Don’t forget, barbeque is more specifically a noun, a specific thing, and that specific thing is pork, not beef or fish, or beaver, or shrimp or anything else. It’s quite possible to barbeque beef; tens of thousands of people out west do it all the time. And it’s oftentimes delicious. But it’s “barbequed beef” not barbeque. The term barbeque is always properly reserved for pork.
Indeed, it was the Spanish who first introduced the pig into the Americas and to the American Indians. The Indians, in turn, introduced the Spanish to the concept of true slow cooking with smoke. So, in that first fateful coming together, way back in the 1500s, the Spanish supplied the pig and the Indians showed them how to cook it. That is when authentic barbeque was first eaten.
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