Meat

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Meat
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• What meats did Indians consume before the Spanish
  conquest?
• What was/is the relationship between meat
  consumption and ethnicity?
• How did the Spanish react to Indian meats like
  guinea pigs, insects, turkeys and iguanas?
• How successfully were European meats introduced
  to America after the conquest?
• What ecological problems did European animals
  cause in America?

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• Some foods classed as indigenous, including
  insects, iguanas, guinea pigs and capybara.
  Eating these foods tended to be interpreted as a
  sign of Indianness.
• Alien to Europeans, did not eat insects, reptiles
  or rodents.
• Turkey, by contrast, not seen as specifically
  indigenous, probably because they resembled birds
  with which the Spaniards were already familiar.

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Insects

• Aztecs ate 91 different species of insect,
  including 21 species of beetle, 19 species of
  bugs and 16 species of hymenoptera (a family that
  includes bees, wasps and ants)
• Insects a good source of protein and certain
  vitamins and minerals.
• Easy to collect, prepare and store.
• Eaten in various forms, including in tamales.

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Insect Egg Cakes
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European Reaction

• Alexander von Humboldt (Venezuela, 1804) I have
  seen Indian children, of the tribe of the
  Chaymas, draw out from the earth and eat
  millipedes or scolopendras eighteen inches long,
  and seven lines broad.Elorduy and Pino Moreno
  claim that in the convents of Puebla in the 18th
  centurythe consumption of insects was applied as
  a form of punishment or penance for the novices
  who committed a misdemeanour.

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Turkeys

• Domesticated by the Indians over 2000 years ago.
  Important part of Mesoamerican diet.
• The Spanish initially confused the turkey with
  the Asian peacock, or pavo real. They gave it
  the name pavo for this reason. They called the
  female turkeys gallinas de la tierra or
  chickens of the land another example of the
  use of old world names for new world fauna and
  flora.
• Turkeys originated in the New World, but were
  introduced to Europe very soon after the conquest
  and subsequently reintroduced to North American
  by English colonists in the seventeenth century.
  The name turkey is misleading. It stems from
  the fact the English, not realising that the bird
  was originally from Mexico, assumed that it had
  come from Turkey.

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Aztec Feast
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• 1577 Relaciones Geográficas imply that turkeys
  and hens were raised together by Spaniards in the
  New World. The report from the town of Acatlán
  states that here they raise chickens of the land
  i.e. turkeys and chickens of Castille i.e.
  real chickens in quantity. The report from
  Xalapa states, likewise, that there are chickens
  of the land, which are called gallipavos, and
  there are chickens of Castille in abundance.

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Aztec Drawing of a Turkey
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Guinea Pigs

• Guinea pigs remains are often found on
  archaeological sites. Consumption dates back a
  long way. Guinea pig pens were discovered at Chan
  Chan, which is an ancient Pre-Colombian city on
  the coast of Peru.
• José de Acosta The Indians regard guinea pig
  meat as very good food, and in their sacrifices
  they frequently offer these guinea pigs.
• Bernabé Cobo The Incas considered guinea pigs
  a greater delicacy than anything the Spaniards
  make.
• Jaime Baltasar Martínez de Compañón, Bishop of
  Trujillo, sent a stuffed guinea pig to Spain in
  1789, along with an illustration of a live cuy
  (note he magnifies its ear perhaps because the
  inner ear is seen as a delicacy?). Compañón
  commented that the guinea pig is a type of
  rabbittender meat and tastyit is eaten roasted,
  fried and stewed in different ways. 1
• 1 Daniel H Sandweiss and Elizabeth S. Wing,
  Ritual Rodents The Guinea Pigs of Chincha,
  Peru, Journal of Field Archaeology 241,1997,
  p.50

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Cuy (Guinea Pig)
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• Guinea pigs are still eaten in modern Peru and
  Ecuador and are now regarded as a typical Andean
  food. Raised both commercially, on large scale
  farms, and domestically, in peoples houses.
• Eaten on special ritual occasions, such as
  Saints days or rites of passage like weddings,
  births and baptisms.
• Usually roasted and served with potatoes.
• Particular body parts are accorded special value
  the inner ear, for example, is sometimes seen as
  particularly delicious, whilst cuyes with 6 toes
  are regarded as auspicious and highly sought
  after.

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• Guinea pigs seen as an Indian food.
• Susan De France Modern consumption of guinea
  pigs by some people and its rejection by other
  reflects the complex interaction between
  ethnogenesis, geography and history in the
  region.
• Mary Weismantel The contrast between serving a
  chicken-rice soup at a festive occasion and
  serving one made with cuy (guinea pig) and potato
  . . . is sharp and unmistakable.

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• VIDEO Roast Guinea Pig for Christmas?

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Capybara

• Capybaras can be eaten during Lent because they
  live in the water and are conveniently classified
  as fish.

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Armadillo and Rabbit
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Other Indian Meats

• Bernal Díaz del Castillo Moctezumas banquet
  Every day they cooked fowls, turkeys, pheasants,
  local partridges, quail, tame and wild duck,
  venison, wild boar, marsh birds, pigeons, hares
  and rabbits, also many other kinds of birds and
  beasts native to their country, so numerous that
  I cannot quickly name them all.
• Peter Martyr For some time none of the
  Spaniards had ventured to eat iguanas because
  of their odour, which was not only repugnant but
  nauseating, explained Martyr, but the
  Adelantado a Spanish official, won by the
  amiability of the cacique's sister, consented to
  taste a morsel of iguana and hardly had his
  palate savoured this succulent flesh than he
  began to eat it by the mouthful. Henceforth the
  Spaniards were no longer satisfied to barely
  taste it, but became epicures in regard to it,
  and talked of nothing else than the exquisite
  flavour of these serpents, which they found to be
  superior to that of peacocks, pheasants, or
  partridges.

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Meat, Race and Nutrition

• Belief that Indian meats were inferior and the
  Indians could become more Spanish if they ate
  European meats.
• Sahagún Indians should eat that which the
  Castilian people eat, because it is good food,
  that with which they are raised, they are strong
  and pure and wiseRaise Castilian maize wheat
  so that you may eat Castilian tortillas bread.
  Raise sheep, pigs, cattle, for their flesh is
  good. But do not eat the flesh of dogs, mice,
  skunks, etc. For it is not edible. You will not
  eat what the Castilian people do not eat, for
  they know well what is edible.
• 16th-century European, commenting on Indians in
  the Mexican village of Citlaltepec Their
  complexion has almost been transformed into our
  own as a result of being given beef, pork and
  lamb to eat and wine to drink, and of sleeping
  beneath a roof.
• Indian diet considered lacking in protein because
  of low meat consumption (19th century).
• Indians also criticised for eating raw meat.

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Francisco Bulnes, El porvenir de las naciones
latinoamericanas ante las recientes conquistas de
Europe y Norteamérica (1899)

• Before the conquest the American races of maize
  could not feed themselves with chickens eggs,
  because the only poultry that existed was the
  turkey they could not drink milk from cows,
  donkeys, goats or mares, because these animals
  did not exist . . .In order to obey the supreme
  law of self-conservation the American races of
  maize were obliged to have recourse to the dog,
  as an especial delicacy . . .They were obliged to
  consume disgusting animals such as the iguana,
  ants, and serpents both with rattles and without,
  the tail-less scorpion, worms from the maguey
  plant or from maize, and other reptiles and
  insects.

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Clorinda Matto de Turner, Birds without A Nest
(1889)

• It is proven that the Indians diet has caused
  their cerebral functions to degenerate. As you
  have no doubt noticed, these disinherited beings
  scarcely ever eat meat, and the advances of
  modern science have proven to us that cerebral
  activity is in direct relation to its nutritional
  sources. With the Indian condemned to eat an
  extremely limited vegetable diet, living on
  turnip greens, boiled beans, and quinoa leaves,
  with no albuminoids or organic salts, his brain
  has no source from which to draw phosphates and
  lecithin for psychic effort it serves only to
  fatten the brain, which plunges him into the
  depths of cognitive darkness, making him live at
  the same level as his work animals.

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• Antonio de Leon Pinelo (17C) The Charrúas of
  the Río de la Plata are known wherever they go by
  the odour that they give off, which is like a
  slaughterhouse, meat market or butchers shop. It
  must come from the fact that they subsist on raw
  meat, and that the most preparation that they
  give to it in order to eat it is to cover it with
  hayand set fire to it, allowing it to burn for a
  few seconds, which leaves it barely warm and less
  clean that it was to start with. They will also
  often kill a cow, a horse or another animal and
  drink the blood as it runs out of the
  carcass.1
• 19th-century Argentine explorer Francisco
  Pascasio Moreno Nothing is more revolting than
  the food of the Tehuelches, and more than once I
  have felt nausea at having to witness such a
  spectacle.2
• 1 Antonio de León Pinelo, El Paraíso en el
  Nuevo Mundo, Lima, 1943, Vol. II, p.19
• 2 Moreno, Francisco Pascasio, Viaje a Patagonia
  Austral, 1876-77, Buenos Aires, Librería
  Hachette, 1969, p.121

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European Meats

• Spanish introduce European meats into Spanish
  America during and after the conquest. Pigs,
  sheep and cattle flourished there, giving the
  conquistadors an adequate supply of food during
  their expeditions.
• 1540s - horses introduced to the Argentine
  pampas.
• 1549 - first sheep and goats arrived in Río de la
  Plata.
• 1555 - first cows and bulls arrived in Argentina.

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Milking Cows and Making Cheese in 18th C Peru
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• Venezuelan Agustín Marrón (1775) All the people
  of this province, without distinction of age or
  sex, eat meat at least 3 times a day.
• Since America had a surplus of meat, some
  countries began to export it. Until the late 19th
  century, preserving meat in a fresh state was not
  possible, so only dried meat or jerky (from the
  Indian term charquí) could be exported. In the
  1860s, however, the Frenchman Charles Tellier
  invented an ammonia compression refrigeration
  plant which surmounted the problem of shipping
  beef from Argentina to Europe. In 1876, the first
  consignment of fresh beef was sent from Rouen in
  France to Buenos Airs as a tester in the ship Le
  Frigorifique. It was judged edible, though not
  great. The following year, a cargo of Argentine
  beef was shipped back to France aboard the
  Paraguay, with various improvements having been
  made to the refrigeration system. The quality of
  meat was considered excellent by diners, and the
  large scale export of Argentine beef commenced
  soon thereafter.

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Ecological Issues

• Ungulate irruption.
• Cattle damage Indian crops.
• Deforestation to create pasture for animals.
• Ecological damage.

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Jean Baptiste Debret Dinner in Brazil (19th C)