Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon
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    • Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon
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    • Cindy Ott
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    • Acknowledgments
  • Online Exhibition
    • Just Another Squash: 12,000 BCE to 1600
    • From Pumpkin Beer to Pumpkin Pie: 1600 to 1799
    • The Making of a Rural New England Icon: 1800 to 1860
    • The Pumpkin and the Nation: 1861 to 1899
    • Americans Celebrate the Fall Harvest with Pumpkins: 1900 to 1945
    • The Changing Nature of Pumpkins: 1946 to the Present
    • The Changing Nature of American Rural Economies: 1946 to the Present
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Picture
Theodore de Bry,(Belgian, 1528-1598), The Towne of Secot, engraving, 1590, from a watercolor drawing by John White (English, c. 1540-c. 1593), 1585-86.  Library of Congress Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Washington, D.C., LC-USZC4-5267.

Secotan Indian Village

This 1590 engraving of the Secotan Indian village on Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina is probably the first visual depiction of a pumpkin patch. The field of large, orange vegetables enveloped in leafy greens is located in the center of the picture frame. Because of the crop’s importance to many American Indians’ diets, it, along with corn and beans, figured prominently in oral traditions. According to the Iroquois, the Great Spirit created squash and her sisters corn and beans at the beginning of time to provide food to sustain the human race. Nicolas Perrot noted of the Iroquois in 1700, “If they are without these, they think they are fasting, no matter what abundance of meat and fish they have in their stores.” 

 

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