148 Singing Valleys 



When Ponce de Leon landed in Florida he brought with 

 him thirteen sows. The dons were pork eaters. Estremadura, 

 the province which sent out the greatest number of conquis- 

 tadores, has a pig-raising industry. Pizarro was a swineherd of 

 Trujillo. The hams of the province have been famous among 

 epicures since Saint-Simon praised their delicate, sweet flavor 

 due, he believed, to the vipers on which they fed. 



Doubtless the "thirteen sowes," which obligingly increased 

 to a herd of three hundred within one year, were of this 

 Estremaduran breed. When de Soto started on his march he 

 drove some of these swine before him; possibly to eat up the 

 rattlesnakes. Runaways from de Soto's advance guard were 

 the progenitors of the wild razorbacks in the south. 



When John Smith left Jamestown, his mind was easy about 

 the colonists' food supply. There was corn a-plenty, and there 

 were "60 odd pigges and 500 chickings." The "pigges" were 

 the natural increase of three sows imported a year and a half 

 before. 



In Florida, in Virginia, and later in New England, swine 

 throve on the native maize. The settlements along the Con- 

 necticut raised hogs and sent ships from Essex loaded with pork 

 and lard to sell in the sugar islands. Indeed the swine, by 

 their numbers, became a problem. There was an ordinance 

 how Connecticut enjoyed making a law about something! 

 that roving swine must be ringed; and that a man could claim 

 for his own and kill or sell any mavericks he caught in his corn- 

 field. 



When the great westward movement began, the pig moved 

 west with the settler. Tamworths, of Wiltshire origin, made 

 the trip down into the Shenandoah Valley. Their descendants, 

 already more American than British, took the Wilderness Road 

 into Kentucky and on to Missouri. Black Mule Foots wrig- 

 gled inside canvas sacks in the Conestoga wagons that took 

 the Palatines and Moravians from Pennsylvania to the Ohio 

 country. There was at least one pig on every flatboat that 

 floated down to Marietta and to Cincinnati. Let out of the 



