mon, too, and beloved, as were eggplant and okra. Partly because stoves
did not become common in the region until after the Civil War, frontier
and antebellum southerners were universally fond of stews, which were
made in iron pots suspended by fireplaces or at outside cooking sites. Tur-
nips, tops and bottoms, were often bases, along with sweet potatoes and
legumes; the whole was seasoned with peppers and whatever meat was
available—bacon, most commonly, but also chicken, squirrel, and rabbit.
The liquid in such stews was called pot-likker (i.e., liquor), and it was never
thrown out but drunk with relish or saved to soften yesterday’s cornbread,
crumbled into the pot-likker. Such variety and such taste, not to mention
such good nutrition, must have haunted every migrant’s dreams. Reestab-
lishing gardens, plus cow and hog pens and chicken yards, surely motivated
wayfarers to work hard to reestablish old comforts in new lands.^12
Still, notwithstanding two centuries of warfare on deer, relentless kill-
ing of bears, and the diminution of dark forests where bears lived, mi-
grants reported the hunting and eating of both venison and bear meat. Cer-
tainly deer and bear were much scarcer, though. Land clearance for farms
and the ranging of European animals (not to mention generations of mar-
ket hunting) had reduced large-animal habitat while hugely enlarging the
brushy ‘‘edge’’ environments where quail, opossums, raccoons, and rabbits
thrive. The latter thickened stews for wayfarers. Far from salt coasts, mi-
grants found freshwater fish—catfish was ever a favorite—but few travelers
seem to have had equipment for fishing. For vegetables in early spring, how-
ever, there was pokeweed, an early emerging wild plant long known to be
sweetly edible. Indeed many southerners preferred poke salad (often ren-
dered ‘‘poke-salat’’) to any other greens, long after frontier stages. (Poke was
Elvis’s favorite green.) Others, especially folks in the highlands, found an-
other wild green, cress, and ate ‘‘cress’s salat.’’ Migrants found a variety of
other wild provender as well: nuts of many kinds, wild grapes, plums, and
‘‘Indian’’ peaches.
Back in the old parts of the South, then in the expansive, newly settled
places that collectively became the antebellum South and the Confederacy,
folks of just about every class ate from a staggering variety of foods. Wealthy
whites, in cities and on plantations, particularly in the East, ate mutton and
lamb as well as beef and pork and game. Sheep were almost ubiquitous
across the broad region, but ordinary people kept them for their wool rather
than meat. In Florida, southwestern Louisiana, and Texas—cattle country
—beef was the principal domestic meat. Everywhere else, pork was king,
making at least two appearances each day in the ordinary household. There