Among the biologists, geneticists and historians who use food as a lens to study the African diaspora, rice is a particularly deep rabbit hole. So much remains unknown about how millions of enslaved Africans used it in their kitchens and how it got to those kitchens to begin with.
That’s what made the hill rice in Trinidad such a find.
The fat, nutty grain, with its West African lineage and tender red hull, was a favored staple for Southern home cooks during much of the 19th century. Unlike Carolina Gold, the versatile rice that until the Civil War was America’s primary rice crop, the hill rice hadn’t made Lowcountry plantation owners rich off the backs of slaves.
It didn’t need to be planted in watery fields surrounded by dikes, which meant that those who grew it weren’t dogged by malaria. You could grow it in a garden patch, as did many of the slaves who had been taken from the rice-growing regions of West Africa. This was the rice of their ancestors, sustaining slaves and, later, generations of Southern cooks both black and white.
That’s what made the hill rice in Trinidad such a find.
The fat, nutty grain, with its West African lineage and tender red hull, was a favored staple for Southern home cooks during much of the 19th century. Unlike Carolina Gold, the versatile rice that until the Civil War was America’s primary rice crop, the hill rice hadn’t made Lowcountry plantation owners rich off the backs of slaves.
It didn’t need to be planted in watery fields surrounded by dikes, which meant that those who grew it weren’t dogged by malaria. You could grow it in a garden patch, as did many of the slaves who had been taken from the rice-growing regions of West Africa. This was the rice of their ancestors, sustaining slaves and, later, generations of Southern cooks both black and white.
But how did the rice travel to that field in Trinidad? Dr. Shields has a theory.
It begins during the War of 1812, when British soldiers promised land and freedom to a small group of West African slaves along the Eastern Seaboard if they would take up arms against their masters. They did, and each was given 16 acres of undeveloped land in southern Trinidad. They came to be called the Merikins, a Creole rendering of the word American.
It begins during the War of 1812, when British soldiers promised land and freedom to a small group of West African slaves along the Eastern Seaboard if they would take up arms against their masters. They did, and each was given 16 acres of undeveloped land in southern Trinidad. They came to be called the Merikins, a Creole rendering of the word American.
That’s why B.J. Dennis, a Gullah chef from Charleston, was stunned to find the rice growing in a field in Trinidad, tended by a farmer descended from slaves who once lived in Georgia.
It is hard to overstate how shocked the people who study rice were to learn that the long-lost American hill rice was alive and growing in the Caribbean. Horticulturists at the Smithsonian Institution want to grow it, rice geneticists at New York University are testing it and the United States Department of Agriculture is reviewing it. If all goes well, it may become a commercial crop in America, and a menu staple as diners develop a deeper appreciation for African-American food.
A Lost Rice Variety - And The Story Of The Freed 'Merikins' Who Kept It Alive.
Carney is widely known for a luminous masterwork called Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in The Americas that explores the critical role Africans played in the rice production that led to such enormous wealth in antebellum South Carolina. Fields-Black, in turn, wrote Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora.
Michael Twitty, a chef and culinary historian who explores African-American foodways and is the author of the forthcoming book The Cooking Gene, says there's always a risk that rediscovered cultivars will be subject to "cultural gentrification, where others repurpose the shell of our heritage. We have to know the value of our own African heritage. For us, these ingredients are part of a mosaic that comes with the blood."
Dennis agrees, and says, "It's up to us to tell our own story correctly. I feel our ancestors actually guide us and ask us to tell the story. And it makes my heart happy, chasing my ancestral roots through food."
Dennis agrees, and says, "It's up to us to tell our own story correctly. I feel our ancestors actually guide us and ask us to tell the story. And it makes my heart happy, chasing my ancestral roots through food."
