Traders from the Middle East brought cinnamon to Mediterranean civilizations beginning around 2,500 years ago, but kept the origin of the spice a secret. Europeans loved it, but didn't know where it came from or how to find out, but they kept looking. This continued after Europeans sailed for the New World. It had so many natural resources, surely there was cinnamon there somewhere!
Among those excited about potential new sources of cinnamon was Francisco Pizarro. Fresh from his destruction of the Incan Empire, Pizarro recruited his brother, Gonzalo, to conquer a place he had heard of not far from his base in Quito called la Canela, the Land of Cinnamon. Contemporary accounts of what happened next are both confused and horrific.
Another Spanish explorer apparently told Gonzalo Pizarro he had found the “Valley of the Cinnamon,” though he hadn’t been able to explore it. He said local people had told him if he continued on he would find a flat land of prosperous people. Dalby suggests that what he had probably actually found was South American trees of the family Lauraceae, which smell sort of like cinnamon. The prosperous land was most likely the Amazon basin, where people cultivated many crops like cassava, maize, and yams—but not “cinnamon trees.”
There were no cinnamon trees, but that didn't stop Pizarro from committing atrocities in his quest. Read about the search for American cinnamon at Jstor Daily. -via Damn Interesting
(Image credit: Simon A. Eugster)