(instrumental tune) - [Commentator] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] It's the age old question.

What's for dinner?

Maybe you're in the mood for wings, Italian or Caribbean Asian fusion.

No matter your mood or taste, the various cuisines all have their own origin and stories behind them.

- [Speaker 1] Where my tribes come from, we had a lot of venison, we had a lot of fish.

- [Speaker 2] The pig I'm cooking on there is pretty much what they were doing 200 years ago.

- [Narrator] Food brings people together.

- Food is life.

(speaker chuckling) Just in general, it's life.

If we use it right, we can be able to solve a lot of the world's problems.

- [Narrator] Coming up, a culinary sampling to dive into the origins of a Carolina classic, whole hog barbecue.

- You're gonna find a CEO at Pig Pick, and you're gonna find the janitor of the Pig Pick.

- [Narrator] And then exploring the woods with a woman on the search for traditional Native American foods while sharing her knowledge with others.

- [Speaker 4] So we just take what we need.

- Honor their legacy and their agency.

- [Narrator] And finally, meet a historical interpreter working hard to share the contributions to the cuisines we eat today, made by enslaved Africans during the era of slavery in America.

- You know, all of these different things that we enjoy the most really comes from that enslaved diet.

- [Narrator] All that and more on this episode of "Trail of History".

(upbeat music) (instrumental music) With the sun just coming up... - [Dan] I call this a Carolina Gold Day.

- [Narrator] Somewhere in New York County.

- [Dan] The smell on a fall day, it hypnotizes you.

- [Narrator] Lives a unique individual.

- [Dan] This guy was in the field on Wednesday, today's Friday.

- [Narrator] Some call him Dan the Pig Man.

- This pig was raised in Union County, North Carolina.

- [Narrator] Others know him as Dan Huntley, former writer for the Charlotte Observer turned to barbecue pit master.

- You can get the around the back.

- [Narrator] With the help this morning from his partner, Kay.

- And just grab him by the feet.

- [Narrator] Dan's right in his element.

- He's not that heavy.

Let's dump some of this water out.

To me on a misty morning, you know, with some split oak and hickory and a pig, it's primal.

- [Narrator] Primal and simplistic.

- I've done it a lot of different ways and tried to not modernize it, but kind of goose it up a little bit.

And I've come full circle.

I'm back to where I started.

Salt and smoke.

- [Narrator] With a tailgate, doubling as a countertop, they're prepping the essential ingredient.

- [Dan] He is a little over 50 pounds.

- [Narrator] For a Carolina tradition centuries in the making.

A Carolina pig picking.

- [Dan] Drop 'em off there.

- [Narrator] This freshly slaughtered hog will be the star of the show.

- [Dan] Just drop him.

- Just drop him in?

- [Dan] Yeah.

Yeah.

(Dan and Kay laughing) All right.

All right.

- [Narrator] Huntley's personal philosophy for making great barbecue... - You don't want to get between the low smoky fire and the salt and pork that they were doing 200 years ago.

- [Narrator] Throughout the Carolinas, you'll find very distinctive styles of barbecue.

- The barbecue you typically get in Eastern Carolinas is a whole hog that's slow smoked like this.

And then you get the tenderloin, you get the ribs, you get the dark meat, you get all of that mixed together.

Barbecue in the Piedmont for the most part, are more shoulders.

And Boston butts are the hams.

- [Narrator] Perhaps the main difference from eastern to western North Carolina and into South Carolina, the type of sauce.

- Particularly eastern North Carolina, and to a lesser degree, the low country of South Carolina, it's more of a vinegar based pepper, red pepper flakes.

Mm, a little bit of sugar, but not much.

As you get into the Piedmont, in North Carolina, it's more of a tomato based and sugar sauce.

You know, Lexington, down around Charlotte, and up into the mountains around Boone.

And it's a thicker, sweeter sauce with little vinegar.

(upbeat instrumental music) - [Narrator] Now, cooking meat over fire certainly isn't new.

According to archeologists, prehistoric humans started cooking with fire over 700,000 years ago.

But the tradition of whole hog barbecue is a bit more recent.

And with a bit of island flare... - The barbecue that we have in the Carolinas came up with the pirates that came up from the Caribbean into the low country.

The first evidence is right around the early 1700s.

I like to say that the tradition of cooking barbecue like I'm doing here, wafted from the coast, like a smoke onto the Piedmont.

Like the pig I'm cooking on there is pretty much what they were doing 200 years ago.

You know, they would cook 'em low and slow.

- [Narrator] The method of cooking low and slow over fire wasn't the only factor influencing the Carolina's love for slow cook smoke swine.

You can thank Spain for introducing pigs to the Americas in the 1500s.

- The conquistadors first brought the pigs in from Spain.

The game was on, and it was primarily Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina coast where it was introduced, and then it kind of came inland into the Piedmont.

- [Narrator] With such an ideal climate, the Humboldt pig quickly established itself as a staple on Carolina farms, and subsequently, on dinner tables.

- We're in pig country.

Barbecue, there's a reason it's stamped heavily on the North Carolina, South Carolina people.

- [Narrator] Before the advent of supermarkets in large scale industrial agriculture, farmers in the Carolinas were mostly self-sufficient, raising much of what they would eat right on the farm, including pigs.

So when the fall rolled around and the crops were out of the fields, it was time to butcher the hogs.

The process often including the whole family, and almost nothing from the animal went to waste.

With much of the work done for the season, farmers often saw the harvest as a reason for celebration.

- [Dan] You know, farmers have a gathering out around the tobacco sheds or something like that, you know, like an early Thanksgiving.

- [Narrator] While it may look like an old tobacco shed, Huntley's old barn is now a cooking shed and serves much the same purpose as a gathering place for friends and family.

- It's outside, rain or shine.

It's a communal gathering of people.

And, you know, I'm not gonna cook a pig for myself.

I'm not gonna do it in isolation.

- I'm from Charleston, South Carolina.

We are very much into our pigs and barbecue.

The scent and the smoke just makes you all that hungrier.

Can't wait to eat and just to have the conversation, the music and the laughter and everything that comes with that.

It's just a good time.

- [Narrator] As more guests arrive, Craig Morrow, a skilled pit master himself, lends a hand with the final details.

- The brotherhood that you build leading up to the event is my favorite part.

Like this right now is the best part where you're cutting all the stuff and getting everything in place, and you're trying to anticipate what everyone's gonna want.

And we've got some kettle beans, we got some mac and cheese, we got some slaw.

We got some good Hawaiian buns.

And we got a pickle board, which I'm excited about.

I didn't even know what that was.

But I mean, I'll tell you, I know now and I'm gonna apply it into my repertoire.

A pig picking, everyone can kind of let their guard down and be who they actually are.

You could admit to almost anything during a pig picking.

It's almost like a confessional, but it's a lot less pressure.

- [Narrator] Much like a chuck wagon cook in the old west, Morrow signals the hungry crowd that it's time to eat.

Or I guess you could say, pig out.

(instrument chiming) - Come and get it!

- [Narrator] Now if you're wanting to get started cooking Carolina Barbecue... - I'm ready.

- All right, well, great.

- [Narrator] Huntley says you really don't need much to get going.

- I would recommend starting not with a whole hog, but a Boston butt that you can buy at the grocery store.

You can do it in a small Weber grill.

What I tell people is low and slow.

Yeah, that sound like me.

- [Narrator] As humans, we are naturally drawn to find our own community or tribe.

- So it's a way to celebrate life and to appreciate what you have and the people that are in it.

- You gotta come to one, you gotta see one because my words fail in response to what it actually is.

- [Narrator] As the night concludes with an impromptu folk music jam, Hunt sums it all up.

(folk music) - [Dan] You can't fake barbecue.

(cars honking) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] In our fast paced and on the go lives, fast food often keeps us moving.

It's quick and convenient, and it is called fast food after all.

However, that convenience may come at a cost, a cost to our health.

But what if you could learn from the past than another culture to find a better way?

- My name is Diosa Hall.

My given name is Jabut Wani, which means to inform or to teach.

I'm from the Mohawk nation, which is located in Akwesasne, New York, which is a border between Canada and the US.

- [Narrator] Out here in the woods and fields of spring grass, Hall hunts for options to the highly processed foods found in American supermarkets.

- [Diosa] These dandelion greens right here are really get to eat.

- [Narrator] But more importantly to Hall, options rooted in tradition.

- These here are good.

I was taught that as a child growing up right from a very early age, we pretty much had to go in the woods and gather our food.

I was taught to take care of our elders.

So it was my job and my responsibility to go and gather for our elders and for our community who could not go and gather for themselves.

- [Narrator] Hall says these traditions are under threat.

- Where my tribes come from, we had a lot of venison, we had a lot of fish, rabbits, squirrels, different berries.

So my concerns today are of course, the environment.

A lot of different areas are being wiped out, which has taken out a lot of our traditional medicines, a lot of our traditional foods.

Cultural preservation is definitely needed, as well as food preservation.

- [Narrator] Hall adds that the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851, which the US government used to forcefully relocate entire nations of Native Americans from their ancestral lands and onto reservations, resulted in other harmful consequences.

- Our food sources were taken away.

Our buffalo, our bison were killed.

We were given rations.

So how do you feed a community when you don't have any food sources, when your food sources have been taken away?

Well, you have to make do and you have to spread that out.

So it was beans, flour, salt, and lard.

So we had come up with fry bread and we put the beans on it, and, you know, we were able to feed a community with that.

I feel that like our people were set up for failure.

Our people were set up for diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.

When I hear fry bread come up a lot, I like to teach people what the history is behind it and where it really comes from because it's not a great place, but we did survive and we made it through.

- [Narrator] With continued pressure on her culture and traditions, Hall decided she can't keep her knowledge to herself.

- These are some potatoes.

I teach traditional medicine, traditional healing.

I also teach foraging head back at the Cho.

- [Narrator] Part of that teaching to her daughters and friend, Dwayne Rogers, might look like a scavenger hunt.

- [Diosa] Come on girls.

Today we're on a mission to find any types of plants, either medicinal or to eat.

A lot of times the plants are used from the root all the way to the leaves or the flowers.

- [Narrator] But before the first leaf, before flour is even plucked from the ground... - In our culture and in our way, we're taught to always give gratitude.

You never take more than what you need.

We're taught to give gratitude from the sky all the way down under the earth, even into the worms.

Every creature on this earth has a purpose.

So there's a protocol and you set that out in your intention.

When I'm walking in the woods, you have that in your heart that I'm going to collect for my children, I'm going to collect for food, I'm going to collect for medicine.

- [Narrator] Rogers, a member of the Kaba Nation himself, says giving gratitude is essential.

- I've always been an outdoorsman, always hunted, and always fished.

When you take an animal, that's something to be serious and something to be really thought about.

So what I do, and I still do it to this day, you know, every time I harvest an animal, it don't matter what it is, I say a prayer over it because, and I give thanks for it giving itself for my nourishment, my family's nourishment, and our people's nourishment.

- What a nice day.

- [Narrator] As the group makes its way through the woods, Hall says she enjoys the company when she's foraging.

- Dwayne spends a lot of time in the woods.

To have that extra set of eyes to say, "Hey, did you see this?"

or "Did you see that?

", so then I know of different places of where to go.

So we kind of really, you know, give each other quite a bit of information.

- [Narrator] But beyond the extra set of eyes, there's something else.

As fewer and fewer people engage in hunting and foraging, Hall and Rogers find collaboration key to keeping their customs alive.

- Dwayne is a Catawba Indian Nation member, tribal member.

And to me that's very important to pass the knowledge on to another tribal member.

I didn't realize how much information I had until I start sharing.

- To tap into her knowledge of what she knows and for her to share that with, you know, with me, and, you know, with a lot of other tribal members that she's helped with our tribe throughout years she's been here, obviously it means a lot to us.

- The amount of knowledge that I've learned from Dwayne has been very valuable as far as knowing where I can and can't go.

- [Narrator] According to Rogers, this land in York County, historically provided the Catawba Nation with much of their needs.

- Any kind of wildlife, you know, you're gonna eat.

You know, deer was a big traditional food, fish.

You know, our property borders, the Catawba River.

Matter of fact, it was on both sides of the river at one point in time with 144,000 acres.

Foraging, nuts, berries, whatever you could find.

Roots, you know, for medicinal purposes or food purposes.

- [Narrator] It's often illegal to hunt and forage in places like state parks, national parks, and private property.

So it's important for both Hall and Rogers to know where they can and can't go.

Something Hall says she's had to learn.

- Being out in the woods with Dwayne has taught me quite a bit of boundaries.

I grew up on a reservation and it didn't feel like we had boundaries, but we did.

But we lived in our own little world and moving to South Carolina and understanding that there are boundaries, there are, you know, restrictions, steps that you need to take in order to do it properly.

- [Narrator] To do it on this private property, they obtained permission from the landowner.

It's land Rogers knows well and is adjacent to the Catawba reservation.

- The property we're on today, we're right here on traditional Catawba lands and being born and raised on the reservation my whole life, you know, yeah, you had a connection to the land.

I mean, you just, you had this sense of home.

- [Narrator] Prior to Europeans making their way into the Carolinas, nations like the Kataba had vast territories for hunting, fishing, and gathering.

Today, however, the Kataba reservation is less than 700 acres.

Hall wants to see more access for indigenous Americans to forage for wild foods and natural medicines.

- The challenges that I face now is I like to take my kids on state parks.

State parks, you can look, but sometimes you can't touch.

So I'm working right now with South Carolina to try and get a foraging permit, which will make things a lot easier.

It will help designate areas where I can forage and how much I can forage.

There's a lot of posted signs that are marked, you know, "Private property".

You can build a relationship with somebody who has quite a bit of land and property that you can, you know, possibly go and forage on.

That makes things a lot easier.

- [Narrator] Hall says there's hope for the future.

- We are the original people.

It's very important that we keep our traditional food system here in our homelands.

I, myself have started a nonprofit.

In that, as my goal, is to purchase land so that we have a place to go.

I have a place to teach.

My purpose here on earth is to protect as much land as I can.

- [Narrator] On this day, the group didn't find everything they had hoped for, but it wasn't a complete loss.

- We foraged some violets, which I'd like to turn into like a violet tea.

It's very tasty.

I had made some last year for a class I was teaching, and if you add some lemon to it, it's very soothing.

It's very beautiful.

It turns into a very nice color.

We also gathered some mushrooms, which was a great find.

- [Narrator] Both Rogers and Halls say the benefits go beyond the physical rewards.

- This is my peace.

Being in the Marine Corps and being some of the situations I've been in, you know, a lot of times life in general gets very stressful and you get a lot of anxiety and stuff when you're in certain environments and certain elements.

So being out here, that's the peace of my life.

- Just the sun hitting my face, just being out here with my kids and teaching them our culture, where we come from, it's so fulfilling.

So being out here feeds my soul.

It feeds everything that I need in order to be happy.

- [Narrator] When the first enslaved Africans stepped on the shores at Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, the first words in a dark chapter of American history were inked.

For centuries, their contributions to the development of the nation were overlooked and marginalized.

But more than 400 years since Jamestown, interpreters like Dontavius Williams now work hard highlighting and celebrating those early contributions.

On a Saturday morning in Pineville, Williams preps a fire and all the ingredients for a cooking demonstration in a log cabin at the James K. Polk State historic site.

- We are making a peanut sauce, which is like a predecessor of the American Peanut Soup.

- [Narrator] Wearing period correct attire and using cooking methods of the era.

- The hearth cooking is the way to go for the 18th and 19th century.

- [Narrator] It might look like your typical 18th century cooking demo, but this is something different.

This is the Chronicles of Adam and Williams interpretation of an enslaved cook.

Williams says, working in the kitchen was one of the most stressful jobs on a plantation.

Those with wealth and power often entertained as a symbol of status.

- One would believe that it was a fortunate job to be in the kitchen.

I would disagree because in the kitchen, you're under constant scrutiny by the mistress of the house.

If you are living as a higher class individual, say for instance, like George Washington or the Lee Family or anybody in Colonial Virginia, you have a point to prove, right?

And you don't want to serve people just anything.

So the cook's job is always, always under constant scrutiny.

- [Narrator] Speaking from Adam's perspective.

- So I have to be very careful to make sure that everything that I do, I'm always performing at my highest capacity because you can only mess up so many times as the cook, right?

Those who were enslaved in the low country, a lot of times- - [Narrator] During his program, Williams gives insight into the diets of the enslaved.

- The enslaved were given rations of corn meal and salt pork, or depending on where they are, maybe dried fish.

And sometimes they were given the opportunity to be able to grow small garden spaces to be able to compensate for what they were not getting in their rations every week.

- [Narrator] But from these basic ingredients, the seeds were planted for new culinary traditions.

- Things like cow peas, black eyed peas, peanuts, were all considered not fit for human consumption, but those colonists fed these things to their enslaved Africans, as well as their animals.

But one day, I believe somebody went over into the slave quarters and they smelled some beautiful aroma, and they tasted what was in the pot and realized that, you know, this food, I didn't die from it, right?

And because I didn't die from it, it also is really tasty.

Cultural diffusion happens in so many different ways, in ways that we don't even realize that we are picking up other cultures.

To have the magic answer of how the African cuisine made it into the making of America, I really can't tell you other than my theory, that somebody tasted the pot that was being cooked in the quarters, and the rest is history, if you will.

- [Narrator] Speaking of cultural diffusion, according to Williams, one classic and very popular Creole dish is a trifecta of African, Native American, and European cuisines.

- Gumbo ain't gumbo unless you got gumbo in it.

If it doesn't have gumbo in it, it's just soup.

Gumbo is an okra soup.

It's a soup with okra in it.

The okra serves as a thickener.

Sweet potatoes, you know, we eat them now, but that's something that is native.

But we eat them now and say that we are eating yams.

It all goes back to, you know, a lot of the ways of Africa.

- [Narrator] Now, if you're wondering what he's cooking here, you have to start with a star ingredient, the peanut.

- The conversation today is about the peanut and about those vegetables and things that were indigenous to the African diaspora.

- [Narrator] And with the peanut, he's making a sauce that's similar to a peanut soup.

- Always tease with Virginians that they think they invented peanut soup because peanut soup is one of those big things in Virginia.

But I have to let them know that, you know, ground nut stew or ground nut soup is something that is just as much African, if not more, as it is Virginian.

- [Narrator] By immersing himself in 18th century conditions, Williams connects with his ancestors.

But with his food, he's creating a space for conversation in the 21st century.

- Food is life.

It's one of those things that I use to be able to have difficult conversations.

I don't just cook, but I cook and I discuss a very difficult topic.

And that topic is that of slavery and the making of America.

To be honest, food is that magic secret that brings people in from all over the place to be able to have those difficult conversations.

And they later find out that it is really not that difficult of a conversation because we're simply talking about people and who they were and where they were in life at a particular time.

Food is the thing that brings us together, but at the same time, it could divide us greatly.

Because those who have, have a lot of, and those that don't, don't.

But if we use it right, we can be able to solve a lot of the world's problems over a simple pot of soup.

Ain't no food like American food, you know what I'm saying?

Everything kind of just comes together so neatly, right?

But you can actually look at a table and see the world.

There's so many things that could divide us.

But when you look at our tables every single day, or look at the cuisine that we have every single day, the food brings us together.

- [Narrator] So perhaps take a moment and consider the origin and culture behind the nourishing food you consume on a daily basis.

You may never look at food the same way again.

(upbeat music) We thank you for watching this episode of "Trail of History".

(upbeat music continues) - [Commentator] A production of PBS Charlotte.