• Pemmican is a North American survival food: dried meat pounded and saturated with fat, with shelf life measured in decades.
• The name comes from Cree, and many Native nations made related foods under different names and local methods.
• One 1859 source defines it as dried, pounded meat saturated with fat and gives one pound as equal to four pounds of ordinary meat.
• Older food records include venison, beaver, elk, duck, rabbit, fish, and the buffalo version used by Lewis and Clark.
• "Buffalo" and "bison" are used interchangeably because period sources do, even though the animal is scientifically bison.

Making the pemmican

• Start with about two pounds, or one kilogram, of very lean bison or other meat, trimmed of visible fat.
• Slice the meat very thin, preferably across the grain, and firm it briefly in the freezer when thin slicing is difficult.
• Dry the strips at the lowest oven setting, with a catch pan below, until they are brittle enough to snap.
• Historical drying used sun, racks, a small fly-chasing fire, stone pounding, and later Richardson's malt-kiln and malt-mill method.
• Grind the dried meat into a coarse powder; a mortar and pestle works, but a blender does it faster.
• Melt suet or other fat over low heat, then mix it into the powdered meat and optional dry ingredients.
• Optional additions include Zante currants, sugar, saskatoon berries, chokeberries, and later salt.
• Use roughly equal weights of fat and dried meat only as a starting point, because excess fat makes the finished food greasy.
• Pack the mixture tightly into hide, tins, molds, or small pans, then cool it until firm.

How it tasted

• Raw pemmican breaks crumbly and tastes like beef jerky wrapped in a heavy mouth-coating layer of fat.
• Chokeberries do little for the flavor; sugar might help, but the main rule is not using more fat than needed.
• It is tolerable when hunger matters more than pleasure, and cooking it is the better path.

Explorers and stored food

• Lewis and Clark made buffalo pemmican for the plains journey and reserved flour, parched meal, and corn for the Rockies.
• Their journals tie pemmican to huge meat needs, with one buffalo feeding the party for about twenty-four hours.
• Alexander Mackenzie relied on pemmican, buried ninety pounds for his return, and cooked it with parsnip tops or wild onions.
• Mackenzie's low-provision meals also included a fish-roe pudding thickened with flour and fat.

Métis trade and the Pemmican War

• The Métis made pemmican a major trade commodity through large seasonal bison hunts.
• Hunting parties could return with enormous supplies, and one bison cow could make a ninety-pound bag.
• The Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company both depended on this food for fur-trade travel and northern work.
• Selkirk's Red River colony intensified food pressure after Highland Clearances settlers arrived under Hudson's Bay Company control.
• Governor Miles Macdonell's Pemmican Proclamation restricted hunting and export of food from the region.
• The Métis and North West Company ignored the order, violence followed, and the Battle of Seven Oaks came in 1816.
• The conflict ended when Britain pushed the rival companies toward the 1821 merger.

Cooking pemmican

• A later western method boiled pemmican with water, flour, wild onions, or potatoes into rubaboo.
• Another method fried it with onions and potatoes, or alone, as rechaud.

References

• [01:05] The Curiosities of Food — https://www.gutenberg.org/files/71509/71509-h/71509-h.htm
• [01:31] July 3, 1805 — https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1805-07-03
• [01:45] September 26, 1804 — https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1804-09-26
• [01:54] July 13, 1805 — https://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/item/lc.jrn.1805-07-13
• [06:00] Arctic Searching Expedition — https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.1870
• [11:00] Voyages From Montreal, Volume 2 — https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35659/35659-h/35659-h.htm
• [11:45] The Animal Food Resources of Different Nations — https://archive.org/details/b2150328x
• [19:20] Sam Steele's Journal Part 2 — https://www.ulethbridge.ca/lib/digitized_collections/ourheritage/steele_pages/Steele_Journal2.html