Lesser Beasts: A Snout-to-Tail History of the Humble Pig Page 25

  114In many cases, these pigs reached slaughter weight: S. White, “From Globalized Pig Breeds to Capitalist Pigs,” Environmental History 16 (2011): 103–104.

  114An English agricultural writer picked up on this: John Laurence, A New System of Agriculture (Dublin: J. Hyde, 1727), 100.

  114Analysis of mitochondrial DNA shows: E. Giuffra et al., “The Origin of the Domestic Pig,” Genetics 154 (2000): 1788.

  114In Neolithic China swine had served as a key source: S. O. Kim, “Burials, Pigs, and Political Prestige in Neolithic China,” Current Anthropology 35 (1994).

  115Even in the twentieth century, pork accounted: E. Anderson, The Food of China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 177.

  115Overall, however, pork represented just a tiny part: John L. Buck, Land Utilization in China (New York: Paragon, 1968), 411.

  116In the words of Chairman Mao: F. Bray, “Agriculture,” in Science and Civilization in China, ed. J. Needham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 6:4.

  116It faced the problem of a growing population: Y. Yu, “Three Hundred Million Pigs,” in Feeding a Billion, ed. S. H. Wittwer et al. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1987), 309–323.

  116This left no open land for pasturing: Earl B. Shaw, “Swine Industry of China,” Economic Geography 14 (1938): 381–390.

  116When modernizers introduced American pig breeds: Sigrid Schmalzer, “Breeding a Better China: Pigs, Practices, and Place in a Chinese County, 1929–1937,” Geographical Review 92 (2002): 17.

  117Some Chinese sows produced litters: H. Epstein, Domestic Animals of China (Farnham Royal, UK: Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau, 1969), 74.

  Chapter 9

  119The ships also carried a menagerie: Charles Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New York: Knopf, 2011), 3–8.

  120These voyages started what has become known: Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1972).

  121Just two years after Columbus’s second expedition: R. A. Donkin, “The Peccary,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 75 (1985): 41.

  121In a few more years the number of hogs running wild: Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 175.

  121“Do not kill them”: Crosby, Columbian Exchange, 78.

  121When the 150 people aboard made it to shore: Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “Somer Islands’ ‘Hogge Money,’” Environmental History 9 (2004): 128–131.

  121Columbus wrote that the trees and plants: Alfred Crosby, “Metamorphosis of the Americas,” in Seeds of Change, ed. Herman Viola and Carolyn Margolis (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), 76.

  122One Spaniard risked blasphemy by claiming: B. J. Zadik, “The Iberian Pig in Spain and the Americas at the Time of Columbus” (master’s thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2005), 24.

  122The Jamaican mountains soon held: Donkin, “Peccary,” 44.

  122in 1514 the governor of Cuba told King Ferdinand: Deb Bennett, “Ranching in the New World,” in Viola and Margolis, Seeds of Change, 101.

  122Peccaries, the American cousins to Eurasian pigs: Lyle K. Sowls, Javelinas and Other Peccaries (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1997), 143–158.

  122American societies had developed without the livestock: Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 46–47.

  123Spanish soldiers, brutal as they were: Mann, 1493, 97–101; F. Guerra, “The Earliest American Epidemic,” Social Science History 12 (1988): 305–325; A. F. Ramenofsky and P. Galloway, “Disease and the Soto Entrada,” in Hernando de Soto Expedition, ed. P. Galloway (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 259–279.

  124A Spanish historian has argued: Crosby, Columbian Exchange, 77.

  125His enemies called him a swineherd: D. E. Vassberg, “Concerning Pigs, the Pizarros, and the Agro-Pastoral Background of the Conquerors of Peru,” Latin American Research Review 13 (1978): 47–61.

  125On sandy soils closer to the coast: Angelos Hadjikoumis, “Traditional Pig Herding Practices in Southwest Iberia,” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31 (2012): 353–364; T. Plieninger, “Constructed and Degraded? Origin and Development of the Spanish Dehesa Landscape,” Erde Berlin 138 (2007): 25–46; D. W. Gade, “Parsons on Pigs and Acorns,” Geographical Review 100 (2010): 598–606.

  125Given the ample supply of mast for hogs: James T. Parsons, “The Acorn-Hog Economy of the Oak Woodlands of Southwestern Spain,” Geographical Review 52 (1962): 234.

  126In 1554 one community in Extremadura reported: Parsons, “Acorn-Hog,” 215.

  126Even that astonishing number wasn’t enough: Zadik, “Iberian Pig,” 44–48.

  127Only in dire circumstances would the leader: Lawrence A. Clayton et al., The De Soto Chronicles (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 81.

  127When De Soto died of illness: Clayton, De Soto Chronicles, 138–139.

  128In most places pigs became village scavengers: Lauren Derby, “Bringing the Animals Back In: Writing Quadrupeds into the Environmental History of Latin America and the Caribbean,” History Compass 9 (2011): 605.

  Chapter 10

  131Spain derived its power from “Indian gold”: Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 67.

  131The English began to describe the New World’s gold: Pagden, Lords, 68.

  132The English saw themselves as fulfilling God’s decree: Genesis 1:26, KJV.

  132Britain built an empire to rival Spain’s: Peter Coclanis, “Food Chains,” Agricultural History 72 (2010): 667.

  132And Indians ultimately fared little better: The argument in this chapter derives largely from Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  133Some sixty years before Raleigh: William Cronon, Changes in the Land (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 25.

  133Europeans marveled at the productivity: Charles Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (New York: Knopf, 2005), 264–265; Emily Russell, People and the Land Through Time (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 26.

  133Columbus had been the first European to write: Betty Harper Fussell, The Story of Corn (New York: Knopf, 1992), 17.

  133William Wood, in Massachusetts, praised the Indian women: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 81.

  133The Indians, wrote John Winthrop: Cronon, Changes in the Land, 130.

  134Robert Gray wrote that in Virginia: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 79.

  134To justify seizing native land: Pagden, Lords, 76–79.

  134According to Roger Williams: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 211.

  134In 1656, Virginia’s legislators offered: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 107.

  135As historian Virginia DeJohn Anderson has phrased it: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 108.

  136Sheep, because of what one colonist called: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 110.

  137“The real American hog,” one observer said: L. C. Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958), 206.

  137That was the toughness needed: Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 1997), 114.

  139Livestock had the legal right to all land: David Grettler, “Environmental Change and Conflict over Hogs in Early Nineteenth-Century Delaware,” Journal of the Early Republic 19 (1999): 197–220.

  139America’s farmers were “the most negligent”: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 244.

  139A more acute observer explained: Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 127.

  139One man in Virginia reported: Gray, History of Agriculture, 20.

  139A planter in Georgia e
xplained: John Mitchell and Arthur Young, American Husbandry (London: J. Bew, 1775), 347.

  139Virginian Robert Beverley noted: Robert Beverley, History and Present State of Virginia, ed. Susan Scott Parrish (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 251.

  139In 1660, Samuel Maverick reported: Cronon, Changes in the Land, 139.

  139As a Barbados planter explained: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 152; John Otto, The Southern Frontiers, 1607–1860 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1989), 33.

  139Pork and beef became New England’s: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 152.

  140On the eve of the American Revolution: John McCusker, The Economy of British America, 1607–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 268.

  141“Tis true indeed, none of my deer are marked”: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 216–217.

  141Often pigs were simply pushed further away: Percy Bidwell and John Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620–1860 (New York: P. Smith, 1941), 22.

  142They devoured tuckahoe, a starchy root: Gordon Whitney, From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 165.

  142Roger Williams observed that pigs lingered: Williams, Key, 114.

  142A more likely reason Indians disliked swine: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, CT: Silas Andeus, 1853), 1:560.

  143“But these English having gotten our land”: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 207.

  143Mattagund, an Indian leader in Maryland: Anderson, Creatures of Empire, 221.

  Chapter 11

  145But European settlers had arrived with livestock: William Bowen, The Willamette Valley (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 87.

  146The American settlers did so using: Terry Jordan-Bychkov, The American Backwoods Frontier (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 123; also see Steven Stoll, Larding the Lean Earth (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), 104.

  146In 1823 New England traveler Timothy Dwight: Timothy Dwight, Travels in New-England and New-York (London: W. Barnes, 1823), 2:439.

  146One German observer noted in the 1780s: Jordan-Bychkov, American Backwoods, 4.

  146“Of all the domestic animals”: Reuben Gold Thwaites et al., Early Western Travels, 1748–1846 (Cleveland, OH: Clark, 1905), 3:246.

  146A traveler in Ohio in 1817 reported: Silas Chesebrough, “Journal of a Journey to the Westward,” American Historical Review 37 (1931): 82–83.

  147Fordham encouraged Englishmen to seek their fortunes: Elias Pym Fordham, Personal Narrative of Travels in Virginia, Maryland . . . (Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1906), 120, 236.

  147The western poet Charles Badger Clark captured: Charles Badger Clark, Sun and Saddle Leather (Boston: R. G. Badger, 1920), 75.

  147In early Ohio, one man observed: Robert Leslie Jones, History of Agriculture in Ohio to 1880 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1983).

  148“We put shelled corn in the pen”: Oliver Johnson and Howard Johnson, A Home in the Woods (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 109.

  149Abraham Lincoln described himself: William Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (New York: George H. Doran, 1920), 53.

  149Woods pigs were called razorbacks: Jones, History of Agriculture in Ohio, 121; Rudolf Clemen, The American Livestock and Meat Industry (New York: Ronald Press, 1923), 53; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 65; Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 105; Mart Stewart, “What Nature Suffers to Groe”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), 213; Robert Porter, William Jones, and Henry Gannett, The West from the Census of 1880 (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1882), 309.

  149“Drops of fat dripped off it”: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods (New York: HarperTrophy, 1971), 15–16.

  149“In all my previous life”: Sam Bowers Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 39.

  149Frederick Law Olmsted, a journalist: Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey Through Texas (New York: Dix, Edwards, 1857), 15.

  150Then he added a lament familiar: George William Featherstonhaugh, Excursion Through the Slave States (London: J. Murray, 1844), 2:109.

  150“The ordinary mode of living is abundant”: Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans (London: Whittaker, Treacher, 1832), 238.

  150Sites in the Ozarks dating to a few decades: Samuel Smith, Historical Background and Archaeological Testing of the Davy Crockett Birthplace State Historical Area (Nashville: Tennessee Department of Conservation, 1980); C. R. Price and J. E. Price, “Investigation of Settlement and Subsistence Systems in the Ozark Border Region of Southeast Missouri During the First Half of the 19th Century,” Ethnohistory 28 (1981): 237–258.

  150They raised swine during the early years: Brian Hesse, “Pig Lovers and Pig Haters,” Journal of Ethnobiology 10 (1990): 218.

  151In later centuries, once the herds: Pam Crabtree, “Sheep, Horses, Swine, and Kine,” Journal of Field Archaeology 16 (1989): 205–213.

  151“emancipated themselves from”: Theodore Blegen, Norwegian Migration to America (Northfield, MN: Norwegian-American Historical Association, 1931), 195.

  Chapter 12

  153“Here, in Ohio, they are intelligent”: Reuben Gold Thwaites et al., Early Western Travels, 1748–1846 (Cleveland, OH: Clark, 1905), 19:33.

  154It became, and remains, the agricultural heartland: John Hudson, Making the Corn Belt (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 58–59.

  154One scholar estimates that if Americans: Terry Jordan-Bychkov, The American Backwoods Frontier (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 115.

  156The land, the Renicks wrote: Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, 60.

  156One of the Renicks later described their system: Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, 68.

  157After the cows had eaten: Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, 71; for medieval use of this feeding technique, see Irven Resnick, Marks of Distinction (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 170.

  157As historian Allan Bogue has explained: Allan G. Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 103.

  158A book on the early years of the Corn Belt observes: Paul Henlein, Cattle Kingdom in the Ohio Valley, 1783–1860 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1959), 73.

  158“Hogs don’t always carry the prestige”: Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, 74.

  158The hog earned the nickname: Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, 74.

  158“What is a hog”: James Parton, “Chicago,” Atlantic Monthly 19 (1867): 331; H. C. Hill, “The Development of Chicago as a Center of the Meat Packing Industry,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 10 (1923): 260.

  159In 1790 an English agriculture writer: William Marshall, The Rural Economy of the Midland Counties (London: G. Nicol, 1790), 453.

  159A swine expert noted that the new types: S. White, “From Globalized Pig Breeds to Capitalist Pigs,” Environmental History 16 (2011): 108.

  160Only the second half of the breed’s name: Josiah Morrow, The History of Warren County, Ohio (Chicago: W. H. Beers, 1882), 323–324.

  160In 1840 there were more than 26 million: United States Census of Agriculture: 1950 (Washington, DC: Bureau of the Census, 1951), 2:362; Statistics of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Thom Alexander, 1868), 42.

  160In improved Corn Belt hogs: Alan Olmstead, Creating Abundance (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 312–313.

  160Whereas woods hogs took two or three years: Margaret Walsh, The Rise of the Midwestern Meat Packing Industry (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982), 23.

  160“Nowhere in the world
can such marvelous herds”: H. J. Carman, “English Views of Middle Western Agriculture, 1850–1870,” Agricultural History 8 (1934): 17–18.

  161An agricultural newspaper explained: Rudolf Clemen, The American Livestock and Meat Industry (New York: Ronald Press, 1923), 58n18.

  161The Poland China dominated the early Corn Belt: Hudson, Making the Corn Belt, 84.

  161“That was the prettiest drive of anything”: William Lynwood Montell, Don’t Go Up Kettle Creek (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), 45–46; E. Coulter, Auraria (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 21.

  161The best estimates suggest that in antebellum America: Sam Bowers Hilliard, Hog Meat and Hoecake (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972), 195.

  161In 1847 one tollgate in North Carolina recorded: Highland Messenger (Asheville, NC), January 14, 1842.

  162A few farmers from Lexington, Kentucky: Elizabeth Parr, “Kentucky’s Overland Trade with the Ante-Bellum South,” Filson Club Quarterly 2 (1928): 72.

  163The drivers shouted, “Soo-eey”: Edmund Burnett, “Hog Raising and Hog Driving in the Region of the French Broad River,” Agricultural History 20 (1946): 90.

  163The secret, one drover said: Montell, Don’t Go, 42.

  163The young Abraham Lincoln: William Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (New York: George H. Doran, 1920), 46.

  164We don’t know many details: Michael Ross MacKinnon, “Animal Production and Consumption in Roman Italy” (PhD diss., University of Alberta, 1999), 130–131.

  164One traveler described watching a drove: Thomas Searight, The Old Pike (Uniontown, PA: T. Searight, 1894), 142–143.

  164The largest cattle drives, from Texas to Kansas: Richard White, “Animals and Enterprise,” in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde Milner et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 260.

  164From Kentucky alone, as many as 100,000 hogs: Frederick Jackson Turner, Rise of the New West, 1819–1829 (New York: Harper, 1906), 101.