Colonialism — 1501 to 1750 AD

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1502 (- 1504)
In a small irony, after transporting the first 8 domestic pigs to come to the new world on his 2nd voyage (1493-1496), Christopher Columbus discovers peccaries (Tayassu tajacu), North America's native relatives of the pig, in Jamaica during his 4th voyage.
c. 1520
Flemish artist Joachim Patinir, often called "the first landscape painter" completes Rest During the Flight into Egypt in which a placid Madonna nurses her child before a panoramic landscape of fantasy and reality, dotted with strange architecture, the tiny figures of peasants cutting their wheat and a sow suckling her piglets.
1533
Truffles are popularized by Catherine de' Medici, queen of Henry II of France, whose passion for the fungi starts the French digging enthusiastically for truffles, and even training pigs and dogs to sniff them out.
c. 1534
Henry VIII orders new notepaper for himself with a watermark depicting the continence of a pig wearing a tiara and intended to be a satirical attack on the Roman Catholic Pope, Clement VII, through its emblematical depiction of a brutish creature in a bejeweled crown. The Pope had refused to grant the divorce of Henry from Catherine of Aragon, which led to Henry's break with the Roman Catholic Church by the Act of Supremacy and Henry's claim that the king was to be the head of the of the new Church of England.
1537
A pig of the ocean is seen in the German Ocean [North Sea] and is reported by Swedish historian Olaus Magnus as a fierce and "monstrous hog" with a hogs head, numerous eyes including one in its naval and a forked tail like that of a fish.
1539
Hernando de Soto, discoverer of the Mississippi River, introduced hogs to North America when he lands at Tampa Bay with more than 600 men, 200 horses, and 13 to 15 hogs. Some hogs escape and become the ancestors to "razorbacks." The rest grow to a heard of 700 at de Soto's death three years later.
1540
Spanish explorer Coronado, in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, arrives in the American southwest with the first horses, hogs, cattle, sheep, and mules ever seen in the region.
1542
French poet ClÈment Marot eats pork during Lent. He is condemned to be burned alive, but pardoned.
1568
In Toledo, Spain, Elvira del Campo is tortured by the Inquisition for the crime of refusing to eat pork.
1597
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, favorite of Elizabeth I, rival of Sir Walter Raleigh and supporter of Francis Bacon kills the last wild boar in the English county of Essex.
c. 1601
Philip II of Spain becomes ill after gorging himself on bacon in an attempt to prove the extent of his Christian faith during the Inquisition, when any obvious distaste for pork is viewed as heretical because both Jewish and Muslim faiths forbade its consumption. He recovers and eight years later expels all the Moriscos — Moors who have converted to Christianity — from Spain for both religious and political grounds.
1610
Carib Indians [Arawakan or Taino] of Hispaniola teach Spanish Buccaneers to cook pigs on a frame made of green wood which they call a "barboca" and thus the barbecue is born.
1615
French speaking pirates refer to barbecue as "de barbe et queue" from beard to tail praising the versatile pig for its being edible and delicious from head to tail.
c. 1617
James I (1566-1625), King of England, son of Mary Queen of Scots, first Stuart king of England and sponsor of the King James Bible kills the last wild boar in the royal park at Windsor.
1618
A Pig-Faced Woman named Tannakin Skinker, is allegedly born in Wirkham, England. For the next two centuries in the popular press of England, there will be baseless rumors of such creatures "looking to hire female attendants" or "seeking husbands." The woman is usually said to be Irish.
1625
Peter Evertsen Hulft, a director of the Dutch West Indies Company, imports the first heard of swine to Manhattan.
1634
Speculation in tulip bulbs reaches new heights in the Netherlands, where one collector pays: eight pigs, 12 sheep, 1,000 pounds of cheese, four oxen, a bed, and a suit of clothes for a single bulb of the Viceroy tulip.
1635
A creature known as a sea hog is described by John Swan in his book Speculum Mundi. It is described as a hogs head and the tusks of a boar, but a fishy body and tail and dragon's feet.
1639
"Smithfield" hams are shipped to England from the Virginia colony to be sold at London's Smithfield Market which is taken over by the city after 516 years and is reorganized as a market for hogs and cattle.

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