Subject: Jerky vs Pemmican 2

From: [email-masked] (Jim Weller)
Date: 25 Feb 2000 15:23:50 EST

MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
 
      Title: Buffalo Pemmican
 Categories: Game, Venison, Dried, Preserved
      Yield: 1 large batch
 
      1    Buffalo
     16 lb Choke cherries
 
  Take one buffalo.  Skin.  Cut the meat in thin strips and sun-dry on
  racks (takes several days to dry).  When meat is dry, pound it into a
  coarse meal.  Set aside. Break and boil bones of buffalo.  Skim off
  fat and extract the marrow from the bones.  Render all fat from
  buffalo in cauldron (or in hide-lined pit in ground with hot stones).
  Pound choke cherries into coarse meal.  Retain seeds and skins.  When
  buffalo fat becomes liquefied, add meat, fat, and cherries.  Place
  mixture into bladder or water-tight skin containers (parfleches) and
  seal (sew shut). NOTE: This mixture has been know to last for as long
  as 80 years!

  From: "Anita Bautsch" [email-masked]
 
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Dorthea Calverley is a historian specializing in the history of the
Peace River country of northern Alberta and northwestern B.C. Her
articles are archived on-line at the Dawson Creek B.C. library web site.

MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.05
 
      Title: Pemmican By Dorthea Calverley
 Categories: Native, Preserving, Game, Venison
      Yield: 4 Servings
 
           Venison or buffalo
           Saskatoon berries or
           Chokecherries
           Melted fat
 
  During the summer the Indians dried Saskatoon berries as well as meat.
  When the chokecherries were ripe the band assembled at some convenient
  spot to make pemmican.
  
  To the chant of traditional songs, the women beat strips of dry-meat
  (a hollow log, up-ended, and bound with a thong of rawhide to prevent
  splitting served as a container) with stone pounding implements until
  it was almost like powder. The mass was mixed with melted fat in a
  bark trough, then packed very tightly into skin bags, and sewed up so
  that no air could enter, folding the skin over until no air remained
  in the bag. Saskatoons and chokecherries pounded up, pits and all
  added to the flavour, if not the digestibility. Some women, as in any
  society were very clean and careful when preparing food, and some were
  not. A well-known good pemmican-maker commanded a higher price as a
  bride.
  
  "Sweet" pemmican was made by cracking the big animal bones and boiling
  them with water. The melted fat came to the top, and when congealed,
  was used for mixing.
  
  Also the paunch or stomach of the animal was used as a container.
  People who are horrified by this idea should remember that until a
  very few years ago sausage casings were made from the cleaned
  intestines of pigs or lambs.
  
  If kept dry, pemmican would remain good for years. Even today, many
  native people embarking on long trips into remote areas make a supply,
  for it is one of the most concentrated foods known to man. It will
  sustain life indefinitely and needs no refrigeration.
  
  The Indians used pemmican for emergency rations due to the large
  amount of work involved in making it. They killed fresh meat whenever
  they could. The Pouce Coupe Prairie was famous for good quality
  pemmican, but the whole Peace River country "exported" it for
  centuries before the white man arrived. It was partly to raid the
  country for Peace River Pemmican that the Cree made their periodic
  raids from the Edmonton area.
  
  After the fur-trade began, pemmican was sought after as well as furs.
  The fur brigades needed great amounts to carry them on long journeys
  to Lake Superior, during which time the voyageurs had no time to stop
  and hunt. In fact it was to help the Indians to shoot more buffalo for
  pemmican that the white men gave them guns. With their new weapons and
  with the added incentive of obtaining trade goods for the product, the
  Indians forgot their ages-long tradition of conservation. Where they
  used to take no more than they needed, they now slaughtered
  mercilessly and wantonly. By 1830, the herds of bison no longer
  wintered on Pouce Coupe's Prairie, but clung in one's and two's to the
  coulees and isolated valleys. In 1906 the last, a tame one, was shot
  near Fort St. John.
  
  Archeological "digs" have not taken place in the area, except for
  fossils. Pioneers yet living know where "Indian Hill" is, a few miles
  west of Dawson Creek. Hector Tremblay Jr. in an interview here in
  August, 1973, remembered the great summer pemmican making gatherings
  there not fifty years ago. There was an Indian cemetery there too, now
  ploughed over.
  
  The white pioneer women knew the preserving quality of fat. It was
  customary to grind up quantities of beef or moose, fry or bake it in
  patties, and pack it in crocks. Over it enough rendered lard was
  poured to cover it well. Crocks of preserved meat were lifesavers when
  gangs of men had to be fed at threshing, wood sawing, or "building
  bee" time.
  
  Sometimes black, rounded masses are ploughed up when breaking fields.
  Many people believe them to be pemmican, or even "fossilized
  pemmican". There is not a chance in a thousand that is anything more
  than a kind of giant, underground fungus known as "tuckahoe". Museums
  must have dozens turned in, for some people cannot be persuaded that
  they have not made a notable find. The comparatively lightweight and
  "mushroom" smell when they are dug up convinced the informed person at
  once as to their nature. They are fairly common.
  
  By Dorthea Calverley
  http://www.calverley.dawson-creek.bc.ca/Part01-FirstNations/
 
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