1619 Through the Lens of Food: Solomon Northup Part 1
Solomon in his plantation suit, Courtesy of the Library of Congress (Circa 1853)
2019 represents 400th anniversary of the start of American slavery in James Town, Virginia. In commemorations we are doing a series of stories which also part of a larger project on food in the African canon. Looking at slavery in African American literature. Each of the stories will contain a related historical image and recipe. In part 1 of our second installment, we turn to the writings of Solomon Northup.
Solomon Northup (1808-circa 1863) was an African American born free in New York’s Hudson Valley. In 1841, two white men drugged him, stole his free papers, and sold him at a Washington, D.C., auction into slavery in Louisiana. Northrop would remain enslaved in Louisiana from 1841 to 1853 after which he published an autobiography in 1853 entitled Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup. The narratives provide interesting culinary comparisons of enslaved experiences—Douglass in Maryland. and Northrop in Louisiana.
Fishing and hunting served as the most common strategies enslaved folks used to supplement rations masters distributed to them. Hunting and fishing at night necessitated courage and skill to avoid slave patrols. Northup had the geographical advantage of living in a slave cabin close to a bed of water with an abundance of fish. He also knew carpentry before he entered into captivity and used his carpentry skills to construct a fish trap. He used it to trap fish large in “size and excellent quality” and thereafter he and his companions “very rarely” went without sufficient food.
