Pemmican (also pemican in older sources)[1][2] is a mixture of tallow, dried meat, and sometimes dried berries. A calorie-rich food, it can be used as a key component in prepared meals or eaten raw. Historically, it was an important part of indigenous cuisine in certain parts of North America and it is still prepared today.[3][4]
The name comes from the Cree word ᐱᒦᐦᑳᓐ (pimîhkân), which is derived from the word ᐱᒥᕀ (pimî), 'fat, grease'.[5] The Lakota (or Sioux) word is wasná, originally meaning 'grease derived from marrow bones', with the wa- creating a noun, and sná referring to small pieces that adhere to something.[6][7] It was invented by the Indigenous peoples of North America.[8][9]
Chokeberries (Aronia prunifolia) sometimes are added to pemmican.
Pemmican has traditionally been made using whatever meat was available at the time: large game meat such as bison, deer, elk, or moose, but also fish such as salmon, and smaller game such as duck;[10][11] while contemporary pemmican may also include beef. The meat is dried and chopped, before being mixed with rendered animal fat (tallow). Dried fruit may be added: cranberries, saskatoon berries (Creemisâskwatômina), and even blueberries, cherries, chokeberries, and currants—though in some regions these are used almost exclusively for ceremonial and wedding pemmican[12]—and European fur traders have also noted the addition of sugar.[10]
Among the Lakota and Dakota nations, there is also a corn wasná (or pemmican) that does not contain dried meat. This is made from toasted cornmeal, animal fat, fruit, and sugar.[13]
Traditional preparation
Demonstration at the Calgary Stampede of a traditional method of drying meat for pemmican
Traditionally, pemmican was prepared from the lean meat of large game such as bison, elk, deer, or moose. The meat was cut in thin slices and dried, either over a slow fire or in the hot sun until it was hard and brittle. Approximately 5 pounds (2,300g) of meat are required to make 1 pound (450g) of dried meat suitable for pemmican. This thin brittle meat is known in Cree as pânsâwân and colloquially in North American English as dry meat.[14] The pânsâwân was then spread across a tanned animal hide pinned to the ground, where it was beaten with flails or ground between two large stones till it turned into very small pieces, almost powder-like in its consistency.[10] The pounded meat was mixed with melted fat in an approximate 1:1 ratio by weight.[15] Typically, the melted fat would be suet that has been rendered into tallow.[16] In some cases, dried fruits, such as blueberries, chokecherries, cranberries, or saskatoon berries, were pounded into powder and then added to the meat-fat mixture. The resulting mixture was then packed into rawhide bags for storage where it would cool, and then harden into pemmican.[10]
Today, some people store their pemmican in glass jars or tin boxes. Since there is no "official" recipe for pemmican, the shelf life may vary depending on ingredients and storage conditions. At room temperature, pemmican can generally last from one to five years,[17] but there are anecdotal stories of pemmican stored in cool cellars being safely consumed after a decade or more.
A bag of bison pemmican weighing approximately 90lb (41kg) was called a taureau (French for "bull") by the Métis of Red River. These bags of taureaux (lit. "bulls"), when mixed with fat from the udder, were known as taureaux fins, when mixed with bone marrow, as taureaux grand, and when mixed with berries, as taureaux à grains.[18][self-published source?] It generally took the meat of one bison to fill a taureau.[19]
The pemmican was cooked in two ways in the west; one a stew of pemmican, water, flour and, if they could be secured, wild onions or preserved potatoes. This was called "rubaboo"; the other was called by the plains hunters a "rechaud". It was cooked in a frying pan with onions and potatoes or alone. Some persons ate pemmican raw, but I must say I never had a taste for it that way.[20]
As bone grease is an essential ingredient in pemmican, archaeologists consider evidence of its manufacture a strong indicator of pemmican making. There is widespread archaeological evidence (bone fragments and boiling pits) for bone grease production on the Great Plains by AD1, but it likely developed much earlier. However, calcified bone fragments from Paleo-Indian times do not offer clear evidence, due to lack of boiling pits and other possible usages.[21]
It has also been suggested that pemmican may have come through the Bering Strait crossing 40–60 centuries ago. The first written account of pemmican is considered to be Francisco Vázquez de Coronado records from 1541, of the Querechos and Teyas, traversing the region later called the Texas Panhandle, who sun-dried and minced bison meat and then would make a stew of it and bison fat. The first written English usage is attributed to James Isham, who in 1743 wrote that "pimmegan" was a mixture of finely pounded dried meat, fat and cranberries.[22]
The voyageurs of the North American fur trade had no time to live off the land during the short season when the lakes and rivers were free of ice. They had to carry all of their food with them if the distance traveled was too great to be resupplied along the way.[23] A north canoe (canot du nord) with six men and 25 standard 90-pound (41kg) packs required about four packs of food per 500 miles (800km). Montreal-based canoemen could be supplied by sea or with locally grown food. Their main food was dried peas or beans, sea biscuit, and salt pork. (Western canoemen called their Montreal-based fellows mangeurs de lard or "pork-eaters".) In the Great Lakes, some maize and wild rice could be obtained locally. By the time trade reached the Lake Winnipeg area, the pemmican trade was developed.[23]
Bison meat drying at a Métis settlement in St. François Xavier, Manitoba, Canada (1899), Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1989-492-2
Trading people of mixed ancestry and becoming known as the Métis would go southwest onto the prairie in Red River carts, slaughter bison, convert it into pemmican, and carry it north to trade from settlements they would make adjacent to North West Company posts.[24] For these people on the edge of the prairie, the pemmican trade was as important a source of trade goods as was the beaver trade for the Indigenous peoples farther north. This trade was a major factor in the emergence of the new and distinct Métis society. Packs of pemmican would be shipped north and stored at the major fur posts: Fort Alexander, Cumberland House, Île-à-la-Crosse, Fort Garry, Norway House, and Edmonton House.
North Pole explorer Robert Peary used pemmican on all three of his expeditions, from 1886 to 1909, for both his men and his dogs. In his 1917 book, Secrets of Polar Travel, he devoted several pages to the food, stating, "Too much cannot be said of the importance of pemmican to a polar expedition. It is an absolute sine qua non. Without it a sledge-party cannot compact its supplies within a limit of weight to make a serious polar journey successful."[27]
British polar expeditions fed a type of pemmican to their dogs as "sledging rations". Called "Bovril pemmican" or simply "dog pemmican", it was a beef product consisting, by volume, of 2⁄3 protein and 1⁄3 fat (i.e., a 2:1 ratio of protein to fat), without carbohydrate. It was later ascertained that although the dogs survived on it, this was not a nutritious and healthy diet for them, being too high in protein.[28] Members of Ernest Shackleton's 1914–1916 expedition to the Antarctic resorted to eating dog pemmican when they were stranded on ice during the antarctic summer.[29]
Emergency Ration, c. 1899, as carried by British soldiers in the Second Boer War, consisting of four ounces of pemmican and four ounces of cocoa paste
During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), British troops were given an iron ration made of 4 ounces (110g) of pemmican and 4 ounces of chocolate and sugar. The pemmican would keep in perfect condition for decades.[30] It was considered much superior to biltong, a form of cured game meats commonly used in Africa. This iron ration was prepared in two small tins (soldered together) that were fastened inside the belts of the soldiers. It was the last ration used and it was used only as a last resort—when ordered by the commanding officer. A man could march on this for 36 hours before he began to drop from hunger.[31]
While serving as chief of scouts for the British Army in South Africa, American adventurer Frederick Russell Burnham required pemmican to be carried by every scout.[32]
Pemmican, likely condensed meat bars, was used as a ration for French troops fighting in Morocco in the 1920s.[33]
A 1945 scientific study of pemmican criticized using it exclusively as a survival food because of the low levels of certain vitamins.[34]
A study was later done by the U.S. military in January 1969, entitled Arctic Survival Rations, III. The Evaluation of Pemmican Under Winter Field Conditions.[35] The study found that during a cycle of two starvation periods the subjects could stave off starvation for the first cycle of testing with only 1000 calories worth of pemmican.[35]
Contemporary uses
Today, people in many indigenous communities across North America continue to make pemmican for personal, community, and ceremonial consumption. Some contemporary pemmican recipes incorporate ingredients that have been introduced to the Americas in the past 500 years, including beef. There are also indigenous-owned companies, such as Tanka Bar, based on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, that produce pemmican or foods based on traditional pemmican recipes, for commercial distribution.
The Blackfoot Confederacy, Niitsitapi, or Siksikaitsitapi, is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Blackfeet people: the Siksika ("Blackfoot"), the Kainai or Blood, and two sections of the Peigan or Piikani – the Northern Piikani (Aapátohsipikáni) and the Southern Piikani. Broader definitions include groups such as the Tsúùtínà (Sarcee) and A'aninin who spoke quite different languages but allied with or joined the Blackfoot Confederacy.
Suet is the raw, hard fat of beef, lamb or mutton found around the loins and kidneys.
In January 1814 Governor Miles MacDonell, appointed by Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk issued to the inhabitants of the Red River area a proclamation which became known as the Pemmican Proclamation. The proclamation was issued in attempt to stop the Métis people from exporting pemmican out of the Red River district. Cuthbert Grant, leader of the Métis, disregarded MacDonell's proclamation and continued the exportation of pemmican to the North West Company. The proclamation overall, became one of many areas of conflict between the Métis and the Red River settlers. Thomas Douglas, 5th Earl of Selkirk had sought interest in the Red River District, with the help of the Hudson's Bay Company as early as 1807. However, it was not until 1810 that the Hudson's Bay Company asked Lord Selkirk for his plans on settling in the interior of Canada.
Vilhjalmur Stefansson was an Arctic explorer and ethnologist. He was born in Manitoba, Canada.
Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains of North America. While hunting-farming cultures have lived on the Great Plains for centuries prior to European contact, the region is known for the horse cultures that flourished from the 17th century through the late 19th century. Their historic nomadism and armed resistance to domination by the government and military forces of Canada and the United States have made the Plains Indian culture groups an archetype in literature and art for Native Americans everywhere.
The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people, also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota, are a First Nations/Native American people originally from the Northern Great Plains of North America.
A 19th century community of the Métis people of Canada, the Anglo-Métis, more commonly known as Countryborn, were children of fur traders; they typically had Scots, or English fathers and Indigenous mothers, often Cree, Anishinaabekwe, Nakoda, amongst others. They were also known as "English halfbreeds." Some Anglo-Metis still identify by this name. Their first languages were generally those of their mothers: Cree, Saulteaux, Assiniboine, etc. and English. Some of their fathers spoke Gaelic or Scots, leading to the development of the creole language known as "Bungee". Some scholars have started spelling Métis as "Metis" to acknowledge the presence and contributions of the Anglo-Métis and the complex history of the Métis people overall.
Fur brigades were convoys of canoes and boats used to transport supplies, trading goods and furs in the North American fur trade industry. Much of it consisted of native fur trappers, most of whom were Métis, and fur traders who traveled between their home trading posts and a larger Hudson's Bay Company or Northwest Company post in order to supply the inland post with goods and supply the coastal post with furs.
Indigenous cuisine of the Americas includes all cuisines and food practices of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Contemporary Native peoples retain a varied culture of traditional foods, along with the addition of some post-contact foods that have become customary and even iconic of present-day Indigenous American social gatherings. Foods like cornbread, turkey, cranberry, blueberry, hominy, and mush have been adopted into the cuisine of the broader United States population from Native American cultures.
Dried meat is a feature of many cuisines around the world. Examples include:
Fort Pitt Provincial Park is a provincial park in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Fort Pitt was built in 1829 by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and was a trading post on the North Saskatchewan River in Rupert's Land. It was built at the direction of Chief Factor John Rowand, previously of Fort Edmonton, to trade for bison hides, meat and pemmican. Pemmican, dried buffalo meat, was required as provisions for HBC's northern trading posts.
Rubaboo is a common stew or porridge consumed by coureurs des bois and voyageurs and Métis people of North America. This dish is traditionally made of peas and/or corn, with grease and a thickening agent that makes up the base of the stew. Pemmican and maple sugar were also commonly added to the mixture.
Voyageurs were 18th- and 19th-century French Canadians who transported furs by canoe at the peak of the North American fur trade. The emblematic meaning of the term applies to places and times where that transportation was over long distances. The voyageurs' strength and endurance was regarded as legendary. They were celebrated in folklore and music. For reasons of promised celebrity status and wealth, this position was coveted.
The Olsen–Chubbuck Bison kill site is a Paleo-Indian site that dates to an estimated 8000–6500 B.C. and provides evidence for bison hunting and using a game drive system, long before the use of the bow and arrow or horses. The site holds a bone bed of nearly 200 bison that were killed, butchered, and consumed by Paleo-Indian hunters. The site is located 16 miles southeast of Kit Carson, Colorado. The site was named after archaeologists, Sigurd Olsen and Gerald Chubbuck, who discovered the bone bed in 1957. In 1958, the excavation of the Olsen-Chubbuck site was then turned over to the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, a team led by Joe Ben Wheat, an anthropologist employed by the museum.
The Iron Confederacy or Iron Confederation was a political and military alliance of Plains Indians of what is now Western Canada and the northern United States. This confederacy included various individual bands that formed political, hunting and military alliances in defense against common enemies. The ethnic groups that made up the Confederacy were the branches of the Cree that moved onto the Great Plains around 1740, the Saulteaux, the Nakoda or Stoney people also called Pwat or Assiniboine, and the Métis and Haudenosaunee. The Confederacy rose to predominance on the northern Plains during the height of the North American fur trade when they operated as middlemen controlling the flow of European goods, particularly guns and ammunition, to other Indigenous nations, and the flow of furs to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and North West Company (NWC) trading posts. Its peoples later also played a major part in the bison (buffalo) hunt, and the pemmican trade. The decline of the fur trade and the collapse of the bison herds sapped the power of the Confederacy after the 1860s, and it could no longer act as a barrier to U.S. and Canadian expansion.
Métis buffalo hunting began on the North American plains in the late 1700s and continued until 1878. The great buffalo hunts were subsistence, political, economic, and military operations for Métis families and communities living in the region. At the height of the buffalo hunt era, there were two major hunt seasons: summer and autumn. These hunts were highly organized, with an elected council to lead the expedition. This made sure the process was fair and all families were well-fed and provided for throughout the year.
Marriage à la façon du pays refers to the practice of common-law marriage between European fur traders and aboriginal or Métis women in the North American fur trade. One historian, Sylvia Van Kirk, suggested these marriages were "the basis for a fur trade society". The practice persisted from the early seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century. It has been suggested that it fell out of practice due to increasing pressures of Catholic ideology and a growing population of non-indigenous women including the new generation of "mixed-breed" daughters who eventually replaced their native mothers as fur traders' wives. Rituals surrounding the marriages were based on a mix of European and, predominantly, Indigenous customs.
Lawrence Vankoughnet was an agent with Canada's Department of Indian Affairs in the late 19th century. Vankoughnet moved quickly up the ranks of the DIA, beginning as a clerk with family connections to prime minister John A. Macdonald. From chief civil servant to deputy superintendent, Lawrence accomplished a lot when he was present. After a 3-month sick leave for a "disordered nervous system", he wasted little time picking up where he left off. Vankoughnet was noted by many historians to be the man who cut costs on the rations the government supplied to the reserves. Despite only visiting the reserves once, where he was reluctant to socialize with the chiefs, Vankoughnet announced his change of policy plans in Battleford shortly afterwards: Indians would only be supplied with rations if they were unable to sustain themselves. Vankoughnet’s goals as deputy superintendent of the DIA was to keep costs to a minimum. He thought that so long as they were supplying reserve peoples with rations, they would remain dependent on the government and therefore a significant burden to their expenditures.
Pânsâwân, or dry meat, is a type of dried smoked meat product made by the Indigenous peoples of Canada including the Cree, Dene, and Métis. The term is loosely translated from the Cree language as "thin-sliced meat" with the meat used for its production from bison, elk, or moose. It is commonly made in the Indigenous community, considered a delicacy, and is also culturally significant.
Bannock, skaan, Indian bread, alatiq, or frybread is found throughout North-American Native cuisine, including that of the Inuit of Canada and Alaska, other Alaska Natives, the First Nations of the rest of Canada, the Native Americans in the United States, and the Métis.
References
↑ Ballantyne, Robert Michael (1876). Away in the Wilderness. Philadelphia: Porter & Coates. pp.81–84.
↑ Goodwin, Janice. "Healthy Traditions: Recipes of our Ancestors"(PDF). National Center for Native American Aging at the Center for Rural Health, University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences. Retrieved 2020-02-12.
↑ Angier, Bradford. How to Stay Alive in the Woods (originally published as Living off the Country 1956) ISBN978-1-57912-221-8 Black Dog & Levanthal. p. 107
↑ "Defects of Pemmican as an Emergency Ration for Infantry Troops". Nutrition Reviews. 3 (10): 314–315. 1 October 1945. doi:10.1111/j.1753-4887.1945.tb08500.x.
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