When you hear the term “buccaneers,” visions of swashbuckling pirates of the Caribbean come to mind. However, that term is rooted in barbecue. Few people realize how close history and barbecue are tied. Barbecue is derived from a Spanish term “barbacoa” for meat roasted or dried over an open fire. The word is said to have originated in the Caribbean from the word for the Indian practice of cooking or smoking meat over an open fire to preserve it.

It was in 1697 that we saw the first use of barbecue in English. That was by William Dampier, an English privateer or pirate. The word buccaneer was used in referring to Europeans who dried and smoked fish in the manner of Indians in the Caribbean. Since many of those were English pirates preserving meat for their voyages, buccaneer became another word for pirate.

The Spanish heritage runs even deeper. In December of 1540, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto crossed the Tombigbee River, probably in the Columbus area. De Soto had more than 300 hogs with his expedition that were used for a supplemental food supply. Their dining on roasted pork a day’s march west of the Tombigbee at Columbus in December 1540 would have been the first recorded pork barbecue in what is now Mississippi.

A major problem with tracing the early history of barbecue and barbecue sauce is that until the early 1900s, few cookbooks included any recipes for it. The 1849 edition of “The Modern Housewife” listed 62 sauces, but not one of them was what we would consider a barbecue sauce. Barbecue sauce, as we know it, has not been around that long.

When early barbecue sauce recipes are found, they are generally what we would consider as a basting sauce. In the 1800s, barbecued meat usually referred simply to meat roasted over coals and seasoned only with salt, pepper and its own juices. The earliest date that I found for a true commercial barbecue sauce was 1909. It was probably the 1940s before commercial sauces were popular.

In looking at the history of barbecue in the Columbus area, the best early references appear as recipes in old cookbooks that had been used locally. The earliest reference that I have seen is in an 1825 copy of the “Virginia House-Wife” that has been passed down in the Billups family in Columbus. The recipe is:

“TO BARBECUE SHOTE”

“This is the name given in the southern states to a fat young hog, which, when the head and feet are taken off, and it is cut into four quarters, will weigh six pounds per quarter. Take a fore quarter, make several incisions between the ribs, and stuff it with rich forcemeat; put it in a pan with a pint of water, two cloves of garlic, pepper, salt, two gills of red wine, and two of mushroom catsup. Bake it and thicken the gravy with butter and brown flour; it must be jointed and the ribs cut across before it is cooked, or it can not be carved well, lay it in the dish with the ribs uppermost; if it be not sufficiently brown, add a little burnt sugar.”

A cookbook dated Sept. 16, 1867, that belonged to Sally Govan Billups has a recipe that says when barbecuing a pig to “make a very strong seasoning of vinegar, salt, red and black pepper, and three quarters of a pound of lard or butter. Baste the pig using a mop.”

A more recent recipe for a historic southern barbecue sauce was recorded by Eudora Welty in about 1939. She told of Aberdeen’s famous barbecue parties given by James Acker at his home, The Magnolias. His barbecue sauce recipe was: “Heat together 4 ounces vinegar, 14 ounces catsup, 3 ounces Worcestershire sauce, the juice of 1 lemon, 2 tablespoons salt, red and black pepper to taste and 4 ounces butter. Baste the meat constantly while cooking.”

In east Mississippi, barbecue probably reached its zenith at Magowah Gun Club south of Columbus. It evolved out of a 1906 birthday party for Collier Hardy that grew into a monthly barbecue. Barbecue, though, is not all the club is noted for. In 1914, a Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper referred to the club as a “famous shooting organization,” In the 1940s a club team once won the Canadian-American trap shooting championship. One club member, E R M Shelly was a big game hunter in Africa whose exploits were written about in Outdoor Life, Field and Stream and the New York Times. I recall when I was a child that he would gather children around a fire and tell stories of amazing adventures.

Lenore Hardy Billups’ father, T.W. Hardy, was one of the original members of Magowah. In her 1940 cookbook is the Hardy family recipe for barbecue sauce for a gathering of 100 people. That was the Magowah sauce recipe:

‘Barbecue Sauce serves 100’

1 pound of chopped onion;

4 pounds of fat,bacon or ham, melted;

2 quarts of vinegar;

1 quart of water;

1 pint of mustard, prepared;

1 1/2 quarts catsup;

4 ounces sugar, brown;

salt;

red pepper;

chili powder (optional)

Worcestershire sauce, (optional) 2 ounces.

Fry onions in melted fat until tender and slightly brown. Add remaining ingredients; mix thoroughly. It simmered all day over an open fire in a cast iron pot.

Following pirate William Dampier’s 1697 usage of the word buccaneer, I guess anyone who barbecues over an open fire could be called a buccaneer. Who would have thought there were so many Buccaneers around here.

Rufus Ward is a local historian.

Rufus Ward is a Columbus native a local historian. E-mail your questions about local history to Rufus at [email protected].

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