As
far back as 6050 BC, salt has been an important and integral part of the
world’s history, as it has been interwoven into the daily lives of countless
historic civilizations. Used as a part of Egyptian religious offerings and
valuable trade between the Phoenicians and their Mediterranean empire, salt and
history have been inextricably intertwined for millennia, with great importance
placed on salt by many different races and cultures of people. Even today, the
history of salt touches our daily lives. The word “salary” was derived from the
word “salt.” Salt was highly valued and its production was legally restricted
in ancient times, so it was historically used as a method of trade and
currency. The word “salad” also originated from “salt,” and began with the
early Romans salting their leafy greens and vegetables. Undeniably, the history
of salt is both broad ranging and unique, leaving its indelible mark in
cultures across the globe.
• History of Salt Production in
the United States
• History of Salt in Religion
• History of Salt Economics
• History of Salt Warfare
• Salt in History
Most people probably think of
salt as simply that white granular food seasoning found in a salt shaker on
virtually every dining table.
It is that, surely, but it is far
more. It is an essential element in the diet of not only humans but of animals,
and even of many plants. It is one of the most effective and most widely used
of all food preservatives (and used to preserve Egyptian mummies as well). Its
industrial and other uses are almost without number. In fact, salt has great
current as well as historical interest, even the subject of humorous cartoons
and poetry and useful in film-making. Sometimes, however, we need to separate
the salt to get the history.
The fact is that throughout
history, salt—called sodium chloride by chemists—has been such an important
element of life that it has been the subject of many stories, fables and
folktales and is frequently referenced in fairy tales. It served as money at
various times and places, and it has been the cause of bitter warfare. Offering
bread and salt to visitors, in many cultures, is traditional etiquette. It is
used in making pottery. While we have records of the importance of salt in commerce
in Medieval times and earlier, in some places like the Sahara and Nepal, salt
trading today gives a glimpse of what life may have been like centuries ago.
Salt was in general use long
before history, as we know it, began to be recorded. Some 2,700 years
B.C.—about 4,700 years ago—there was published in China the Peng-Tzao-Kan-Mu,
probably the earliest known treatise on pharmacology. A major portion of this
writing was devoted to a discussion of more than 40 kinds of salt, including
descriptions of two methods of extracting salt and putting it in usable form
that are amazingly similar to processes used today. Chinese folklore recounts
the discovery of salt. Salt production has been important in China for two
millennia or more. And the Chinese, like many other governments over time,
realizing that everyone needed to consume salt, made salt taxes a major revenue
source. Nomads spreading westward were known to carry salt. Egyptian art from
as long ago as 1450 B.C. records salt-making.
Salt was of crucial importance
economically. A far-flung trade in ancient Greece involving exchange of salt
for slaves gave rise to the expression, "not worth his salt." Special
salt rations given early Roman soldiers were known as "salarium
argentum," the forerunner of the English word "salary."
References to salt abound in languages around the globe, particularly regarding
salt used for food. From the Latin "sal," for example, come such
other derived words as "sauce" and "sausage." Salt was an
important trading commodity carried by explorers.
Salt has played a vital part in
religious ritual in many cultures, symbolizing immutable, incorruptible purity.
There are more than 30 references to salt in the Bible, using expressions like
"salt of the earth." And there are many other literary and religious
references to salt, including use of salt on altars representing purity, and
use of "holy salt" by the Unification Church.
Saltmaking encompasses much of
the history of the United Kingdom, particularly in the Cheshire area. Medieval
European records document saltmaking concessions. On the Continent, Venice rose
to economic greatness through its salt monopoly. Saltmaking was important in
the Adriatic/Balkans region as well (the present border between Slovenia and
Croatia) where Tuzla in Bosnia-Herzegovina is actually named for
"tuz," the Turkish word for salt. So is Salzburg, Austria, which has
made its four salt mines major tourist attractions. Bolivia's salt producing
region is a tourist attraction with one hotel constructed entirely of salt and
fascinating salt-bearing caravans of llamas. The grand designs of Philip II of
Spain came undone through the Dutch Revolt at the end of the 16th Century; one
of the keys, according to Montesquieu, was the successful Dutch blockade of
Iberian saltworks which led directly to Spanish bankruptcy. Saltmaking was --
and is -- important in Holland as well. France has always been a major producer
of salt and any discussion of saltmaking and distribution in France includes
discussion of the gabelle, the salt tax which was a significant cause of the
French Revolution, but salt remains important today. The magnitude of the
gabelle is mind-boggling; from 1630 to 1710, the tax increased tenfold from 14
times the cost of production to 140 times the cost of production, according to
Pierre Laszlo in his book Salt: Grain of Life (Columbia Univ. Press). Many
Americans evoke an image from the phrase "Siberian salt mines," but
salt making takes place in many places in Russia. In the Middle East, the
Jordanian town of As-Salt, located on the road between Amman and Jerusalem, was
known as Saltus in Byzantine times and was the seat of a bishopric. Later
destroyed by the Mongols it was rebuilt by the Mamluke sultan Baybars I in the
13th century; the ruins of his fortress remain today. Indian history recalls
the prominent role of salt (including the Great Hedge and its role in the
British salt starvation policy) and Mahatma Gandhi’s resistance to British
colonial rule. Salt played a key role in the history of West Africa, particularly
during the great trading empire of Mali (13th-16th Centuries) — and it still
does!
Salt has played a prominent role
in the European exploration of North America and subsequent American history,
Canadian history, and Mexican history as well. The first Native Americans
"discovered" by Europeans in the Caribbean were harvesting sea salt
as on St. Maarten. When the major European fishing fleets discovered the Grand
Banks of Newfoundland at the end of the 15th Century, the Portuguese and Spanish
fleets used the "wet" method of salting their fish on board, while
the French and English fleets used the "dry" or "shore"
salting method of drying their catch on racks onshore; thus, the French and
British fishermen became the first European inhabitants of northern North
America since the Vikings a half-century earlier. Had it not been for the
practice of salting fish, Europeans might have confined their fishing to the
coasts of Europe and delayed "discovery" of the "New
World."
Salt motivated the American
pioneers. The American Revolution had heroes who were salt makers and part of
the British strategy was to deny the American rebels access to salt. And salt
was on the mind of William Clark in the path breaking Lewis & Clark
Expedition to the Pacific Northwest. The first patent issued by the British
crown to an American settler gave Samuel Winslow of the Massachusetts Bay
Colony the exclusive right for ten years to make salt by his particular method.
The Land Act of 1795 included a provision for salt reservations (to prevent
monopolies) as did an earlier (1778) treaty between the Iroquois' Onondaga
tribe and the state of New York. New York has always been important in salt
production. The famed Erie Canal, opened in 1825, was known as "the ditch
that salt built" because salt, a bulky product presenting major
transportation difficulties, originally was its principal cargo. Syracuse, NY,
is to this day proud of its salt history and its nickname: "Salt
City." Salt production has been important in Michigan and West Virginia
for more than a century. Salt played an important role on the U.S. frontier,
including areas like Illinois and Nebraska which no longer have commercial salt
production.
Salt played a key role in the
Civil War and on the the present. In December, 1864, Union forces made a forced
march and fought a 36-hour battle to capture Saltville, Virginia, the site of
an important salt processing plant thought essential to sustaining the South's
beleaguered armies. Civilian distress over the lack of salt in the wartime
Confederacy undermined rebel homefront morale too. Salt was critical to
locating the city of Lincoln, Nebraska and West Virginia claims salt as its
first mineral industry. The important role of salt in Kansas history will be
captured in a new salt museum in Hutchinson, KS. The vast distances in the
American West sometimes required passage over extensive salt flats. In Canada,
Windsor Salt is more than a century old. In the American West, a "salt
war" was fought at El Paso, TX and we know that Nevada was not known only
as a silver state. Many cities, counties, land features and other landmarks
reflect the importance of salt. Salt, of course, has many uses; some techniques
using salt such as production of "salt prints" in 19th Century
photography have been superseded by new technologies -- others have not.
Several salt prints are viewable online Not all American "salt
history" is so old, either. Salt-glazed pottery is still popular. Salt is
even associated with the struggle for women's rights in the U.S.
Salt also had military
significance. For instance, it is recorded that thousands of Napoleon's troops
died during his retreat from Moscow because their wounds would not heal as a
result of a lack of salt. In 1777, the British Lord Howe was jubilant when he succeeded
in capturing General Washington's salt supply.
Similarly, throughout history the
essentially of salt has subjected it to governmental monopoly and special
taxes. Salt taxes long supported British monarchs and thousands of Britishers
were imprisoned for smuggling salt. French kings developed a salt monopoly by
selling exclusive rights to produce it to a favored few who exploited that
right to the point where the scarcity of salt was a major contributing cause of
the French Revolution. In modern times, Mahatma Gandhi defied British salt laws
as a means of mobilizing popular support for self-rule in India. In recent
years, the promotion of free trade through the World Trade Organization has led
to abolition of many national monopolies, for example, in Taiwan.
In short, the innocuous looking,
white granular substance we know today as "salt" historically has
been so essential to all life as to be of the utmost value. We are fortunate,
indeed, that in the United States it has never been subjected to discriminatory
taxes, and that in North America it is plentiful and one of the most easily
obtainable and least expensive of our necessities.
History of Salt Production in the
United States
Reports from Onondaga, New York
in 1654 indicated the Onondaga Indians made salt by boiling brine from salt
springs. Colonial Americans were making salt by boiling brine in iron kettles
during the time the U.S. Constitution was drafted. By the time of the Civil
War, 3,000 workers produced over 225,000 short tons of salt by boiling.
Settlers reported that Native Americans made salt at Kanawha, West Virginia
before 1755 by boiling brine from salt springs. Large scale salt production
from brine springs was underway by 1800, and the process of drilling for more
concentrated brine began within a few years. The Kanawha valley supplied the
Confederacy with salt during the Civil War, when production peaked.
Similar events occurred at Avery
Island, Louisiana. Historians believe that Native Americans produced salt from
salt springs more than 500 years before the arrival of Europeans. Salt produced
by boiling brine supplied salt during the war of 1812. Full scale production in
open pits or quarries began in 1862, during the Civil War, and the first
underground salt mine was started in 1869 with the sinking of a shaft.
Solar salt was produced during
the early 1800s in less than ideal climates, by building movable, covered sheds
over the evaporating pans, protecting the salt and brine from precipitation.
Solar salt making began on San Francisco Bay, California in 1770 and at the
Great Salt Lake in Utah in 1847. During the 1830s on Cape Cod there were 442
salt works.
Mechanical evaporation in
multiple effect open "grainer" pans began in about 1833, along with
methods to purify the brine before evaporation. Salt makers could produce a
clean, white, desirable salt product. Further developments during the 1800s at
Silver Springs, New York, produced the concept of crystallizing salt in
enclosed vacuum pans.
Salt was produced between 1790
and 1860 in Louisiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana,
Illinois and Missouri by boiling brine in salt furnaces. Waste wood products
from the lumber industry supplied low cost fuel to produce salt from salt
springs at Saginaw and St. Clair, Michigan during the mid-1800s. Drillers found
a rock salt deposit at St. Clair, Michigan in 1882, providing nearly saturated
brine to feed the evaporators. Solution mining of rock salt deposits spread
rapidly throughout the salt producing states. When rock salt deposits were
reached by drilling, conventional underground mining soon followed. Salt mining
continues today throughout North America in Kansas, Louisiana, Ohio, New York,
Texas, Ontario, New Brunswick (potash and salt), Quebec, and Nova Scotia.
Salt production in Kansas, Utah,
Louisiana, New York, Ohio and Michigan in the U.S. has enriched local history
and culture. Branding by Morton has made it a highly-recognized name in
American commerce. Salt mining under the City of Detroit, Michigan has been a
long-standing activity.