Most if the items I've found about gourds would make me think most all were domesticated varieties. I've only found one reference which might indicate otherwise, and it's from Texas in 1831.
From Women in the Texas Revolution, Mary Sheer:
"...when supper was announced, we sat on stools around a clapboard table, upon which were arranged wooden platters. Beside each platter lay a fork made of a joint of cane. The knives were of various patterns, ranging from butcher knives to pocketknives. And for cups, we had little
wild cymlings, scraped and scoured until they looked as white and clean as earthenware…”
The usual definition for 'cymling' is pattypan squash. The line between squash and gourds is fuzzy, and young gourds are very much like squash until they begin to harden.
I don't have any items indicating frontiersmen grew them except some which detail their using them, so I assume they did. The Native Americans certainly did, and from very early on. There are paintings from 1585 of Algonquins in North Carolina using large gourds as containers, and that was at first white contact. So, did they domesticate them?
I don't know much about different types of gourds. I've used them for many items, but I just use size and shape to decide which is best. They all work.
I've used gourds as canteens, food containers and bowls, black powder primers, etc. and have never lined a single one. I know I'm swimming upstream on this, but I've just never found it necessary.
I have collected maybe a dozen items mentioning gourds from the old literature, so it's not common, but also not rare. Here's a picture I've never seen posted but fits. It's from 1730, by Jean Baptiste Oudry titled “Portrait of a man as a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela, possibly Charles-Francois Noirot”
Some items which may be of interest.
Robert Beverly, 1705 speaking of Native Americans in Virginia:... “Several Kinds of the Creeping Vines bearing Fruit, the Indians planted in their Gardens or Fields, because they wou'd have Plenty of them always at hand; such as, Muskmelons, Water-melons, Pompions, Cushaws, Macocks, and Gourds.”
“The Indians never eat the Gourds, but plant them for other Uses. ….For, when it is ripe, the Rind dries, and grows as hard as the Bark of a Tree, and the Meat within is so consumed, and dried away, that there is then nothing left but the Seed, which the Indians take clean out, and afterwards use the Shells instead of Flagons and Cups; as is done also in several other Parts of the World.“
A New Voyage to Carolina, John Lawson, 1709, on making maple syrup/sugar by the Native Americans: “The Indians tap it, and make Gourds to receive the Liquor, which Operation is done at distinct and proper times, when it best yields its Juice, of which, when the Indians have gotten enough, they carry it home, and boil it to a just Consistence of Sugar, which grains of itself, and serves for the same Uses, as other Sugar does.”
And describing crops grown: “Pompions yellow and very large, Burmillions, Cashaws, an excellent Fruit boiled, Squashes, Simnals, Horns, and Gourd; besides many other Species, of less Value, too tedious to name.”
Chapter 10 “Notes on The Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia and Pennsylvania from 1763 to 1783…” by Joseph Doddridge
"The furniture for the table, for several years after the settlement of this country, consisted of a few pewter dishes, plates and spoons ; but mostly of wooden bowls, trenchers, and noggins. If these were scarce, gourds and hard shelled squashes made up the deficiency."
Journal of Wm. Calk while traveling to Kentucky, spring of 1775:
"thurds 30th we Set out again & went down to Elk gardin and there Suplid our Selves With Seed Corn & irish tators. then we went on alittel way. I turned my hors to drive afore me & he got Scard Ran away threw Down the Saddel Bags & Broke three of our powder goards & ABrams beast Burst open a walet of corn & lost a good Deal & made aturrebel flustration amongst the Reast of the horses."
Spence
