Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter

People who lived here in the 1600s and 1700s ate many of the same foods every day—but their experiences of those flavors differed sharply. 

European colonists expanded their menu through trade and empire. So abundant was this land that they had plenty to export and grew ever more prosperous. The relentless expansion of their farming ventures through land appropriation formed the foundation for a new nation, to the detriment of Esopus lifeways and the freedoms of people of African descent. As they accumulated power and wealth over centuries, European descendants often inscribed their cultural memories onto the land in historic sites like this one. 

Enslaved Africans lost access to much of their original food culture when European traders and enslavers abducted and permanently displaced them. Under duress, they were forced to adapt their palates and skills to a new set of ingredients. The culinary techniques they introduced, and the new food combinations they created, became the basis of long-lasting American food traditions. Today, researchers are actively working to retrace the relationships of people of African descent in the Hudson Valley and beyond. 

Esopus people struggled to maintain their food and culture, along with their ancestral homeland, in the face of land theft and displacement. European settlers felled forests for farmland, dammed streams for mills, and plowed earth for planting, destroying root and soil ecosystems. Esopus people began moving over the Catskill Mountains, and by 1770, colonists had taken the last Indigenous-held land in today’s Ulster County. Most of the Esopus were forced to move away to the Grand River in Ontario, from which descendants later spread to Wisconsin and Oklahoma, where they maintain tribal ties with one another and this land today. 

Food for Thought? 

What flavors did these ancestors savor? What lost flavors did they miss? What might they wish they had never encountered? We can never really know what the past tasted like. But using memory, cultural knowledge, and the evidence of the past, we can begin to imagine how each person who lived and labored here experienced the flavors of change.