Sweetness

The universal human “sweet tooth” draws us to foods that signal to the body a delightful infusion of energy. Esopus people found sweetness in the wteehim (wild strawberry), small in size but big in flavor, and celebrated the fruit during Wteehiim Kiishox, the spring Strawberry Moon. By 1700, the Esopus had begun boiling maple sap into hard sugar cakes; accounts mention a man named Tottoi trading his sugar for bread. Europeans adapted this process to make maple syrup.

Europeans brought honey bees to North America, shipping dormant hives in ice-packed casks. Recipes for honingkoek (spiced honey cake) turn up often in the recipe collections of Dutch colonists and their descendants. 

Muskmelon and watermelon were among America’s few foods of African origin, spreading north from their 1500s arrival in the tropics and quickly becoming popular with the Esopus and their neighbors. In 1665, Dutch promoter Adriaen van der Donck enthused: “It melts as soon as it enters the mouth."

Fueling Slavery 

Refined cane sugar flooded the world when Europeans used slavery to transform the once-scarce flavoring into a global commodity. Dutch and English sugar planters’ demand for labor forced more than twelve million African people and at least a quarter million Native Americans to labor under cruel conditions in the tropics of Brazil and the Caribbean. Many people enslaved in colonial New York had already survived the brutality of sugar plantations. 

Under this flood of cane sugar, sweets became more common, both in times of celebration and as a source of quick energy and even comfort. No traditional diet had so many sources of sweetness, especially not year-round. Today, we still struggle with the way this stream of refined sugars has impacted health.