Words by Matt Dursum
Cranberries, the tart and slightly bitter berries that many people eat only once a year in canned form. Why do we consume them and where do they come from? For this week’s article, let’s look closely at the berries that so many of us only eat in canned form.
The Original American Superfood
The American cranberry, Vaccinium macrocarpon, is a small shrub native to the Northeastern United States. Every fall, fruit growers harvest these small red berries to use in juices, dietary supplements, and most famously in canned gelatinized sauces.
Human use of cranberries goes back thousands of years to the Native Americans. They had a wide range of uses for the fruit, from medicine to the early energy bar known as pemmican. This blend of cranberries, venison meat, and venison fat could last for months and gave hunters and foragers a portable and nutritious meal that wouldn’t spoil.
When Europeans began colonizing the Eastern seaboard, the cranberry, amongst other native plants, helped them survive the unforgiving climate of the “New World.” How this knowledge was obtained from the Native people is still largely a mystery, but one famous story about the man named Tisquantum may explain part of it.
Survival, Murder, Disease, and Cranberries?
Tisquantum’s story, or what’s known of it, is a wild one. He was a member of the Patuxet village of the Wampanoag confederation. One day, a few Englishmen kidnapped him and a few others from his village and forced them into slavery. After his kidnappers took him to Spain to sell him off to the catholic church, he somehow escaped and found his way back to England, learning English, and eventually sailing back to Massachusets.
For decades, Europeans had been landing on the shores of Wampanoag territory to trade and only staying until the Wampanoag tribes forced them to leave. When Tisquantum returned to his homeland, he discovered he was the only person from his village left and that disease had killed most Wampanoag tribes in his region. The Europeans, however, had stayed, and he found himself imprisoned by a surviving rival tribe led by a leader named Massasoit.
There was one tribe, the Narragansett, almost entirely unaffected by the disease. Fearing the Narragansett, Massasoit traded and aligned himself with the Europeans and used Tisquantum as his translator. To free himself from captivity, Tisquantum stayed with the Europeans, much to Massasoit’s anger. As the hard winter arrived, Tisquantum taught his new community how to survive.
This is only part of the story, one that’s been romanticised into our present day tale of Thanksgiving. What followed in New England and both American continents was a trail of genocide. In the process, societies like the Wampanoag lost their land, culture, history, and culinary traditions. Out of all the edible and useful native plants along the seaboard of New England, it was the cranberry that won over the Europeans and became an aristocratic staple.
From Foraging to Canning
After the colonizing British brought honey to the America’s they began sweetening their cranberries and using them in sauces similar to those made in England and Europe. These sauces flavored meat dishes and became popular condiments for the wealthy elite. Soon, farmers started planting the berries and harvesting them for trade.
In the 19th century, the first commercial cranberry farms started. Farmers began flooding cranberry patches, allowing their fruit to float to the surface of the water. This wet-harvesting made them easier to collect and made harvesting cheaper and more profitable for farmers. As more sweetened cranberry sauces became easily available, their popularity grew.
These fresh sauces had to be eaten shortly after harvest from mid-September into November. In the early 20th century, industrial canning and preservation technology was developing. One farmer, former lawyer, and businessman named Marcus L. Urann took advantage of this new technology to extend the shelf life of his fresh berries and expand their market. Urann’s work led him to develop the first jellied cranberry sauce and cranberry juice cocktail.
Shortly after, other formerly competitive cranberry growers unified with Urann and formed the National Cranberry Association, later rebranding themselves as Ocean Spray. Companies like Ocean Spray started marketing their canned cranberry sauce during the holidays. Canned cranberry sauce is non-perishable and cheap, perfect for budget-strained post-war middle American households. Americans consume over 5 million gallons of jellied cranberry sauce a year.
Ingredients Can Help Us Remember the Past
Our connection to our food is changing. Consumers demanding organic, local, and free-trade products have changed the landscape of what we eat in many parts of the country. Another significant change over the years has been the resurgence of Native American cuisine and ingredients. Influential faces in the world of food like Sean Sherman, aka The Sioux Chef, and Crystal Wahpepah at Wahpepah’s Kitchen, and many others, are taking Native American culinary traditions and ingredients to new heights and prestige and easily proving that our true American cuisine is some of the most complex and delicious in the world.
The cranberry, one of the staples that the Wampanoag Indians of Plymouth depended on for sustenance and medicine, is one of them. Through educational initiatives, cookbooks, and social media, foraging for native plants and fungi is becoming hugely popular.
Every year, in Martha’s Vineyard, about 50 miles from Plymouth, members of the Wampanoag tribe celebrate Cranberry Day. It’s a festival celebrating not only this small and important berry, but Native American cuisine and culture as a whole.
American history in textbooks is like canned cranberry sauce, the adulterated and sweetened version of the bitter original. Thanksgiving for many people is a time to come together and celebrate. Maybe, by looking at what we eat, we can start talking about the hard truths of our history and respectfully come together through food.