“…A
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“…And suddenly the
memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine
which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out
before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie
used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of
the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And
all from my cup of tea.” — Marcel
Proust, "Remembrance of Things Past"
Proust’s
seven-volume opus has long been one of my favorite novels. And amaranth has long been one of my favorite
flowering plants.
So, having
recently moved to northern New Mexico, and being somewhat a gardener as well as
a fan of history, I was excited to learn that not only does this tall
maroon-colored weed with spinach-shaped leaves grow here, but it also played a
major role in the lives of the ancient residents of this area. But I was most surprised to hear that this
“everlasting flower” (as it translates) at on time was banned and destroyed by
the Spanish colonists because of its use in native pagan practices.
Marsha and
I were first introduced to amaranth back in Wethersfield, Connecticut by her
parents who, unbeknownst to us while we were at work one day, sowed some of
their seeds into our small backyard vegetable garden. The big red weed became our most successful
crop that year. Being self-seeding plants
their location shifted from season to season.
Yet they always remained the star of that garden. However the in-law connection is likely the primary cause of my affection for
the plant, which, like Proust’s madeleine triggers pleasant memories of people
in my own life story.
Likewise
the sight of tansy precipitates involuntary memories of J, a dear friend of
Marsha’s and mine and a master gardener who gave us what became a patch of this
yellow, perennial, herbaceous flowering plant that we placed within shouting
distance of the amaranth. The herb
garden at El Rancho de las Golondrinas living history museum where we volunteer
likewise has a tansy bed, which now touches off the same reminiscences.
However Marsha
and I had not seen any amaranth during the fifteen months since we moved out
here until we visited the Santa Fe Botanical Garden where more than a dozen
amaranths form a phalanx above their terraced vegetable garden. Docents S and K explained briefly the plant’s
place in New Mexico’s dietary and fiber arts history – and the Spanish
Colonial’s distrust and destruction of it.
Both of which prompted further research on my part.
Similar to
our own surprise introduction to the tall red plant, amaranth (which is native
to the Americas) was happened upon and harvested before being domestically planted
around 4,000 BC in Mexico’s Tehuacan Valley (also believed to be the first
place maize was ever cultivated by humankind.)
From there, it is considered to have spread to the Southwestern United
States via ancient trading routes.
Unlike Marsha
and me, these Late Archaic-era Mesoamericans, and later-in-time Southwestern
Indians found many practical uses for the seeds and leaves of the plant. Native Americans in general have eaten
amaranth seeds for thousands of years, while the Apache and Navajos used
amaranth to make flour for bread. Aztecs
and later the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) people of what is now Mexico would make “pinole”
by grinding and toasting the amaranth, mixing it with sugar, spices, and a bit
of water to then be eaten as hot cereal or cooked into cakes. Amaranth flour,
mixed with cornmeal, was also made into dumplings. And the seeds were popped like popcorn and
sometimes mixed with honey, chocolate, and pumpkin or sunflower seeds for Day
of the Dead and other celebrations.
And, before
the advent of corn, amaranth was used to make tortillas.
The Spanish
Colonials and Priests however were not that concerned about the culinary
practices of this newly conquered people (many of which they adopted) as much
as they were about their religious rituals.
Fray Diego
Duran was a Franciscan Friar whose job was to help his fellow priests identify
and wipe out the pagan practices that they found among the Aztecs during and
even after the Spanish conquest of Mexico.
He compiled his findings, including his long list of forbidden foods, in
the Book of the Gods.
As described in “AnthroSource”, a publication of the American Anthropological Association, “Duran was particularly concerned with parallels between Aztec and Christian religion, for he believed the natives often associated pagan beliefs with Catholic rites. He noted that Easter fell in the same season as the pre-Conquest feast for the Aztec tribal god Huitzilopochtli. Both feasts celebrated human sacrifice through rites of Holy Communion. When the Aztecs consumed bits of dough [made from amaranth] sprinkled with the blood of sacrificial victims they claimed they had eaten the flesh and bones of their gods just as Christians believed they received the body and blood of Christ at communion.”
Amaranth was clearly a no-no – so
deeply engrained into the fabric of the native’s spiritual consciousness that
it had to be eliminated. The crops were
destroyed and its growth or use was banned.
Penalties for violations were harsh – e.g. severing hands. However the plant still grew abundantly in
the wild. So while its ritual use
disappeared (or at least disappeared from the friar’s view), it remained a
staple of the Mesoamerican diet – while
the Colonial Spaniards continued to use the native word “huautli”, meaning
amaranth greens to refer to greens of all kinds.
Here in New
Mexico amaranth was used by the Hopi as a natural dye to color their
world-renowned piki bread. (Baker CreekHeirloom Seed Company, which now owns Comstock Ferre Seeds in our former home
of Wethersfield, sells what it calls Hopi Red Dye Amaranth.) Apache, Chiricahua and Navajo ground the
seeds into flour to make bread and ate the young plants eaten as greens.
And amaranth
leaves were used by the Navajo in religious ceremonies to “smoke for lewdness”
during the Coyote Chant, according to Tsvetelina Stefanova writing in Native
Plants of Arizona. Definitely not
something Fray Diego Duran was interested in seeing continue.
The late
poet Gertrude Stein wrote, "A rose is a rose is a rose" – generally interpreted
as meaning "things are just what they are – no more, no less."
Ms. Stein
certainly has more literary clout than me – but I sincerely doubt the accuracy
of that particular observation. It
certainly is not true of any garden plant that we have ever been given. Like the tea-infused madeleine, each flower
carries within it the power to invoke involuntary memories of things past – “in
the sensation which that material object will give us,” as Proust would put it.
The Aztecs,
the Native Americans – and most definitely the Spanish Conquistador Franciscan
Friars – clearly understood that.
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