In Winslow Homer’s print Chestnutting, a group of children climb up and shake down a chestnut tree in rural New England, collecting the falling burs in an outstretched blanket. Printed in 1870, this image depicts a time when foraging was still a part of many rural Americans’ foodways. This print depicts the American chestnut tree, which grew abundantly throughout the Appalachians from the areas now known as southern Ontario to central Alabama, and as far west as Tennessee. Chestnutting was not only a favorite pastime for children; it also served as a valuable cash crop for farmers and bolstered agricultural economies. Nuts were gathered in large batches and distributed across the eastern seaboard to major cities, where they were roasted and sold from street carts. The nuts, high in caloric value, were also ideal for fattening livestock for sale.
Aside from providing sustenance, the chestnut tree played an important role in the livelihoods of Euro-American colonial settlers and Indigenous peoples of North America. When settlers arrived and began to displace Native Americans, they learned of the usefulness of chestnut lumber, which was both straight grained and rot resistant. This made it well-suited for building log cabin foundations, fences, and, later, railroad ties and telephone poles. The abundance of chestnut trees was in part due to the agricultural techniques of the Cherokee, Iroquois, and Mohegan tribes, who cleared and burned specific areas of forests to promote new tree growth. Among Native American tribes, its leaves were used for medicines, the nuts were ground into flour, and the tannins from the bark were used to tan leather goods. The chestnut tree was also integral to the ecosystem of the forest, its leaves providing nutrients for the soil, insects, and wildlife.
Despite the ubiquity and importance of chestnut trees during this period, it is unlikely any of us today have ever seen, let alone eaten, an American chestnut. This is because of the twentieth-century chestnut blight that originated in New York City in 1904. The airborne fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, carried on chestnut varieties imported from abroad, was accidentally spread outward across the Appalachians. Over the next thirty years, the American chestnut, which previously made up one quarter of all the trees in that mountain range, was brought to virtual extinction.
The chestnut blight had devastating impacts on both the ecosystems and the economies of the eastern United States—among other things, many regions across the Appalachians relied on the industrialization of chestnut timber. While the blight did impact the foodways of the rural peoples depicted in Homer’s print, it also occurred in the middle of a political and cultural shift regarding the practice of foraging. Chestnutting presents an idyllic, romanticized version of New England life, a return to “normalcy” not long after an extremely tumultuous period in the country’s history: the U.S. Civil War. Although Chestnutting seems to promote American values of communion with nature and self-sustenance, these rights were simultaneously being legislated away.
The development of anti-foraging laws began with the first arrival of European colonial-settlers, who sought to displace Native Americans from their land. By claiming ownership over Native American territories, settlers disrupted Indigenous foodways and knowledge of local plants and animals while extracting the use of these resources for themselves. These laws were further expanded after the Civil War, as plantation owners pressured legislators to restrict the foraging rights of freed African American slaves. Many previously enslaved African Americans earned money by selling foraged and hunted foods, which provided a level of self-sufficiency and self-determination that contrasted with their plantation work. However, to avoid losing their primary source of labor and to reduce the bargaining power of their African American workers, southern planters pushed for the legislation of criminal trespass laws, which made foraging and hunting on private lands illegal. Homer’s print focused on white children in New England, visually communicating who could acceptably forage immediately following the Civil War.
In the decades after the Civil War, anti-foraging sentiment expanded with regard to the poor and working classes, including rural white farmers. During the 1880s, a little more than a decade after Homer’s print, New York State’s wealthy, white elites began a conservation movement in an effort to “protect” the public commons. In practice, however, these parks were designed to be enjoyed only by some, while dispossessing others of their food sources. Though city, state, and national parks are often thought of as public land, most still enforce rules against foraging, which can result in steep fines for simply picking dandelion greens or mushrooms.
Over the past decade, we have begun to experience another major cultural shift around foraging practices, although government policy has yet to catch up. Today, it is common to find foraged foods (morels, ramps, fiddleheads) highlighted on the menus of fine-dining, farm-to-table restaurants. This mainstream cultural acceptance is in no small part due to the work of communities who have historically been barred from foraging but have nevertheless continued to pass down their knowledge. Foraging, an inherently anti-capitalist practice, has come to be associated with activism and the larger global food sovereignty movement. It has also gained popularity across social media, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw people turning to self-sustenance to cope with changes to their foodways. Alexis Nicole Nelson (@blackforager), probably the most widely known forager on Instagram, has gained a following of 1.8 million people for her videos that explain how to find and cook wild foods, mostly based out of her home state of Ohio.
Here in the Upper Valley, many of us are familiar with, or even regularly eat, foraged foods. Though I did not grow up in Vermont, it is easy for me to imagine the world in Chestnutting because I’ve been able to dabble in foraging in parks and recreation areas without fear of criminalization or judgment. Despite my individual experience, the political and cultural context in which Chestnutting was printed remains relevant today. In my home state of Hawaiʻi, foraging has a history as complex as its history in the continental United States. It is not easy to gather wild plants and edibles without a permit, and the effects of colonization have vastly decreased the existence of and access to public lands.
In April 2022, I had the opportunity to return home for a research trip during Hawaiʻi Contemporary’s third triennial exhibition, Pacific Century: E Ho‘omau no Moananuiākea. I took part in a workshop facilitated by Eating in Public, a project created by Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma, professors in the Departments of Art and Art History and Sociology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. During the workshop, Gaye taught us how to identify and cook amaranth, a common wild plant found amongst grasses in Hawaiʻi and often assumed to be a weed. During the workshop, Gaye spoke of their mission to plant and gather on both public and private lands, set up free food stores, and create autonomous systems of exchange outside of the bounds of the state. For many, learning how to (and being able to) forage is as much a form of sustenance as it is an act of political resistance.
Throughout the planning of From the Field: Tracing Foodways through Art, I have realized that food sovereignty can and should take many different forms. In Hawaiʻi, this can mean revitalizing kalo (taro) patches and niu (coconut) groves while also making use of edible “weeds” and creating anti-capitalist food-share systems. Across the Northeast, states are working to restore the American chestnut to its native range. The Cryphonectria fungus cannot compete with soil microorganisms, meaning it is unable to kill the root systems of the American chestnut. New sprouts continue to regenerate, but the blight keeps them from fully maturing. By studying these new sprouts and blight-resistant variations of chestnuts, scientists and forestry organizations are hopeful that the American chestnut can be brought back from its functional extinction. If this happens, how might the restoration of the chestnut impact our ecosystems, foodways, and economies now? And if you could pave the way for its return, what would you want that world to look like?
This post was authored by: Nichelle Gaumont, Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Nichelle Gaumont is the 2021–24 Mutual Learning Fellow in Registration and Collections. Prior to joining the Hood Museum, Nichelle served in an Americorps position with St. Paul Public Library in Minnesota, where she focused on increasing technology access and building digital literacy skills in local communities. She collaborated with non-profit Literacy Minnesota to research digital access in Minnesota’s counties and contribute to a needs assessment report for the MN Dept of Education. She also served in an Americorps position with the George W Carver Museum in Austin, Texas, where she facilitated virtual arts and science workshops for Austin youth. Nichelle graduated from the University of Portland with a BA in psychology and a minor in communications.
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