crockett said:
My other succotash issue is how widely used was it? I've been reading the David Thompson Journals and there were Iroquois relocated to the Canadian Rockies and you would think succotash would have been introduced to the area.
There are two different issues to your question, IMO. The word 'succotash' is said to have first been derived from the Narragansett word msÃckquatash, meaning boiled corn, in about 1750, so you wouldn't expect to see it used as such before that date in other places.
Cooking corn and beans together, though, was being done much earlier. The original Jamestown settlers, 1607, found that the Powhatan Indians living along the Virginia coast boiled corn and beans together routinely, a dish they called Pausarowmena.
As is not unusual, I suspect we won't ever find out when the term succotash was first applied to a dish of corn and beans. After 1750, at least. I have a reference from 1788 on the Ohio River near Fort Pitt, Journal of John May, which uses the term succotash, but doesn't tell us what he meant by it.
"Tuesday, May 27. I dined to day with General Harmer, by invitation, had an elegant dinner. amongst the variety was allamode and boiled fish Bear steak roast venison et.c excellent sacketosh salads and cramberry sauce, grog and wine after dinner."
As an aside, his allamode was probably beef braised with vegetables served with brown gravy. The term allamode is our à la mode, as in apple pie à la mode. It simply means 'in the fashionable way'.
Spence
