The Historic Pumpkin

In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, European explorers, including Columbus, were fascinated by the squash-like “pumpkins” that they found in the New World, and they took seeds back to Europe with them. While pumpkins didn’t grow particularly well in England, they flourished in other parts of Europe where the climate was warmer.

The word “pumpkin” is derived from the Greek word “pepon,” which means large melon. The word was later altered by both the French and English to “pompon” and “pumpion,” respectively. Those in the American British colonies, in turn, began calling the vegetable a “pumpkin.”

By Jennie Shurtleff

Today pumpkins on doorsteps are one of the most obvious harbingers of autumn. However, in the 1830s and 1840s, large quantities of pumpkins were grown for animal feed, not for decorations. The Vermont Temperance Herald, which was published in Woodstock, notes that pumpkins “are annually produced on most farms, and, while sound and good, are relished by most kinds of domestic stock, especially by cows and swine.” The article goes on to note that pumpkins, if properly cured and stacked in layers of straw, might be preserved until spring.

While pumpkins since early times were prized as a nutritious form of animal feed, they were also used in other ways. Prior to the arrival of white settlers, Native Americans not only roasted pieces of pumpkin and pumpkin seeds for food, but they also dried the pumpkin flesh and ground it into a type of flour. Additionally, they used pumpkins in utilitarian ways – such as weaving strips of dried pumpkin pulp into mats and drying the shells of pumpkins and gourds to use as bowls and storage containers.

While estimates vary as to when members of the pumpkin and winter squash family were first raised by Native Americans, most sources indicate between 5,500 and 7,500 years years ago, making pumpkins and squash some of the first domesticated crops in the New World. The oldest known domesticated pumpkin seeds were discovered (along with other food remnants) in Mexican caves. However, there is evidence that pumpkins were also grown by early Indigenous populations in South America, Central America, and the southwestern part of the United States.  

Garlan Miles, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Eventually, the practice of growing pumpkins and squash spread from these locations to the northeastern part of the United States. The Haudenosaunee (known as the “Iroquois” by the French), who lived in what is now central and western New York, grew their winter squash in a symbiotic way with two other plants. The three crops -- squash, corn, and beans --were known as the “Three Sisters,” and they would be planted together on a mound. The squash, with their large leaves, sheltered the ground and helped retain the soil’s moisture while simultaneously helping to prevent the growth of weeds. The beans grew around the corn stalks steading them in the wind as well as supporting the growth of other plants by “fixing” nitrogen in the soil. And the corn stalks, which towered above the other two, provided the beans with a stem on which to climb, so that they would not be covered over by the squash leaves.

When early European settlers came to America, pumpkins quickly became an integral part of their diet. As one poem of the early 17th century states: “For pottage and puddings and custard and pies, / Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies: / We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon, / If it were not for pumpkins, we should be undoon.”

One of the favorite ways to prepare pumpkin in colonial days was to remove the pumpkin’s top, clean out the seeds, and then fill the pumpkin with a mixture of milk, apples, honey, and spices. The top of the pumpkin was then replaced, and the stuffed pumpkin was then set in the ashes of the fireplace to bake. The result would have been a custard-like product that was a precursor to the pumpkin tart recipes that began to appear over a hundred year later in cookbooks that used the same ingredients as their ancestors had, along with the addition of eggs and molasses, and baking the mixture in a pastry crust.

Pumpkin pulp was also stewed like other vegetables and added to batter. As pumpkin varieties were refined, some were prized for their sweetness. An article published in the Vermont Mercury in September of 1837 notes that a recent discovery in France would “make the pumpkin fields of New England dangerous rivals to the cane fields of Louisiana and the West Indies.” The paper explains:

“A complete revolution is expected to take place in the manufacture of native sugar – a revolution which will probably compel the beet growers to ‘hide their diminished heads.’ In other words, the pumpkin is about to enter the field as a rival of the beet root, and to force the Chamber of Deputies to revise its late enactments on the sugar question. An industrious speculator is on the point of establishing a manufactory for extracting sugar from this overgrown and hitherto despised production of the vegetable world, the first experiments on which, it is added, have been crowned with complete success.”

Like so many seemingly good ideas, pumpkins replacing cane fields and sugar beets never came to fruition. One can imagine the potential impact if they had, however, by replacing several of the crops that had been raised and harvested largely by enslaved laborers and providing an alternate sweetner to honey and maple sugar.