From: Overland From Canada to British Columbia, McMicking, Thomas, UBC
Press, 1981. First published in installments in the British Columbian,
1862-1863.
Our provision consisted chiefly of flour and pemican, which we bought
principally from the Hudson Bay Company at the rate of $3.90 pre 112 lbs.
for flour, and six cents per lb. for pemican. The flour, which was
manufactured in the settlement, was a good, sound, wholesome article, but
somewhat dark and coarse. From the samples of wheat that we saw, the
produce of the colony, with proper mills number one flour ought to be made.
Pemican is prepared buffalo meat and is made in the following manner: as
soon as the animal is killed the lean portion of is separated from the fat,
and cut into thin strips, which after being roasted over the fire, are
thoroughly dried in the sun until the become quite hard and brittle. It is
then spread out on the skin of the animal and beaten with flails until it
is quite fine. This is then put into sacks made of the green hide, with
the hair side outward, and containing about one hundred pounds, and the
fat, after being rendered, is poured over it while hot. The bag is then
firmly sewed up, and pemican is fit for use. Although not one particle of
salt is used in its preparation, it will keep in this way for years. But
few of our party could eat it at first, its very appearance and the style
in which it is put up being apt to prejudice one against it; but all by
degrees cultivated a taste for it, so that before we reached the mountains
it not only became palatable but was considered, by most of us, an absolute
luxury. It is the principal, and in many cases the only food used by the
employees of the Hudson Bay Company, and, indeed, by all the inhabitants of
that territory, and is found to be wholesome and nutritious, and admirably
adapted to the country.
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From: Overland to Cariboo, McNaughton, Margaret, Argonaut Press Ltd., 1996.
Originally published in 1896.
A brief description of the making of pemmican may be quoted here as of
possible interest to the reader. It was made from the flesh of the buffalo
and was very nutritious. "As soon as the animal is killed the lean flesh
is separated from the fat and is cut into strips, which, after being
roasted over the fire, are thoroughly dried in the sun. The Meat, being by
this time very hard, is spread out on the skin of the animal and beaten
with flails until quite fine. The fat is then melted, and about sixty
pounds poured into a bag containing about forty pounds of lean meat. The
fat and lean are then thoroughly mixed and left to cool, when all is ready
for use. It becomes very hard; in fact it has to be cut with an axe."
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From: The Great Fur Land or Sketches of Life in the Hudson's Bay Territory;
Robinson, H. M., G. P. Putnam's Sons, 182 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1879.
Chapter VII
The Great Fall Hunt
...
Pemmican forms the principal product of the summer buffalo-hunt, when, to
preserve from decay the vast quantities of meat taken, some artificial
process is necessary. A large amount is also made in the earlier part of
the autumn hunt. To manufacture pemmican the flesh of the buffalo is first
cut up into large lumps, and then again into thin slices, and hung up in
the sun or over the fire to dry. When it is thoroughly desiccated it is
taken down, placed upon raw-hides spread out upon the prairie, and pounded
or beaten sometimes by wooden flails, again between two stones, until the
meat is reduced to a thick, flaky substance or pulp. Bags made of buffalo
hide, with the hair on the outside, about the size of an ordinary pillow or
flour-sack, say two feet long, one and a half feet wide and eight inches
thick, are standing ready, and each one is half filled with the powdered
meat. The tallow or fat of the buffalo, having been boiled by itself in a
huge cauldron, is not poured hot into the oblong bag in which the
pulverized meat has previously been placed. The contents are then stirred
together until they have been thoroughly mixed; the dry pulp being soldered
down into a hard solid mass by the melted fat poured over it. When full
the bags are sewed up as tightly as possible, and the pemmican allowed to
cool. Each bag weighs one hundred pounds, the quantity of fat being nearly
half the total weight, the whole composition forming the most solid
description of food that man can make. It is the traveling provision used
throughout the Fur Land, where, in addition to its already specified
qualifications, its great facility of transportation renders it extremely
valuable. There is no risk of spoiling it, as, if ordinary care be taken
to keep the bags free from mould, there is no assignable limit to the time
pemmican will keep. It is estimated that, on the average, the carcasses of
two buffaloes are required to make one bag of pemmican - one filling the
bag itself, the other supplying the wants of the wild savage engaged in
hunting it down.
It is only of late years that pemmican has come into public notice as a
condensed food valuable to the commissariat upon long expeditions.
Hitherto it has been a provision peculiar to the Fur Land, and particularly
to the service of the Hudson's Bay Company. Notwithstanding the vast
annual slaughter of buffalo south of the forty-ninth parallel, no pemmican
is made there; the meat being used in the fresh or green state, or in the
form of jerked beef. The pemmican of the English Arctic expeditions
differs from the real article in being made of beef mixed with raisins and
spices, and preserved from decay by being hermetically sealed. Buffalo
pemmican may be said to keep itself, requiring no spices or seasoning for
its preservation, and may be kept in any vessel and under any conditions,
except that of dampness, for unlimited time. It is one of the most perfect
forms of condensed food known, and is excelled by no other provision in its
satisfying quality. The amount of it used throughout the territory is
almost incredible, as, besides the enormous quantity consumed in the
company's service, it appears, when attainable, upon the table of every
half-breed in the country. So essential is it to the wants of the
voyageurs, as the staple article of food upon the long voyages made in the
transportation service of the company, that its manufacture is stimulated
in every way by the agents of that corporation, and every available pound
is bought up for its use. Until a comparatively late year, it was the only
article embraced in the trade-lists for which liquor was bartered.
Another form of provision, also the product of the summer hunt and
extensively used, is dried meat. In its manufacture the flesh of the
buffalo undergoes the same treatment as in the preparatory stages of
pemmican-making - when it has been cut into thin slices it is hung over a
fire, smoked and cured. It resembles sole-leather very much in appearance.
After being thoroughly dried, it is packed into bales weighing about sixty
pounds each, and shipped all over the territory.
The serious decrease in the number of buffalo, which has been observed year
by year, threatens to produce a very disastrous effect upon the provision
trade of the country; and the time can not be far distant when some new
provision must be found to take the place of the old. We recollect very
well when pemmican, which now can be produced with difficulty for one
shilling and three pence a pound, could be had at two pence, and dried meat
formerly costing two pence now costs ten pence. This is a fact which
threatens to revolutionize in a manner the whole business of the territory,
by more particularly the transport service of the company.
The camp, which has for days been on the verge of starvation, after the
return of the hunters from the chase become a scene of feasting and
revelry; and gastronomic feats are performed which seem incredible to those
unacquainted with the appetite begotten of a roving life, unlimited fresh
air, and the digestible nature of the food.
Enjoy
Dave Chapman
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