By Lake E. High, Jr. photos courtesy: South Carolina Barbecue Association
A Very Brief History of South Carol ina Barbeque
T
he history of barbeque dates back long before there was a United States of America to claim the slow cooked pork as its own.
We can thank the Spanish for intro- ducing the pig to the Americas; in turn, the Native Americans introduced the Spanish to the concept of slow cooking with smoke. That fateful com- ing together, way back in the 1560s, was when authentic barbeque was born.
During this time, America was slowly being settled. The first Spanish adventurers were actually Conquistadores, bent on gold and conquest, not colonizing. The Spanish colonists came slightly later in the 1500s, settling in South Carolina and naming their colony “Santa Elena” – the first true colony in the Americas.
That colony, known today as Beaufort County’s “Port Royal,” lasted 20 years and was home to nearly 500 colonists representing more than 100 families. It was there, long before the name “Carolina” had even been applied to
the area by the English, where people first learned to prepare and eat real barbeque in what would eventually become known as South Carolina.
Today most people define the bar- beque they eat in terms of the sauce that is added, and what many people outside of the southern region don’t realize is there are actually four types of sauces: vinegar and pepper; mus- tard; light tomato; and heavy tomato. North and South Carolina are home to three of the four types of barbeque sauces, but only South Carolina is home to all four.
The “original” barbeque sauce, dating back hundreds of years, is vinegar and pepper – the simplest of the four. It is predominantly found on the coastal plains of both North and South Carolina and, to a lesser degree, in Virginia and Georgia.
The most famous preparers of vinegar and pepper barbeque are the Scottish families who settled primarily in Williamsburg County, present-day South Carolina Lowcountry. The most prominent present-day Scottish bar-
Mid-Atlantic EVENTS Magazine 71
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