves, and the American Revolution by Rachel Beth Herrmann, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2013 Dedication For Marilyn and Amy Acknowledgements I have received more professional and personal support than I could have hoped for while writing this dissertation. Research funding from the history department, the graduate school, and British Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the David Library of the American Revolution, the Huntington Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the New York Public Library allowed me to bury myself in manuscripts and microfilm. Two additional writing fellowships from the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and International Security Studies at Yale enabled me to write my dissertation surrounded by supportive, welcoming, and very smart people. My committee has provided me with the feedback I needed to make this work as strong as I could. Carolyn Eastman constantly pushed me to ask big questions about my sources, and to separate the forest from the trees. Neil Kamil gently let me know when I overstated the size and importance of the former. Erika Bsumek read some of my earliest work on food history and cannibalism, and ensured that I became securely grounded in Native American history. Elizabeth Engelhardt introduced me to some of the newest work in food studies, and showed me that it was possible to successfully blend American Studies with early American history. Robert Olwell’s work on slaves has informed my work tremendously, and his interest in the historiography of the American Revolution helped me to figure out the sorts of arguments I needed to make. James Sidbury read my v work with an enormously helpful critical eye, and challenged me where I needed to be challenged on the Sierra Leone material. Obviously, I take full responsibility for any errors that remain in these pages. As a historian, I would be remiss if I did not look back on the teachers whose enthusiasm for the past fired my own. At the Bronx High School of Science, Melvin Maskin turned me from a math and science student into someone who went to college to major in history. At Vassar, Jim Merrell advised my undergraduate work on foodways in the Early Republic, and his tough questions and encouragement convinced me that I could make a place for myself in the field of food history. At the University of Texas at Austin, many people cheered me on. I thank Dharitri Bhattacharjee for excellent movie recommendations, Ben Breen for all things early modern, Mikki Brock for demonology and enthusiasm for margaritas, Felipe Cruz for aviation anecdotes and careful edits about chamomile tea, Chris Dietrich for advice about New Haven and going easy on his TA, Bryan Glass for the world of British Studies, Chris Heaney for skulls and appendices, Marilyn Lehman for helping me jump through administrative hoops, Storm Miller for ribbing me about my baseball predilections, Rachel Ozanne for being the best roommate I could ask for, Alexis Harasemovitch Truax for camping adventures and homebrewed beer, Trevor Simmons for updates on the weather in Austin, and Angela Smith for her humor and support. I’ve also met people outside of Austin who have enriched my work and kept me company during my travels. Thanks to Joe Adelman for introducing me to the world of Twitter and other communication networks, Amanda Behm for making me feel at home vi in the foreign world of security studies, Rachel Finn for listening to my early thoughts on black foodways, Rachel Laudan for talking with me about food studies writ large, Kristina Poznan for feeding me copious amounts of Hungarian food in Colonial Williamsburg, and William P. Tatum for keeping me honest about military history and the British army. Every now and again, a scholar is lucky enough to land in a place where she makes colleagues and friends at the same time; for me, this place was the McNeil Center. Dan Richter was kind enough to read one of my very rough chapters, but more importantly, he provided an example of a seminar leader who steered discussions with humor, wit, collegiality, and an impressive array of ties. I am grateful to all of the fellows who called 3355 Woodland Walk home for the year, but especially to Glenda Goodman, Dael Norwood, Nenette Luarca-Shoaf, and Nic Wood, who made extended lunch conversations just as important as sorting out my dissertation paragraphs. To Sari Altschuler, Chris Parsons, Jessica Roney, and Seth Perry, I think I am, for once, at a loss for words. I suppose that in these sorts of situations, one can only offer unlimited amounts of gratitude and promises of future deliveries of cookies. There will always be people who love you for who you are, no matter what you have written. My mother Marilyn and my sister Amy will in all likelihood never read this work, but I owe them my ability to write it. To Chelsea Backer, Erica Fink, Kofi James, Sasha Litwin, Anna Rogers, Matt Shapiro, and Kathryn Swallow: I couldn’t have done it without you. vii Finally, to Marc-William Palen, who’s been here since I started writing this thing, and who has gone on food adventures with me in Austin, Washington Crossing, Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Paris, London, Sydney, Maine, and New Haven, and probably consumed more than his fair share of stress-induced cooking: thank you. viii Food and War: Indians, Slaves, and the American Revolution Rachel Beth Herrmann, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisors: Neil Kamil and Carolyn Eastman This work asks how Native Americans, free blacks, and slaves used food to wage war and broker peace during and after the American Revolution. I argue that from 1774 to 1812 food diplomacy and victual warfare were two opposing yet related ways of communicating in the Atlantic world, and therefore ways of negotiating power. Case studies of white soldiers, black soldiers, black Loyalists, Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, and Western Confederacy Indians stitch together the broad fabric of the Atlantic by illuminating points of commonality and divergence in places as far-flung as the Upper Ohio Valley, the North- and Southeastern Woodlands, Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone. I argue that Iroquois Indians’ abilities to use food diplomacy speak to an anti- declension narrative and help to chart the pan-Indian movement that cohered from the 1780s to the 1810s. By the end of the war nearly everyone in the North adhered to a Native iteration of food diplomacy. In the South, by contrast, food diplomacy failed. Victual warfare illuminates factions among Americans, Britons, and Natives, and explains how the violence of the Revolution continued into the postwar period. My chapters on black Loyalists in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone show how discourses about food followed people out of the colonies and into increasingly transnational worlds. Yet ix by 1812 Native Americans and black Loyalists lost the ability to use food as a bargaining tool, and Americans and Britons increasingly dictated the terms of a less flexible diplomacy, which they enforced with stringent food laws. This project offers the first study of how people in the Revolutionary Atlantic used food as a tool of social and political control. x Table of Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................1 Cast of Characters ..................................................................................................41 Chapter 1: “The pivot upon which all your operations turn”: Domestic and Military Foodways ......................................................................................................52 Chapter 2: “What he now related he heard the Officers talk over at Table”: Black Food Networks ............................................................................................104 Chapter 3: “No useless Mouth”: Iroquoian Food Diplomacy ..............................139 Chapter 4: “We shall make their Towns Smoak with fire, and their Streets run with blood”: Victual Warfare and the Not-So-New Order of Things .................187 Chapter 5: “From hunters to husbandmen”: Culinary Imperialism and the Pan-Indian Western Confederacy War ..........................................................................238 Chapter 6: “A denial of bread to many hungry families”: the State-Federal Battle in Postwar Creek and Cherokee Country ........................................................290 Chapter 7: “One days alowance of frish Beef for a Christmas diner”: Race and Food Laws in Nova Scotia ...................................................................................342 Chapter 8: “So inconsistent with those equitable principles by which we professed to be governed”: Nova Scotian, Maroon, and Temne Foodways in Sierra Leone .....................................................................................................................380 Conclusion