A Look at History
Archaeology Reveals Early Use of Tea, Coffee in Straits Area
BY FRANK STRAUS

Many Mackinac Islanders will remember doing their grocery shopping at the old A & P store in St. Ignace. The original name of the A & P chain was the "Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company," and it is a reminder of the fortunes that have been made from tea and coffee in the history of North America.

Both tea and coffee are strong alkaloids that can be shipped long distances in dried form. Because of efficiency of transport, they were among the first food to show up at each location on the American frontier. These drinks must be brewed for consumption, but there is no shortage of water in northern Michigan. The beverages were also sold to Native Americans to supplement the local herbal teas they already drank. In the early 1800s, one of the Chippewa words for tea was simply "leaf," anibish, based upon the fact that a wide variety of plants in the Northern Great Lakes produce leaves or plant tips that if harvested young can be brewed into a beverage.

By the time Bishop Frederic Baraga wrote his pioneering "Dictionary of the Ojibway

Language" in 1852, the Chippewa had also developed a word for coffee. It was a compound word, "makatemashkikiwabo," which merged the words for "black" and "medicine," perhaps because the Natives found the new drink to be quite bitter.

When Grand Hotel landscaped the grassy lawn below the hotel in the early 1900s, it named the area the "Tea Garden." During the first half of the century the hotel maintained a small dance floor in the garden for "tea dances" as shown in top photograph. (Photographs courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

In the early 1960s, archeologists beginning the excavation of Colonial Michilimackinac were surprised to discover pieces of Chinese export porcelain, used for the serving of tea, in the subsoil. The finding of a Chinese export porcelain tea bowl was published as early as 1967; fragments of many similar pieces have since been discovered. It is likely that the British fur traders living in and around Fort Michilimackinac drank large quantities of tea, but the diggers had not expected to find these brittle handicrafts, painstakingly packed in straw or some similar absorbent and transported by canoe to the North American frontier.

In the 1700s, most of the world's tea was grown in southern China; China was the richest and most powerful nation in the world, a fascinating culture to many middle-class Englishmen. The English developed a tea ceremony that combined Chinese servingware with their own social rituals. These hegemonic force of these porcelain rituals were so strong that they showed up at the Straits of Mackinac.

The English tea-distribution network was so efficient that the price of tea dropped sharply in the 1700s, bringing it within reach of many English-speaking households but reducing its

attraction to the wealthy and the upper class. The Portuguese had begun to transplant African coffee bushes in their sprawling South American colony of Brazil. The hot, black beverage was at first a great luxury, reserved for moments of conspicuous consumption. When the successful Michilimackinac fur trader John Askin made out his inventory in 1778, the most valuable single item of personal property listed was a sterlingsilver coffee pot, which he valued at 78 in "York pounds." (Three years later the British would buy all of Mackinac Island from the Chippewa for goods worth 5,000 in York pounds.)

In contrast to tea, coffee was served in metal pots that exchanged heat rapidly, allowing the beverage to cool down slightly before drinking. If you have a sterling-silver spoon, you may want to see this for yourself by brewing a cup of tea or coffee, and then putting the spoon into the liquid. You will be able to feel the heat from the beverage creeping up the handle of the spoon. Copper has some of the same properties, which is why some fine cookware is made with copper to this day. Askin also had two copper coffeepots for everyday use, but neither was worth more than a few shillings in 1778.

After the War of 1812, factor Robert Stuart was the wealthiest man on Mackinac Island and kept a high table at the Stuart House. Records for the Stuart House are missing, but we have accounts from high tables at similar American Fur Company posts on the upper Missouri and they make clear that gallons of coffee were served. Francois A. Chardon, stationed at Fort Clark (in what is now central North Dakota) in 1834, wrote of their Christmas feast in his journal. After noting that the commander had invited members of all races and ages to share Christmas with him, Chardon calculated that the average guest had drunk "seven to nine cups of coffee."

By the mid-1800s many Americans considered coffee almost a necessity of life. As the nation was moving toward civil war, Congress directed Army logisticians to make sure that each post receive at least 36 pounds of green coffee (or 29 pounds of roasted coffee) per man per year. Even a small post like Fort Mackinac would have taken delivery of at least a ton each summer. The same ration was resumed after the war when the fort was reoccupied. In his outline of soldier life at the Fort, "Reveille Till Taps," Keith Widder notes that the mess brewed coffee for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and many soldiers drank it at all three meals. Just before the Civil War, milkman Gail Borden had patented a tinned product that he called "condensed milk." The canned liquid would keep indefinitely and was often drunk with coffee, especially during the winter months.

By the late Victorian era, the relative positions of coffee and tea had flipped over, with coffee being seen as a working class beverage and tea being elevated to the centerpiece of a tableau of Edwardian luxury. When Grand Hotel landscaped the grassy lawn below the hotel in the early 1900s, it named the area the "Tea Garden." During the first half of the century the hotel maintained a small dance floor in the garden for "tea dances." Meanwhile coffee had been symbolically banished to Main Street, where the 1941 WPA guide pointed out the "coffee shops" where daytrippers could grab a "bite to eat."

After World War II came the era of tea bags and instant coffee. Some Americans are now rediscovering the joys of hand-brewed hot beverages, sometimes packaged and sold to indicate their specific point of origin.