Hawaii and Bounty
Going back to Hawaii was a wonderful experience. Trouble is that I had such a fine time with new and old friends that I had less time than I had hoped to wander around the markets, mom and pop stores and storefront restaurants checking out what had happened to Local Food, the food that everyone in the islands shares in common.
But this did seem to me a good moment to pass on some of the things I said in the two talks I gave while I was there. The first was a keynote talk to the annual meeting of Les Dames d’Escoffier (a philanthropic organization of some of the most successful women in the food, beverage and hospitality industry in the US and Canada). I wanted to explain why the Hawaiian Islands, which might seem the ultimate culinary backwater, were a model that turned my thinking about food topsy turvy. And at the same time I wanted to introduce a bit of the history of the islands, including the culinary history. I chose to do this under three headings: bounty, local, and courage.
So bounty. No escaping the chit chat about bounty if you live or visit the islands. One of the first talks I ever gave on food was at an event called the Big Island Bounty. From the huge literature and art on tropical islands of the nineteenth century through the advertising blitzes of the twentieth, paradise was the theme, bounty the watchword with a mysterious fruit that tasted like bread hanging from trees, along with coconuts, bananas and pineapples.
Bounty is a theme that resonates with contemporary ideas about terroir, about the natural goodness of the things of the place, about the value of the local. Trouble is, so far as Hawaii is concerned, no bounty awaited any one of the three diasporas that arrived in the islands.
When the first Hawaiians arrived probably about the 3rd century AD, they found essentially nothing for hungry humans. I exaggerate. But not by much. There were a number of species of flightless birds and their tasty eggs. There were two fruits. Since they were small and grew above the 3000 foot level, they weren’t going to keep any one alive. Nor was the edible fern nor the sea weed. Even the fish was less bountiful than might be expected. Going outside the reef for the big fish was always dangerous and impossible in the high waves of winter. Most of the fish inside the reef were, well, like those pretty things that you see in aquaria, pretty but mainly bone and tough skin. Above all there was no carbohydrate.
Had the Hawaiians not managed to bring taro and sweet potato, yams, banana, breadfruit, coconut, and a few other edible plants, along with chickens, pigs and dogs, they would have quickly starved.
The Europeans who arrived from the late nineteenth century on did not perceive bounty either. They wanted bread not poi (steamed pounded taro), potatoes, beef and apples. Twenty years later all (except apples for which green mangoes substituted) had been introduced.
Nor did the Asian indentured laborers who came to work the plantations between 1880 and 1920. Although many were poor and probably ate various roots in their home countries, they were seeking a better life. It was typical that the Japanese had written into their contracts that they would have white rice to eat. By 1900, rice was as big a crop as sugar and Hawaii exported to California.
In short, one way of telling the story of Hawaii is to tell it as the story of the introduction of one plant after another in search of something, anything, that would feed the inhabitants or that could be marketed and clothing, building materials, and now air tickets and video games bought in exchange. The scale of introduction is staggering. When the Director of one of the many botanic gardens retired fifty years ago, he had introduced nine thousand, six hundred and seventy plants to the islands. Work it out. To an order of magnitude, that’s almost a plant a day for thirty years.
In Hawaii, once you think about it, the fact that bounty has to be created, that it does not just exist for the picking, is obvious because the islands are so isolated. But that was the whole world. Almost nowhere was there a bounty of edible plants awaiting the hungry human. Bounty is something we’ve made over the centuries. And we all eat better for it.
The taro and sweet potato, yams, banana, breadfruit, coconut, chickens, pigs and dogs is often given as the polynesian colonial package. In terms of the starch plants, only a couple of these produce an edible crop within 12 months. I imagine that you would want to have more then one type of plant in the boat before you set off. I wonder if the colonisation of polynesia could not occur until the introduction of the New World sweet potato (or the rate of colonisation was greatly enhanced by the use of this plant).
Another factor is that the introduction of a new food source like the sweet potato can lead to an increase in population* (often through increased survival rates of children). I wonder if the introduction of a new food stuff not only allowed the successful colonisation of new territory, but also caused the people to seek new territories due to an increased population.
*After the introduction of the potato to the Scottish Highlands, there was some questions raised about the aphrodisiac properties that the plant must have as there was an increase in the population after its introduction.
Local seems to be a relative term. When 21stC city people say they want to eat “local” they don’t mean they want to eat food from local plants. They mean that they wish it to have popped out of the ground just over there.
Adam brings up population increase as a byproduct of introduced food species and the introduction of the potato in parts of the UK. Made me look at the potato in Ireland. These numbers are rounded and approximate and come from several sources. In 1600, just after the potato arrived the population was about 1M and most kitchens had ovens. By 1800 it had doubled twice to about 4M and one source comments that ovens were nearly unknown — a farmer could get about four times more calories from an acre planted in potatoes then he could from an acre planted in grain. By 1840 the population had doubled again to between 8 & 9M. In 1845 the blight came and by 1950 the population had dropped to 6M (over 1M dead and 1M gone away) By 1900 the population was down to about 4.5M — half of what it had been 60 years before. In 1872 the blight resistant GM ‘Burbank potato’ was introduced but it was too late to halt the cycle of social/economic devastation. I know there are some other factors (e.g. British wish to solve the problem of famine by free market measures in agriculture markets) in the population changes but the food source looks to me like a very large part of both the increase and the decrease.
I hope this is not too far astray from the theme of bounty and introduction.
Interesting post Rachel. If i am reading this correctly, it appears other than the flighless birds/eggs and the 3000foot fruit trees everything has been introduced? That is amazing.
Whoops!
That 1950 in the middle of the paragraph on Ireland should be 1850. Sorry.
Thanks all for the comments. Adam, I had not thought about the time to harvest of starch plants. For the Hawaiians it must have been a long period indeed because they cannot have brought more than a few seed plants of each species. Thus they had to wait not only for harvest but for enough multiplication of the plants to have enough to feed themselves. So I imagine as with many settlers, the first few years were very hungry indeed.
Have you read Nancy Pollock’s These Roots Remain? I really have to get my own copy.
Then later, as with the potato, taro did manage to sustain a large population. It demanded huge irrigation projects to do so. Not easy at all.
Thanks for the helpful summary on the potato, Kay. One of the things that interests me about the potato is that even with that huge increase in calories, across most of Europe it had to be forced on the poor. As far as they were concerned grains were food and roots (or tubers) were not. I remember a social historian also telling me that with every war in Europe the potato acreage went up–more calories, harder for the enemy to walk off with.
Rajagopal, there were more plants, birds, insects, and I think a few reptiles in Hawaii prior to human settlement. In fact these had speciated very rapidly. But there was nothing for humans to eat. All that had to be introduced.
Now biologists say the introduced plants (whether food plants or other kinds) have pushed out the native plants in all the lower altitudes. The lush tropical “bounty” of flowering trees and vines that tourists admire is all introduced and consists of the same things you find around the tropical world.
But to get back to food, the moral I draw is that although Hawaii may be an extreme example, in most spots on the earth’s surface it is the introduction of plants and animals that makes it possible to support a human population, not what is there originally.
For taro, sweet potatoes and banana (not sure yam) they would not have had used seed, rather vegetative propagation (suckers for banana, corms for taro, sweet potato tubers).
From what I can gather the polynesians were stellar (in in both senses) seaman, their navigation ability is debatable. . There seems to be a great body of information passed on through oral tradition though. Cook used some of this local information during his first voyage. He took a local Taihitan (Tupia) with him and has this to say:
“I have before hinted that these People have an Extensive knowledge of the Islands situated in these Seas. Tupia, as well as several others, hath given us an account of upwards of 70; but, as the account they have given of their situation is so Vague and uncertain, I shall refer giving a list of them until I have learnt from Tupia the Situation of each island with a little more certainty”.
Cooks copy of Tupia’s map of the society islands still exists. The debate continues as to it’s value as a navigation aid.
It seems to me that it is unlikely that a colony could be founded in Hawaii in a once off event. The issue of bringing in enough people to found a viable population and yet feeding them in the first year seems a limiting factor. My guess would be that it occured in several stages. The initial stage being the founding of a tiny group, maybe a single family or simply seeding the islands with appropriate food sources without settlement (dumping off pigs/goats was a common practice even by european sailors). The seeding may even have been accidental.
Any genetic data on the size of the original founding population? Or archaeological evidence of pigs/goat activity pre-colonisation?
Yes, to be sure Adam, most of these plants would not have been grown from seed (hence my weasel word seed plants to cover various ways of transporting something that could be reproduced.
I have not kept up with the rapidly growing research on the amazing subject of the settlement of the Pacific Islands. My memory is that they do think that there were multiple voyages, perhaps even two separate waves of migration separated by a long period.
Even so it would not have helped the hungry early settlement period much. It would have taken a sailing season each way.
I’m sure there’s work going on on the genetic data. But again I don’t know it.
I’m going to post a link to the Hokulea (reproduction outrigger that reproduced the voyage) website.
One interesting thing with the food in Hawaii was the taboos on the eating of certain food. Bananas seem to have been heavily associated with certain taboos and practices. I wonder if this has survived in any of the modern eating customs (similar to the “don’t eat fish with yoghurt” we discussed earlier).
No, as far as I know not. But I’ll be talking a bit about the taboos in an upcoming post.