The word specifically comes not just from cooking meat over an open fire, but slow-cooking it above the flame using a wooden framework (the first barbecue grills). The word they took wasn't actually the word for cooking the meat, it was the word for the wooden grills themselves.
You all are still going with the theory that native people created that style of cooking and the Spanish named it. But none of you bothered to ask how did African Americans who lived on different plantations in different States in the Southern USA learn that style of cooking? Because the vast majority of African Americans came directly from Africa to the USA between 1720-1780, rather than through the Caribbean. They were never around Taino Indians or any Spainards to learn that style of cooking, yet how did the slaves know how to barbque?
A dude broke off some knowledge in here earlier and y'all dudes walked right by it.
Did black people invent American BBQ?
History of Barbecue
February 1, 2021 Caleb Crossman
"Look up any web article on “the history of barbecue” and you’re likely to get statements to the effect that the word “barbecue” comes to us from the Caribbean by way of Spanish Conquistadors who learned of slow-cooking over a fire using a wooden frame from the Taino-Arawak people. The Spanish adopted the Haitian word barbacoa meaning “sacred fire pit” to describe this process and have used it since at least 1526, when it first appeared in a Spanish dictionary. Many attribute the origin of the modern word “barbecue” to the word barbacoa. It is equally likely that the word “barbecue” stems from the Taino-Arawak word “barbicu.” The Taino people inhabit what is today Hispaniola, the island home of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. What you won’t read quite as often is that the meats of choice were goat, deer, alligator, and possibly human. Sacred fire pit, indeed.
But the word “barbecue” has other roots, as well. The West African Hausa people used the word “babbake” to refer to a variety of processes involving cooking and fire. This explanation has a lot going for it. Particularly, the fact that a single word with myriad meanings came to define a past-time that is as fraught with ambiguity today as its origins in the distant past... ."
History of Barbecue | Community | MAK Grills
The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa with the largest concentration being in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana. So the Hausa were cooking in that fashion long before any of them were brought to the USA as slaves.
Here are pictures of their food and more articles.
Hidden Barbecue History Too Delicious To Be Ignored
![nigeriansuya.jpg](https://nitrocdn.com/gCmPdOiQHRSMMdgshrWKlPFYQNLRTYAo/assets/static/source/rev-fd811f4/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/nigeriansuya.jpg)
The Hirshon Nigerian Skewered Beef BBQ – Suya
Barbecue is an American tradition – of enslaved Africans and Native Americans | Michael W Twitty
![4G8A6140.jpg](https://www.africanbites.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/4G8A6140.jpg)
Suya (Spicy Grilled Kebab)