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Conquistadors reported that the Aztecs and Mayas ate chile with nearly everything. Nutritious atole – corn gruel – with chile was thought to cure colds, strengthen the body, and relieve depression. Fasting for religious or health reasons entailed abstaining from chile and salt. Chile smoke was used as a fumigant, and misbehaving children were punished with it. Among the Tarahumara, chiles were used to prevent witchcraft and illness. A person who did not eat chile was immediately suspected of being a sorcerer. In prehispanic times, chiles were not cultivated north of Mexico, but many native peoples from southern Arizona to the Big Bend of Texas used the tiny, fiery wild chiles, or chiltepin. Chiles came late to the Chumash in our region, brought by settlers from Mexico and presumably incorporated into the changing Chumash diet in mission times. They were also used medicinally. One seriously ill patient was given a concentrated extract of boiled chiles to drink, which induced profuse sweating. Then he had to drink a bucketful of seawater, a powerful purgative, after which he felt much better and recovered nicely. How & Why Chiles Went Around the World Wild chiles like the chiltepin (or chile piquin) are dispersed by birds. Humans helped to spread these plants from their South American homes into Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Chile peppers joined corn, beans, and squash to form the “Big Four” staple crops in Mesoamerica. Native Americans and, later, people around the world, developed a great number of varieties from the original three principal species. Now many cultivated peppers, including bells and jalapeños, require human involvement for propagation. Columbus actually undertook his voyage with the goal of finding a shortcut to the “Spice Islands” of Indonesia, source of spices like nutmeg, mace and cloves that had been prized throughout Europe for centuries. They helped to mask ‘off’ flavors of food in a time before refrigeration and were also a status symbol: highly spiced foods were a prerogative of the very rich because exotic spices were so expensive and hard to obtain. It was the Portuguese who introduced chiles through their trading activities to Africa, India, and much of Asia.
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