ABSTRACT
Atlantic history became a history of gastronomic encounters between Europeans, indigenous peoples of the Americas, and Africans, both free and enslaved. The indigenous people of the Caribbean, like many Africans and Europeans across the Atlantic, envisioned a land of the dead across the vast waters. The Western Atlantic Ocean moved in deep, dark, and mysterious currents, in contrast to the clear, calm, and protected turquoise waters of the Caribbean. The residents of other Caribbean islands, together with those living on the outer shores of the circum-Caribbean region, moved easily from one land perch to the next in their giant canoes dug out of grand silk-cotton trees. Over the course of thousands of years, oceanic voyages had linked the Caribbean with Mesoamerica and with the South American mainland. Food offerings would be thrown overboard to remember those Caribs who had perished and now lived in huts under the sea.
