I thought the following may be of interest:

From The Old North Trail: Life, Legends & Religion of the Blackfeet
Indians, Walter McClintock, MacMillan and Co., London 1910.
"In front of the war-tipi several women were engaged in drying and smoking
meat upon poles erected for the purpose.  From the time, when the men
killed the game, the cutting of the meat, packing it on horses into camp,
curing it, and finally cooking it, all was the work of women.  The
preparing of pemmican, the Blackfeet's "staff of life," a palatable form of
condensed food, which was used for long journeys and for winter supplies,
was also their duty.  Their method of preparing it consisted, first, of
cutting the meat into strips and drying it in the sun.  It was then well
pounded in a mixture together with wild cherries.  To this was added
shredded meat, forming a kind of mince-meat, which was again dried and
stored in parfleches for future use."

From The North-West Passage by Land, Viscount Milton, M.P., F.R.G.S.,
F.G.S., &c., and W.B. Cheadle, M.A. Cantab., F.R.G.S., Cassell, Petter, and
Galpin, London, 1865.
"The women were busy making pemmican, which is prepared in the following
manner:- The meat, having been dried in the sun, or over a fire in thin
flakes, is placed in a dressed buffalo skin, and pounded with a flail until
it is reduced to small fragments and powder.  The fat of the animal is at
the same time melted down.  The pounded meat is then put into bags of
buffalo hide, and the boiling grease poured on to it.  The mass is well
stirred and mixed together, and on cooling becomes as solid as linseed
cake.  Although we found pemmican decidedly unpalatable at first, tasting
remarkably like a mixture of chips and tallow, we became very partial to it
after a time.  A finer kind of pemmican is made by using only marrow and
soft fat, leaving out the tallow, and sometimes adding berries of different
kinds and some sugar.  The berry pemmican is much prized, and very
difficult to get hold of, and is really capital eating."
Foot note: "The pemmican used in the Arctic expeditions was manufactured in
England using the best beef, with currants, raisins, and sugar; very
different to the coarse stuff which is the staff of life in the Hudson's
Bay territories."

From Handbook of Indians of Canada, Sessional Paper 21a, King's Printer,
Ottawa, 1912.
"Pemmican.  A food preparation (also spelled pemican) used in the wilds of
the northern parts of North America, and made by cutting the meat of the
reindeer into thin slices, drying the latter in the sun or over the smoke
of a slow fire, pounding them fine between stones, and incorporating the
material with one-third part of melted fat.  To this mixture, dried fruit,
such as choke or June berries , is sometimes added.  The whole is then
compressed into skin bags, in which, if kept dry, it may be preserved for
four or five years.  Sweet pemmican is a superior kind of pemmican in which
the fat used is obtained from marrow by boiling broken bones in water.
Fish pemmican is a pemmican made by the Indians of the remote regions of
the N. W. by pounding dried fish and mixing the product with sturgeon oil.
The Eskimo of Alaska make a pemmican by mixing chewed deer meat with deer
suet and seal-oil.  "This food," observes Lieut. Ray, "is not agreeable to
the taste, probably owing to the fact that the masticators are inveterate
tobacco-chewers."  The word is from Cree pimikeu, 'he (or she) makes (or
manufactures) grease,' that is, by boiling crude fat, pimu, in water and
skimming of the supernatant oil.  The verb is now used by the Cree in the
sense of 'he makes pemmican.'  The word is cognate with Abnaki pemikan."

From Canadian Savage Folk: The Native Tribes of Canada, John MacLean, M.A.,
Ph.D., William Briggs, Toronto, 1896.
"Pemmican was, however, the staple food of the Crees in the days of the
buffalo, and the half-breeds were especially fond of it.  It was made of
the flesh of the buffalo.  Buffalo meat cut into thin slices and dried was
used as dried beef.  The pemmican, however was made by taking the
hind-quarters of the bison, cutting the flesh into thin slices, drying it
on a pole in the sun and then pounding it with stones.  Two parts of the
dried meat were placed in a large leather bag made of the hide of a bison,
and one part of melted fat poured upon it, which was closed and allowed to
cool.  Generally one of these bags held the meat taken from one buffalo
cow, as it weighed from ninety to a hundred pounds.  In this form it was
the commonest kind of pemmican.  Berry pemmican was made as above, with the
addition of wild cherries or Saskatoon berries.  Sometimes ten pounds of
sugar was added to each bag, and this increased the flavor.  The bast kind
of pemmican was made of meat finely pounded, with the addition of marrow,
berries and sugar.  Two pounds were sufficient for the needs of any man per
day.  Sometimes it was eaten uncooked, but generally it was boiled with
flour and water, oatmeal and other ingredients, and it was then called
rabibu.  Mixed with flour and fried in a pan, it was named richat.  When
well prepared it could be kept for a long time in good condition.  When the
fat was dirty and hairs of various kinds got mixed with it, a very unsavory
dish was it for white men or red, yet hunger gave zest in the partaking of
this dish."

From Surveying the Canadian Pacific: Memoir of a Railroad Pioneer, R.M.
Rylatt, University of Utah Press, Copublished with Tanner Trust Fund Salt
Lake City, 1991.
"Thursday Octr 30, 1872.  Made another start towards the party today.  Hall
has asked me to procure for him, of possible, a suit of skin clothing from
the Indians, and I am desirous of fitting myself out with a suit.  I am
told a few Indians have visited the party, and are disposed to be very
friendly.  They are Assignaboines, and are tall, well made men; Hall says
their habits are extremely primitive, and although an agent of the Hudsons
Bay Company visits them yearly at a place some 24 years beyond where the
party have now reached, yet these children of the Plains and forests had no
idea what Flour was used for, looking upon it curiously, and tasting bread
with suspicion.  The food of these people consists mainly of Roots dug from
the swamps, Berries and game.  The game being preserved as pemican.
I may as well state here that Pemican, as I found later on, is a very
strengthening, and economical food, and is prepared in this way.  The flesh
of the Moose and Buffalo is freed from the bone, minced up fine, then
placed in bags made of the hide of the animal, the hair of course outside,
after which the fat and marrow is boiled down and poured over and through
the meat, which, when set becomes a solid mass.  No salt or other seasoning
is used, your primitive Indian does not understand such luxuries.  After
partaking of this food a few times, I grew very fond of it, and it is
astonishing how small a quantity will satisfy a man. ....."


I could probably find a few more, but the will be essentially the same as
above, and I don't want to annoy members who actually have to pay for their
internet access by making this missive unnecessarily expansive.

Sorry for any typos, I am a very disphunkshunnul typist.

Sorry, I don't know how to properly cite other's works.  I would like to,
if someone wants to teach me....

Sorry, I know that lots of the above thinking is not politically correct in
the '90s.   I did't write it, didn't edit it, just quoted it.  Don't mean
to offend, tho....  Some of the thinking is _very_ colonial!

   Dave Chapman
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