As was done in England at the time, colonists cooked in iron pots or
skillets and then poured the food onto wooden “trenchers.” A trencher
resembled a chopping block but had a declivity in the middle to keep stew
from running out. Ceramic mugs and cups did not become common until
after the middle of the seventeenth century, and plates came even later.
Porcelain was uncommon until the eighteenth century.
People usually ate with their fingers, but they scooped up mush with a
shell or spoon—in 1635 in Maryland immigrants were advised to bring
“Platters, Dishes, spoones of wood”—and cut chunks of meat with sheath
knives. When the table knife appeared, it had a sharp point on which meat
was speared and carried to the mouth. Forks were not used in early
America. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts famously owned one fork
in the middle of the seventeenth century; but no forks have turned up at
any archaeological site dating before the eighteenth century. The first men-
tion of a fork in Plymouth Colony dates from 1721.
The amount and the quality of food and drink were, of course, factors
in well-being. The first English explorers were impressed by the healthi-
ness of Virginia. Ralph Lane found “the climate so wholesome, that wee
had not one sicke since we touched the land here.” He did not stay long
enough to find out that throughout the low-lying lands surrounding the
Chesapeake, “agues and fevers” were prevalent. The later colonists found
that “seasoning”—living through the onset of sicknesses against which they
had no immunities—was a hurdle many did not cross. Later in the seven-
teenth century malaria became much more virulent when a new strain, fal-
ciparum, came from Africa. Malaria was the most obvious danger to health
because it weakened the body’s resistance to dysentery (known as “Grypes
of the Gutts”) and influenza. In Maryland, most immigrant men did not live
beyond age forty-three, and about seven out of ten died before age fifty;
women usually had even shorter lives. Few marriages lasted more than ten
years before one spouse died. Among babies the death rate was about one
in four before the first birthday.
Succeeding in the New World was not just a matter of staying alive,
hard as that was. Investors in the Virginia Company were businessmen who
were disinclined to provide charity. To get what they could not make them-
selves, settlers had to produce something that they could barter or sell. The
first move was obvious. All around them were forests, and timber was in
114 THE BIRTH OF AMERICA