All History

Case III. Thomas Kay, age 24

Admitted an In-Patient, September 29, 1800.

Complains of great thirst, weakness in his loins, and an incessant inclination to make water, which is of a light colour, and very sweet taste. He first discovered the latter quality about four months ago, when being urged by extreme thirst in the night, he drank copiously of his urine, which practice he has since occasionally repeated.

His appetite is generally very voracious, and when he can indulge his inclination, he eats until the stomach is often obliged to disgorge its contents. What he throws up varies in taste and smell ; being sometimes sweet, but more frequently of a pungent acid taste, and odor. The saliva is white and frothy; the mouth peculiarly clammy ; he has a sour taste, and the corners of his lips are covered with fur. The heat in his bowels is frequently distressing, and to use his own expression, "they seem at times burned up." His skin is dry and shriveled, and he seldom perspires.

Pulse 80 ; his figure is lean and gaunt, his complexion sallow, and he has a dejected air. He enjoyed a tolerable state of health till within the last twelve months ; and attributes his present malady to a frequent exposure to wet and cold, and a habit of drinking spirits. He has frequently, when intoxicated, laid out all night in the open fields. His occupations have been various, but of late he has been employed as a laborer to bricklayers. Upon examination, he was found to be afflicted with a painful phimosis. He had never measured the quantity of his urine for any given time, but thinks it must amount to some gallons in 24 hours. This being considered as an undoubted instance of Diabetes Mellitus, under its most aggravated form, an accurate register of the liquid ingesta and egesta, was ordered to be kept, and every material circumstance, connected with the progress, and treatment of the malady, to be carefully noted down. From these documents, the following abridged statement is copied.

September 30th. One pint of urine yielded by evaporation, two ounces and one drachm of a thick sweet syrup, of the colour and consistency of treacle.

In the last twenty-four hours, he has passed thirteen pints of urine, and drank twelve of liquids. The urine is of a whitish colour, sweet to the taste, smells like wort, and exhibits air bubbles on the surface. This decrease in the quantity of urine, compared with what he had usually passed in the same time, he attributed to his being abridged by the nurse(from mistake) in the indulgence of his appetite for liquids.

He was directed to pursue a strict plan of animal diet, consisting of cold fat meat, with beef-tea; and to use daily, one drachm of the nitric acid, diluted with a sufficient quantity of water, as a part of his common beverage. To take five grains of rhubarb, and one of opium, each night.

A remarkable increase in the quantity of urine, and an aggravation of some of the most distressing symptoms, led to an inquiry as to the patient's strict adherence to the plan of animal diet; when it was found, that for three evenings past, he had, by a mistake of the nurse, been indulged in a liberal allowance of bread and cheese for supper, instead of cold meat.

This error was ordered to be rectified, and the greatest attention enjoined, to confine the patient in the future, solely to animal food; medicines and acid drink to be repeated.

October 8-13th.

October 10th - Urine 13 pints, Drink: 12 pints

October 11th - Urine 8 pints, Drink: 9 pints

October 12th - Urine 8 pints, Drink: 9 pints

October 13th - Urine 8 pints, Drink: 9 pints

This diminution in the quantity of urine (as appears from the register) was accompanied with a mitigation of the thirst, internal sense of heat, and stricture of the skin.

He has suffered little disturbance in the night, and finds his strength recruiting, but his urine has not quite acquired its natural smell and taste. Pulse 80, one pound of urine, yielded, by evaporation, one ounce and seven drachms of a thick tenacious extract, not quite so sweet nor so fluid as the last, and less in quantity by one drachm and a half.

As he complained of griping, and soreness of the mouth and gums, from the use of the acid ; he was ordered to be laid aside, and the rest of the plan to be continued.

October 12-20th 

In this interval no material change has occurred; except that on the average, the daily quantity of liquid egesta, rather exceeds that of the liquid ingesta. He has never passed more than eleven pints of urine, nor less than eight in twenty-four hours. On one day, this discharge exceeded, by two pints, the liquids taken in. He complains of a tickling cough, and flight pains in the chest; to appease which, he was ordered an oily linctus, and a warm stimulating plaster.

Pulse 68, urine more natural. Prescribed for daily consumption, one drachm of Kali-sulphuratum, in two pints of soft water. Regimen and opiate to be continued.

October 23rd. 

He was attacked with a violent colic, attended with rigor, which was succeeded by a hot fit. After clearing the stomach, he took a carminative opening mixture, which was ordered to be repeated, with or without an opiate, according to circumstances.

He soon obtained relief, but has suffered, every other, or third day, in a slight degree, from griping pains in his bowels, which have been always mitigated by the carminative mixture. The disorder in his bowels has generally come on after a full meal.

The quantities of urine and drink, have born nearly a relative proportion to each other-; nine pints and a half form the highest, and seven pints and a half, the lowest amount of urine in twenty-four hours.

October 27th

An augmentation was noticed of nearly two pints in the quantity of urine, compared with that of the preceding twenty-four hours. On being interrogated by the House-Surgeon, who suspected some irregularity on account of the change which had taken place, both in the quantity, and sensible qualities of the urine, the patient freely confessed, that he had seized an opportunity to indulge privately in bread and cheese for supper. He has been admonished of his faults and seems determined to act with more discretion) in future.

October 31st — November 12th,

November 9th.

Pulse 76. Obtained, by evaporating one pound of urine, an ounce and five drachms of a thick residuum, of a mixed saccharine and urinary taste and smell; but the latter rather predominated.

The register affords nearly the same result as the last report, except that within the last four days the urine and drink have diminished to seven pints and a half; but the latter is still rather sweet. He gains but little strength and flesh, and complains of weariness and general debility. On the 2d. he began to take a bolus, composed of half a drachm of Kali sulphuratum, and ginger, thrice in the day ; and as he suffered from pain in the lumbar region, blisters were applied over each kidney, and the blistered parts ordered to be kept open. This plan was continued till the 10th. when, on account of the nausea excited by the Kali sulphuratum, and the stationary point of debility, at which the patient remained, notwithstanding the removal of the most formidable of the diabetic symptoms, an infusion of bark in lime water was substituted for the solution, and alum and gum kino were added to his opiate at bed time.

November 12th —20th.

 The urine is scarcely, if at all, sweet; and has varied little since the I2th, either in quality, or quantity. The average amount may be reckoned at eight pints each twenty-four hours. His appetite is fickle, and for the most part puny; the clamminess and sour taste in the mouth have disappeared; the patient has been allowed a small portion of toasted bread at his dinner, without any increase of the diabetic symptoms. He has for two or three days past complained of a fixed dull pain in the back, underneath the right shoulder-blade, to which a warm plaster was applied.

November 20th – December 10th.

Continued the medicines, and the regimen. The pain under the shoulder, having gradually increased, and a tumor appearing; surgical aid was requested. The Surgeon gave it as his opinion, that an abscess was forming, and treated the patient accordingly. The urine has remained stationary in quantity and quality. He has been troubled with flying pains in his knees and ankles ; for the relief of which, a stimulant liniment was ordered. On the 9th, he had transient chills and flushings, with a regular febrile paroxysm in the evening, which, together with the increased size of the tumor, sufficiently indicated the formation of matter. Under these circumstances, it was thought necessary to change his diet; milk was allowed for breakfast, and supper, and the common broths of the house, with animal food at dinner. The bark, and anodyne to be continued.

December 12th — January 1st. 1801

The symptoms have been nearly stationary within this period. The discharge of urine has been reduced, at times, to five pints within twenty four hours, but the average quantity may be reckoned at seven pints. It is improved, both in natural colour, and smell; but the patient says it has acquired a sweeter taste, since vegetable diet was entered upon. The tumor, having pointed outwards, was opened by the Surgeon, and discharged a considerable quantity of laudable pus. The bark, with Vitriolic acid, and a mixture of vegetable, with animal food were continued.

Pulse 80, soft and regular. His countenance, and general appearance, rather improved; notwithstanding the discharge from the abscess was considerable. The excoriation, and swelling of the prepuce, are nearly gone, and the pain in his loins, and sense of internal heat, are very little troublesome. He does not appear to have gained flesh ; but his spirits are good, and he expresses a full confidence of his recovery.

January 1st — February 1st. 1801

The report of this month has varied more than the last. The register points out as much as eleven pints of urine, in twenty four hours; and the average quantity may be estimated at eight pints.

The abscess is not yet healed, but the discharge daily decreases. The bowels are with difficulty kept open, and his evening feverish paroxysms, attended with a short dry cough, have been constant and troublesome. Ordered to wear a flannel waistcoat, and to take opiates, with mucilaginous pectorals. The other medicines to be continued. On the 18th, one pint of urine afforded one ounce and six drachms of an extract, nearly resembling the last; except that there was rather more sweetness, both to the smell and taste. His diet was again ordered to be restricted to animal food; but this was found difficult to accomplish, not only on account of the patient haying been for some time past indulged in the agreeable article of vegetable diet, but also from the persuasion he entertained of his being already cured of his ordinal disorder.

February 1st. — 16th. The patient has remained nearly stationary. His urine is natural, in appearance and smell, though (in his own opinion) rather sweet: The average quantity amounts to nine pints in a day/ yet his thirst, heat, and dyspepsia are all abated. His strength is certainly increasing, the skin feels more soft and natural, and his visage is less sallow and dejected. The cough is troublesome occasionally, but without any fixed pain in the side, or purulent expectoration; yet, notwithstanding these favorable changes, his bulk is little, if any increased. His impatience to quit the infirmary, in order to complete (what he considers to be) his cure, among his friends in the country: and his increasing aversion to any restriction of diet, have led to a compliance with his wishes; and he was accordingly discharged, relieved, on February the 16th.

Remarks.

This appears to be a decisive and aggravated instance of diabetes mellitus. The sweet taste and smell, and profuse discharge of the urine, thirst, dry skin, voracious appetite, and wasting of the body, with hectic fever, (all which symptoms were apparent in this patient's case) are sufficient indications of the nature of the disease. An indulgence in spirituous liquors, and exposure to hard fare, cold and moisture, seem to have operated as remote causes in the production both of Piggin's and Kay's disorder. The efficacy of animal diet, in mitigating the patient's diabetic symptoms, is sufficiently evident; and it is probable, if this case had not been complicated with a pulmonic affection, and the formation of a large abscess under the shoulder, that its termination would have been successful. For the hectic fever arising from these latter causes, contributed greatly to the patient's extreme emaciation and exhausted strength. It may therefore be presumed that the slight remains of the diabetic affection would have given way ; provided the patient had strictly persisted in his regimen and diet. Indeed the changes which so remarkably followed every irregularity in the plan of abstinence from vegetable food ( especially in the first stages of the treatment of the disorder) sufficiently point out the necessity of a strict adherence to this essential part of the method of cure. The quantity of solid matter carried off by this patient's urine is very extraordinary. It amounted, in the first experiment, to two ounces and thirty grains, troy weight, from one pint (wine measure) of the fluid. This is nearly the largest quantity ever before collected by a similar experiment on diabetic urine; at least in all the cases hitherto published, which have come to my knowledge, there is but one instance of more than two ounces of extractive matter having been obtained from one pint of urine ; but the medium quantity in even very aggravated cases of diabetes mellitus, may be fairly estimated at not more than ten drachms of solid extract. The gross ignorance of this patient, joined to his habit of self indulgence, rendered it highly necessary to keep a constant watch upon his conduct; but in spite of every precaution, I believe he succeeded too often latterly, in eluding the vigilance of the man-nurse, and house apothecary. He was strongly urged, and he promised a compliance with the request, to send occasional information of the state of his health; but since he left the infirmary, and went into a distant county, no account from him has been received ; and consequently the termination of his complaint, although most likely to be unfavorable, cannot be ascertained.

More difficult than finding a wife in the pays d'en haut to cook one's rations was the problem of obtaining an adequate and dependable supply of food itself. It was one of Henry's problems at Pembina; it was one that extended right up to Headquarters. The vast organization of trading posts, supply systems, and communications known as the North West Company existed, of course, for only one thing: beaver. But you couldn't eat beaver - or, at least, their pelts, or the hats into which they were finally made. And how to feed a thousand-odd men and their families in more than a hundred posts, and on their long wilderness journeys, was one of the Concern's biggest worries.

With the fur trader himself, it wasn't so much a question of how well he ate as of whether he ate at all. He was often on short rations, and the dread of famine hung over every post. Scattered through every trader's journal are such routine phrases as, "We were reduced to eating the parchment bille of our windows." or "We dined on a pair of leather breches." or "We were obliged to take the hair from the bear skins and roast the hide, which tastes like pork."

The eating of one's leather garments , sometimes broiled, sometimes boiled up into a glutinous broth - was so common in times of dire need, in fact, that it received no more than casual mention in the Nor'westers' journals. Thus, W. F Wentzel, writing at his post on the Mackenzie River, said what he and twelve others lived for two months on nothing but dried beaver skins: "We destroyed in order to keep alive upward of three hundred beaver skins besides a few lynx and otter skins . . . We have a meal now and then; at intervals we are still two or three days without anything. All my men are dead of starvation, viz: Louis Le mai dit Poudrier and one of his children, François Pilon and William Henry, my hunter."

Other last resorts in the way of food were the old bones of animals or fish, which were cracked open and boiled; the spawn of fish, beaten up in warm water; and various herbs, low in food value, but capable of sustaining life, such as the often mentioned choux-gras of the prairie. Daniel Harmon tells of subsisting on rosebuds, "a kind of food neither very palatable nor nourishing . . . They are better than nothing, since they would just support life."

But the standard emergency ration of nature, mentioned by the very earliest missionaries and explorers, was a rock lichen called tripe de roche. It was necessary to close one's eyes while eating it, an early father remarks, but it filled the stomach, if nothing else. The elder Henry describes its preparation, "which is done by boiling it down into a mucilage, as thick as the white of an egg."

The distressing results of eating tripe de roche are vividly pictured by the free trader John Long: "Tripe de roche is a weed that grows to rocks, of a spongy nature and very unwholesome, causing violent pains in the bowels, and frequently occasions a flux. I am informed that traders in the Northwest have often experienced this disorder, and some of them in very severe weather have been compelled to eat it for fourteen days successively, which weakened them considerably. When the disorder does not terminate in a flux, it occasions violent vomiting, and sometimes spitting of blood, with acute spasms of the bowels."

Hardly the sort of dish one would care to serve often - yet it was not the last extremity of desperate men. For, as the elder Henry darkly hints, cannibalism was not unknown in the fur country. John Long, anything but a squeamish reporter, again tells of a starving voyageur who killed and ate not only a harmless Indian who had brought him food, but one of his two companions as well. Tricked into a confession of his guilt, he was summarily shot through the head by his bourgeois.

[Translated from French]

All Paris has recently been upset about milk made from animal brains; which does not prevent all Paris today from drinking without disgust, and without remembering its forgotten emotion, the unhealthy beverage called café au lait.

Like adulterated milk, horse flesh, at a time when butcher's meat is so expensive, is said to enter Paris fraudulently in large quantities, and is sometimes sold for beef. It is curious and useful to examine whether this flesh in fact deserves the reprobation with which it is subjected.

Let us first seek what is the primary cause of the prejudices preserved to this day against horse flesh, used as food. Keysler, in his work entitled: Antiquitates selectœ septentrionales, after having demonstrated the good qualities and excellence of this flesh, teaches it in these terms:

— " The ancient Celts, northern peoples, sacrificed horses to their gods, and as the flesh of these victims composed the principal dish of the solemn feasts which followed these sacrifices, the horror which one had of these false acts of religion spread to all that entered into them; hence the zeal of the clergy, who, to destroy the heretical custom, believed it necessary to regard horse flesh as impure, and those who used it as filthy.
" The passage from a letter addressed on this occasion by Pope Gregory III to Saint Boniface, bishop of Germany, is too remarkable not to be quoted here.
"You have shown me," said this pontiff, "that some ate wild horse, and most of them domestic horse; Do not allow this to happen henceforth, most holy brother; abolish this custom by all means possible to you, and impose on all horse-eaters a just penance. They are filthy, and their action is execrable."
"It is since that time," adds Keysler, "that our ancestors have continued to be deprived of horse flesh, and this to their great detriment, magno rei familiaris de trimento."

This shows that horse flesh was very good and much sought after in those remote times. Let us prove that it has not changed in nature, and that it suits the stomachs of our contemporaries as well as those of our ancestors.

We owe the following documents to Mr. Baron Larrey, one of the most distinguished witnesses and instruments of our ancient military glory.
"The muscular flesh of the horse, especially that of the hindquarters, can be used to make soup, especially if a certain quantity of bacon is added; it can also be used in grilling and in beef à la mode, with the appropriate seasoning.
" Liver can also be used and prepared in the same way as that of horned beasts; it is even, it seems, more delicate than that which comes from them. This dish, continues Mr. Larrey, was especially sought after by our companions in the Russian campaign, who all spoke highly of it.
"Everyone knows, moreover, that horse flesh is the principal food of the peoples of Asiatic Tartary. I myself have very often had the soldiers and wounded of our armies use it with the greatest success.

"In some of our campaigns on the Rhine, Catalonia and the Maritime Alps, I have had it given to our soldiers on several occasions; but it was especially during the siege of Alexandria, in Egypt, that this meat was used to great advantage. Not only did it preserve the life of the troops who defended this city, but it also contributed powerfully to the healing and recovery of the sick and wounded, whom we had in great numbers in the hospitals; it also contributed to the disappearance of a scorbutic epidemic (scurvy) which had seized the whole army. Regular distributions of this meat were made daily, and fortunately the number of horses was sufficient to lead the army until the time of the capitulation. These animals, of the Arab breed, were very thin, due to the shortage of fodder, but they were generally young. To answer the objections which had been made by many prominent figures in the army, and to overcome the repugnance of the soldier, I was the first to have my horses killed and to eat this meat.
"At the siege of El-Arych in Syria, after having consumed the camels that we had, to feed the sick and wounded that were left in the fort, we were obliged to resort to horse meat, which served us very well.
"At the battle of Eylau, during the first twenty-four hours, I had to feed my wounded again with horse meat prepared in soup and in beef in the fashion; but, as we did not lack seasoning objects on this occasion, the wounded hardly distinguished this meat from that of beef. We must also say that the horses that were dedicated to this use were young and in satisfactory shape.
"After the battle of Eslingen, isolated on the island of Lobau, with the greater part of the French army and about six thousand wounded (the communication bridges having been broken), we were deprived of all resources for three days. To calm, in this critical circumstance, the hunger and impatience of these unfortunates, I had them make soup with the flesh of a fairly large quantity of horses scattered on this island, and which belonged to generals and senior officers. The breastplate of the dismounted and wounded horsemen themselves served as a pot for the concoction of this meat, and instead of salt, of which we were entirely devoid, it was seasoned with gunpowder. I only took care to decant the broth by pouring it from one breastplate into another through a cloth, and after having left it to clarify by rest. All our soldiers found this meat and this broth of a very good quality. Here I also gave the example by the sacrifice of one of my horses, and I made use of this same food, with this difference that I had been able to keep some salt and a little biscuit, which I used to make soup. Marshal Masséna, commander-in-chief of these troops, was very happy to share my meal, and seemed very satisfied with it.
"Thus," says Mr. Larrey, "experience shows that the use of horse meat is very suitable for human food; it seems to me especially very nourishing, because it contains a lot of osmazome. The taste is also pleasant; only this flesh is more or less stringy, according to the leanness and age of the animal. Why, adds this famous surgeon, not take advantage for the poor class and for the prisoners, of the horses that are killed every day in Paris? "

Doctor Berthollet, nephew of the famous chemist of the same name, and who practiced medicine for a long time in Taranto (kingdom of Naples), wrote that the people of this city ate horse flesh with pleasure; that it was sold there publicly by the pound, and that the sale was always prompt. The liver was considered a delicate piece; it was prepared in the same way as that of other livestock.

Géraud, a distinguished physician of the last century, advances in a very remarkable work, "that one would derive a very great utility from horse flesh, by using it as food."... After some developments, he adds: "A considerable quantity of horse and donkey flesh stealthily enters the large cities, and especially Paris, which, after the barrier, is sold under the name of beef, veal, and this meat is given at a lower price than that under the name under which it is sold... Why should we not have butcher's stalls where this meat would be publicly sold? It would be a great resource, especially in these times, when the flesh of ordinary animals is at a price that hardly allows the unfortunate to feed themselves with it. "

Géraud attributes several illnesses of the workers to the deprivation of meat... He would prefer horse flesh for them to the viscera of animals, such as the lungs, liver, spleen, stomachs, which the tripe sellers provide them... "If the sale of horses were free," he says, "it would be better and more advantageous, because the animal would be killed while still in good health, without waiting for an illness, an accident or old age to make it perish."

Let us add to these notions that at the time of the revolution, Paris was fed largely, for the space of three months, only with horse meat, without anyone noticing it and without the slightest accident resulting from it. Mr. Huzard has the proof; no one was any more able by their position to know what was happening there in this respect.

These precious details of facts observed on a large scale, at points of the globe far removed from each other, and in completely opposite circumstances, tend to demonstrate that horse flesh can be used, without inconvenience, as food.

The sturgeon season opened, with immense quantities of the great fish strung between stakes in the villages along the river. The importance of sturgeon on the Columbia Was comparable to that of buffalo on the prairies, or whitefish in the forest belt. It was the staple food of the traders: 

Our party, when all together, numbers 60 men, who consume 13 sturgeons per day, weighing from 25 to 250 pounds each. One of the largest we have seen measured to ft. 7 inches over all, the head 3 ft. 10 inches in circumference; it weighed, after the guts were out, 395 pounds.

The food problem, at almost all times an acute one, was dealt with by the Nor'westers under two headings: the provisioning of the posts, and the provisioning of the fur brigades on the march.

The posts in the forest belt subsisted largely on fish. Often, indeed, the traders in the northern departments had no other food at all. Yet, eating nothing but fish the year around, without vegetables or even salt, they were healthier, Mackenzie avers, than the venison eaters of the west. A prodigious amount of food was required to keep an active man going on an all-fish diet. In one house at Chipewyan, five men, a woman, and three children ate between them thirty-five whitefish, weighing between five and ten pound apiece, every day. A large post would consume a thousand or more a week.

Fortunately, the lakes and streams of the Northwest were full of many kinds of fish, which were taken by both net and line in vast quantities. In the autumn, as many as 500 white-fish could be caught in a couple of hours with a scoop net from a canoe. Long mentions a catch of 18,000 pounds of whitefish netted through the ice in two months. Trout weighing up to 70 pounds were taken by the hundreds with both line and seine. Sturgeon of 150 pounds or more, Harmon says, were sometimes driven onto sand bars and shot; "We have no trouble killing any number of them we please."

Among the kinds of fish mentioned by the Nor westers were: whitefish, trout, sturgeon, pike, walleyed pike, carp, herring, sucker, fresh-water drum, smallmouthed bass, and bream. Of all these, the whitefish - fresh, frozen or dried - was considered the variety par excellence. "It is the only fish that sauce spoils," the Baron Lahontan maintained. Nicholas Garry was no less enthusiastic: "All I had heard of its excellent quality and taste fell far short of its real excellence. I should say it is the most delicate tasted fish I have ever eat." But Alexander Henry the Elder paid it perhaps the highest tribute of all: "Those who live on whitefish for months together preserve their relish to the end. This cannot be said of trout." With all this, many a gourmet will agree; still, a steady diet of even whitefish must have sated the heartiest appetite in time. The voyageur was not one to complain much; but one of his rare cries of anguish has come down to us in a trader's journal: "Toujours le poisson!"

The Nor'wester, whose Indian wife cooked for him, soon accustomed himself to the eating habits of the natives; and le could speak with equanimity, if not enthusiasm, of a meal of "five Indian dogs, bear, beaver, mountain cat, and raccoon, boiled in bear's grease and mixed with huckleberries." 

In the delicatessen department, so to speak, the Nor'wester had little to choose from, although certain luxury items did appear on his table now and then. He highly esteemed the tail of the beaver, the tongue of the buffalo, and the snout of the moose; and from the Indians he learned to relish the sweet and highly nutritious marrow in roasted buffalo bones. 

Most important of his luxuries, perhaps, was the flour he had brought all the weary miles from the Grand Portage. Sometimes he made with it a kind of thick flour-and-pemmican soup called rubbaboo. More often, he fashioned galettes, small unleavened cakes, which he baked in the ashes. When he had chicken or gull eggs, he made up a pudding of some sort, or "fritters," which were probably an approximation of our flapjacks. It can also be assumed that, without yeast, he made sourdough bread whenever his cabin was warm enough to promote its rising. And at the Grand Portage and some of the big Interior posts, he baked proper loaves of bread: there were ovens, for instance, at Rainy Lake House. On the great fete days, flour and a little sugar always accompanied rum as a special treat. 

As for fruit, the Nor'wester had none except what he could find growing wild. But these he must have enjoyed greatly; for he always has time especially Alexander Henry to pause in his journal and tell us: "We found an abundance of sand cherries, which were of an excellent favor." or, "Red raspberries are now ripe and very good . . . the panbian is fine and large, and of a beautiful red, but requires the frost to ripen it." He seems, indeed, to have had not only great quantities, but also many varieties of wild fruits and berries to eat fresh or dried, in his pemmican, or with his meat and fish. 

In addition to his regular winter provisions, each Partner was allowed certain luxuries: six pounds of tea, four of coffee, four of chocolate. Clerks received a lesser allowance, each according to his rank. The Partners also took biscuits with them, which were invariably so crumbled at the end of the trip that they had to be eaten with a spoon. 

Now and then a gourmet among them brought along a hamper of wine; and we have Duncan Cameron writing: "Invited my neighbor to dine with me and gave him good Madeira to drink" . . . and adding ruefully that his neighbor seemed to prefer rum. Alexander Henry once concocted a cordial of Jamaica rum, wild cherries and a few pounds of sugar. 

Salt, when he could get it, was used by the trader as a condiment and sometimes to preserve meat, although freezing and drying usually served the latter purpose. At every post, no effort was spared to obtain a supply from some nearby salt pit or saline spring. And so the Nor'wester and his voyageurs maintained their defenses against starvation, and sometimes even feasted on plenty. But what, one wonders, of the children, so numerous at every post? What did their Indian mothers feed them? For a long time, of course, they were nursed at the breast perhaps for two or three years, as was the custom with the tribes. But when the child was weaned, at last, his diet was one that Dr. Spock himself might have approved. As described by John Long, it included a pap made of Indian corn and milk, if it could be obtained; wild rice, pounded fine, boiled and mixed with maple sugar; and the broth of meat or fish. And Wither kind of pap, he adds, was made of a toot called toquo, which was also baked into a kind of zwichack for the infans of the posts.

The Nor' wester on the march was faced with an entirely different problem of food supply. There was remarkably little game along the Northwest Road, and not much else that could be bought from the Indians en route. Once the plains were gained, hunters were sent out to shoot buffalo; but the brigades that continued on to the northern posts could not live off the land; they had to carry their rations with them in already overloaded canoes. 

The answer to this problem was lyed corn, wild rice and pemmican. The corn, grown by the Ottawa and Saulteur around Sault Ste. Marie, was processed at Detroit by boiling it in lye water, which removed the outer husk. It was then washed and dried, and was ready for use. One quart of lyed corn called hominy by the Americans was boiled for two hours over a moderate fire in a gallon of water. Soon after it came to a boil, two ounces of melted suet were added. This caused the corn to split open and form "a pretty thick pudding." Alexander Mackenzie maintained that, with a little salt, it was a wholesome, palatable, easily digestible dish. A quart of it, he said, would keep a canoeman going for twenty four hours. 

Mackenzie also observed that lyed corn was about the cheapest food the Concern could give its men, a voyageur's daily allowance costing only tenpence. And the elder Henry wryly commented that, since it was fare that nobody but a French-Canadian would put up with, the monopoly of the fur trade was probably in the North West Company's hands forever! 

Indian corn and grease possibly supplemented by a few fish, game birds, eggs, and Indian dogs along the way took the brigades as far as Rainy Lake. Here wild rice replaced the corn as far as Lac Winipic. After that, pemmican sustained the western brigades until they reached the buffalo plains and fresh meat; but the northern canoes had to depend on pemmican all the way to their wintering stations. The provisioning of Alexander Henry's canoes, from Lake Superior to the Saskatchewan, would be typical: 

At 4 P.M. I arrived at Fort Vermilion, having been two months on my voyage from Fort William, with a brigade of I1 canoes, loaded with 28 pieces each, and manned by five men and one woman. Our expenditure of provisions for each canoe during the voyage was: two bags of corn, 1½ bushels each, and 15 pounds of grease, to Lac la Pluie; two bags of wild rice, 1½ bushels each, and 10 pounds of grease to Bas de la Rivière Winipic; four bags of pemmican of go pounds each to serve until we came among the buffalo generally near the Monte, or at farthest the Elbow of the Saskatchewan. 

This, in a few words, was the formula that made possible the long voyages of the fur brigades, which must often be accomplished with hairbreadth precision between the spring thaw and the fall freeze-up. The North West Company's network of hundreds of canoe routes and more than a hundred forts, scattered over half the continent, could never have functioned without corn, rice and pemmican. And of the three, pemmican was perhaps the most important. 

The Nor westers got the idea, as they did so many, from the Indians. Or perhaps it should be said that Peter Pond dit since he, before anyone else, realized the logistical importance of pemmican and made a systematic use of it. Where the elder Henry and the Frobishers had failed in early attempts to reach the rich Athabasca country, Pond succeeded; and the key to his success is found in his own words: "Provisions, not only for the winter season but for the course of the next summer, must be provided, which is dry'd meat, pounded to a powder and mixed with buffaloes greese, which preserves it in warm seasons." In other words, pemmican. 

Almost every trader, from Peter Pond down, described pemmican, and how it was manufactured; but none so well as David Thompson. It was made, he explained, of the lean and fleshy parts of the buffalo, dried, smoked, and pounded fine. In that state, it was called beat meat. To it was added the fat of the buffalo. There were two kinds: that from the inside of the animal, called "hard fat" or grease; and that which lay along the backbone in large flakes and, when melted, resembled butter in softness and sweetness. 

The best pemmican, Thompson tells us, was made from twenty pounds each of soft and hard fat, slowly melted together and well mixed with fifty pounds of beat meat. It was stored in bags made of buffalo hide, with the hair on the outside, called taurenut. When they could be obtained, dried berries, and sometimes maple sugar, were mixed with the pemmican. "On the great Plains," Thompson wrote, "there is a shrub bearing a very sweet berry of dark blue color, much sought after. Great quantities are dried by the Natives; in this state the berries are as sweet as the best currants, and as much as possible mixed to make Pemmican." 

Properly made and stored, the ninety-pound bags of pemmican would keep for years. Post masters took great pride in the quality of the product they turned out. But sometimes, through nobody's fault, it went sour, and great quantities had to be thrown to the post dogs. Often, as in the case of dried meat, mold formed; but that, the traders cheerfully agreed, only improved the flavor. 

Pemmican could be hacked off the piece and eaten in its natural state; or it could be boiled up with corn or rice to make a highly nourishing and not unpalatable kind of stew. Whereas a daily allowance of eight pounds of fresh meat was required to sustain a man, two pounds, or even a pound and a half of pemmican would do. A better emergency ration for men in a cold climate has never been developed. So vital was pemmican indeed to the North West Company's system of communications that a highly specialized organization was set up to make and distribute it. On the prairies were built the famous "pemmican posts" Fort Alexandria, Fort George, Fort Vermilion, Fort de la Montée whose principal business was not pelts but provisions, chiefly pemmican, for the canoe brigades and the hungry posts in the forest belt. Archibald Norman McLeod gives us a glimpse of the activities at Alexandria: "I got the last Pounded meat we have made into Pimican, viz. 30 bags of 90 lb., so that we now have 62 bags of that Species of provisions of the above weight. I likewise got nine kegs filled with grease, or Tallow rather, each keg nett 70 lb." 

Looking into his storehouse in January, Duncan McGillivray noted that he had 8000 pounds of pounded meat, with enough fat to make it up into pemmican sufficient, he added, to "answer the expectations of the Gentn. of the Northern Posts, who depend on us for this necessary article* in April, he made his pounded meat and grease into two hundred bags of pemmican. 

For one year, 1807-1808, Alexander Henry listed the returns from his four Lower Red River posts as only 60 packs of furs, but 334 bags of pemmican and 48 kegs of grease; a striking statistical sidelight on the importance of beat meat and grease in the economy of the North West Company.

 Getting the huge production of pemmican from the prairie posts to where it was needed was a major problem in logistics: and the Nor' westers solved it with their usual flair for organization. Besides the posts that specialized in making pemmican, certain others principally Cumberland House and Fort Bas de la Rivière were established at strategic spots to distribute it. To Cumberland House, at the juncture of the Saskatchewan and the waterways leading to Athabasca, the pemmican posts sent hundreds of taureaux in skin canoes and roughly built boats. And there the vast store of shaggy buffalo-hide bags was rationed out to the Great Northern brigades for the posts in the forest Fort Chipewyan, Fort de I'Isle, Fort Resolution, Fort Providence where the supply of pemmican made of deer and bear meat was both scanty and uncertain. The pemmican from the Red River and Assiniboine posts was distributed from Bas de la Rivière. And later on, Fort Esperance on the Qu'Appelle became the North West Company's chief depot for rushing emergency supplies to posts in distress. 

Wherever he was stationed, and however long the march he must make to his wintering grounds, the Nor wester could usually depend on his supply of pemmican to see him to journey's end and, if necessary, through a winter's scarcity of game and fish. It was his staff of life in a way that bread never was in more civilized parts of the world. It was often his last defense against the forces of famine that hung, like wolves on the trail of a wounded caribou, about every trading post. And he never spoke of it with anything but respect.

Case IV.

John Wild, age 33, Labourer.

Admitted an In-patient , April 12th, 1802;

Feels excessive thirst, an almost perpetual inclination to void sweet tasted urine, in profuse quantities, ( especially during the night) great clamminess in the mouth, and soreness of the gums; much pain and weakness in the loins, with an involuntary discharge of semen after voiding his urine.

His skin is dry, hard, and extremely rough ; pulse 125, weak and fluttering; and his countenance portrays the utmost anxiety and distress.

The emaciation is extreme, and his debility so great, that he was obliged to creep along the passages, leading to the physician's room, by laying hold of the walls for a support.

The excoriation, and swelling of the prepuce, are so considerable, as to have brought on a phymosis. He states his urine to be as sweet as honey, and to, amount to thirty pints in twenty-four hours. His appetite is so greedy, that his means are unable to gratify its longing; but after every indulgence of a full meal he feels loaded, and sick at his stomach, and often throws up its contents, which have a sour and unpleasant taste. He has lost several of his teeth, since the soreness of his gums came on, and many others are now loose in the sockets.

He describes his mode of life to have been very irregular; sometimes faring hardly, at other times indulging to excess, especially in the use of spirituous liquors.

About seven months ago, he had worked at the harvest, and getting intoxicated, he laid himself down to sleep near a pool of water, where he continued all the night.

From this period he dates the origin of his complaint; but has only noticed the increase in the quantity of his urine, and the peculiarity of its appearance and taste, five months from the present date.

He was ordered to be put upon a diet of animal food, without the least portion of bread, or any other vegetable matter; two blisters to be applied to the region of each kidney, and the ulcerated parts to be kept open, by irritating dressings: six drops of the hepatised ammonia, to be got down, mixed with mint water, three times a day, and also every night a bolus, containing one grain of opium, and five of rhubarb.

His thirst to be quenched with water, in which, at meals, toasted oat-cake was to be infused. The liquid ingesta and egesta to be accurately ascertained.

April 15th. (typo in text)

Urine 34 pints, Drink 27 pints

Has eaten, at least, from three to four pounds of cold beef, but has carefully abstained from every other kind of food; slept better, and feels easier.

The urine (which was kept in a bucket) appeared of a greenish straw colour, and was clear when first voided; but on standing some time in the vessel became turbid on agitation, and looked like thick small beer; it emitted a

faintish acid odour, although evidently sweet to the taste.

April 16th.

Urine 38 pints,  Drink 36 pints

He complained of tormenting thirst, and begged to have his drink changed. Ordered weak barley water, acidulated with the spirit : vitriol: ten: and, to support his strength, four ounces of wine in the course of the day. The dose of ammon: hepatisat: was increased to ten drops, four times a day; and the opiate with rhubarb repeated. The nitric was afterwards substituted for the vitriolic acid, and constituted, when mixed with water, the common beverage of the patient.

April 17th.

Urine 28 pints, Drink 26 pints

Has perspired copiously in ihe night ; pulse reduced to 108; appetite moderate, but he begins to loathe his animal food. The sensible qualities of the urine are not much changed; One pint of this fluid yielded, on evaporation, two ounces, within half a drachm, of an extract, resembling coarse brown sugar, both in colour and taste; at the same time one pint of healthy , urine, was exposed to evaporation under similar circumstances; and afforded a residuum amounting only to two drachms and twenty six grains. Medicines and diet to be continued, with the addition of broth at supper and breakfast

April 17th.—  April 27th.

The quantity of urine passed each twenty-four hours, within the last ten days, has greatly varied: on the 21st, thirty six pints were discharged, on the 27th only seventeen pints—- these being the maximum and minimum quantities within this period; but the average amount may be estimated at nineteen pints each twenty four hours.

The liquid ingesta were seldom equal to the egesta; and the relative proportions fluctuated considerably. On the 23d, the urine measured nineteen pints, and the drink only sixteen : On the 25th, urine twenty four pints, and drink twenty six ; yet these changes could not be attributed to any perceptible cause.

The patient has been almost daily improving in health and strength: his sleep is more refreshing, and prolonged (without the interruption of making water) to two hours at a time. The urine is become paler, and has lost some little of its faintish acid smell, and sweet taste. The pulse varies from eighty four to eighty eight. As he became disgusted with the hepatised ammonia, a solution of sulphurated kali, was administered as a substitute.

The bowels were to be kept open with castor oil, and his other medicines and diet to be repeated.

April 27th — May 8th.

During this period, and especially within these three or four days, a general amendment has taken place. The average quantity of urine has not exceeded fourteen pints in the twenty four hours, but has varied in quantity, at times, very considerably. On the first of May, it amounted to twenty two pints, and on the eighth, to no more than eight pints. The following extract from the register will point out the favorable changes which have taken place.

May 3rd: Urine 12 pounds, Drink 12 pounds

May 4th: Urine 11 pounds, Drink 9 pounds

May 5th: Urine 14 pounds, Drink 16 pounds

May 6th: Urine 12 pounds, Drink 16 pounds

May 7th: Urine 14 pounds, Drink 16 pounds

May 8th: Urine 8 pounds, Drink 12 pounds

The patient begins to feel his strength recruited, his countenance has lost its ghastly appearance, and he has evidently gained flesh, ai well as strength. He no longer complains of the offensive taste in his mouth, nor heat and tormenting pain in the bowels. His pulse is in general not more than eighty ; indeed his vigors arid spirits are such as to suffer him to be employed in assisting the patients, and performing several menial offices about the house; yet the urine has not lost its saccharine taste, although it has become, according to his own expression, "sharper and less pleasant."

The phymosis continues, but the swelling and excoriation are abated.

He still complains of occasional weakness in the loins, which is always aggravated by the involuntary seminal discharge.

The improvement has been so marked and rapid, within the last four days, that he feels assured of his speedy recovery, and begs to have an allowance of vegetable food, and is very desirous to be discharged in a short time.

May 8th — June 1st.

On the 9th, one pint of urine yielded, on evaporation, one ounce, two drachms, and forty grains of an extract of the consistence and colour of treacle; but with rather a saltish taste, and urinous smell.

Important changes for the worse have un- expectedly occurred within this period. For on the 9th, the patient injured his leg severely by a fall, in running up stairs; this accident occasioned the opening to a very considerable extent of the cicatrise of an old wound upon the shin bone. At this time he expressed a longing desire to be indulged with bread and vegetables, and from an apprehension, that a refusal might induce him to obtain them surreptitiously, he was allowed a small portion with his meat.

From this period, the diabetic symptoms increased, and the average daily quantity of urine amounted to twenty pints; but the ingesta were nearly upon a balance with the egesta. Bread and vegetables were again forbidden ; yet I have reason to believe that he contrived to purloin from the other patients, part of their vegetable diet.

The ulcer on the leg spread rapidly, and discharged a large quantity of ill conditioned pus.

He was now confined entirely to bed, and lost both his strength and flesh.

He was ordered to take wine, bark, and lime water, and to omit his other medicines. One of his legs becoming anasarcous, small doses of digitalis and calomel were prescribed, in conjunction with the bark. By this treatment the swelling was nearly subdued, but the diabetic symptoms remained stationary. He was again ordered rigidly to abstain from vegetable food, and to drink daily a quart of fresh lime-water, mixed with milk; and to make use of a bath every night, heated to ninety-five degrees : by these means, the progress of the disease seemed at least to be arrested; but no permanent change of the characteristic diabetic symptoms was effected.

June 29th.

One pint of urine, taken from twenty-four pints which had been discharged on this day, was again evaporated. The residuum resembled the last in colour, consistency, and smell ; and weighed one ounce, seven drachms and a half.

June 1st — July 1st.

During this month, the register points out little or no variation in the daily quantities of the liquid ingesta and egesta, when compared with the proceeding fortnight: twenty-six pints was the greatest, and eighteen the smallest quantity of urine discharged on any one day: the ulcer on the leg, so far from being healed, has assumed a phagedenic appearance, and ex- cites much pain and inconvenience — alum with galls, and opium, were prescribed at bedtime,

in addition to the bark and lime-water, during the day. He now complains of increased soreness in the gums, and an irregular voracious appetite, attended by frequent vomitings of food in an undigested state. Pulse 103. feeble and irregular. Finding there was little, or no chance of restraining him from the occasional use of vegetable food, and despairing of his recovery, he was permitted to combine bread and vegetables with his animal diet.

July 1st – July 19th.

The patient has been evidently sinkings although the quantity of urine, voided each day, does not exceed the former statement. The average being twenty two pints every twenty-four hours. The swelling of the lower extremities has much increased, and, he is troubled with a teazing dry cough: the hopelessness of his situation was strongly depicted in his countenance, and his dissolution seemed evidently approaching.

Notwithstanding his extreme debility, on the 18th, and 19th, he was able to walk about the ward, and expressed himself even with cheerfulness; but on the 19th, at 2 o'clock p. m he was suddenly attacked with a pain in the stomach, succeeded by violent convulsions, which shortly put a period to his existence.(he died)

Remarks.

This, at first view, seemed to be a hopeless case. The disease had been so rapid in it's progress, and had made such ravages in the patient's constitution, that little could be expected from any plan of cure. The quantity of urine (thirty-six pints) discharged in twenty-four hours, is equal to, if it does not exceed that of any other instance which has been recorded by authors of credit. The proportion of residuum ( nearly two ounces to one pint ) is also very extraordinary, especially when we take into the account that it only formed a twenty-eighth part of the solid matter, drained off from the body in twenty-four hours.

This immense and rapid waste was, however, nearly supplied by the patient's greedy appetite, for both solid and liquid nourishment. It is worthy of remark, that on some days, the register pointed out an excess in the liquid egesta considerably beyond that of the whole amount, both of the solid and liquid ingesta; now as this superiority of the egesta to the ingesta has been often insisted upon by some practitioners, and denied by others. I felt very anxious to ascertain the fact in the present instance: and, therefore, when the register denoted that such a circumstance had happened, I was very cautious and diligent in my enquiries concerning the accuracy of the report ; and in no instance was I able to detect any irregularity or imposition on the part of the patient or attendants.

In this case, as in the foregoing ones, much advantage was derived from the use of the nitric acid. It greatly assuaged the thirst, and was grateful to the palate, but its effects on the bowels often prevented a further trial. Opium, with rhubarb, was generally serviceable in allaying irritation, and probably the diminishing the morbidly increased action of the stomach. Perhaps success could not reasonably have been expected in the treatment of this deplorable instance of diabetes mellitus; and I must confess, that at first, my most sanguine hopes did not extend beyond a palliation of the more urgent symptoms; but from the unexpected, rapid, and important improvement, which the patient experienced soon after his admission, I am inclined to believe, that had he steadily persisted in the plan of cure, and no accident to his leg had occurred, his life might have been considerably prolonged ; and perhaps the diabetic symptoms eventually subdued.

Better off were the posts in the buffalo country that subsisted on a fare of juicy steaks, roasts and tongues. As in the case of fish, enormous quantities of meat were required to sustain a man who ate only flesh. The daily allowance of buffalo meat at Fort George was eight pounds a man. The voyageurs who, between them, ate thirty-five whitefish a day would have required forty rabbits to get the same amount of nourishment. Two whole geese were no more than a meal for a man in the northern posts.

The prairie posts were blessed with an almost inexhaustible supply of buffalo meat that delivered itself, so to speak, to their very doors. Hunters sometimes killed entire herds and returned with nothing but the tongues. In seasons of lesser abundance, the whole carcass of the animal was utilized. The hunters cut the meat up into twenty pieces much like our standard cuts of beef for transportation to the post. The choice cuts were the hump and back meat. The tongue generally went to the hunter.

To the trader, settling down with his "family" for the long prairie winter, the sight of tons of fat meat in his icehouse or glacière must have been a comforting one. The size of his store depended on his needs; but Duncan McGillivray gives us an idea of what the average post required. In his glacière were stacked 500 thighs and shoulders the meat of 413 buffalo, weighing almost a quarter of a million pounds. Even in the elder Henry's time, the beef reserves at some of the posts were awe-inspiring. "At Fort des Prairies I remained several days," he wrote, "hospitably entertained by my friends, who covered their tables with the tongues and marrow of wild bulls. The quantity of provisions which I found collected here exceeded everything of which I had previously formed a notion. In one heap I saw fifty tons of beck, so fat that the men could scarcely find a sufficiency of lean."

While the meat of the buffalo made excellent steaks and roasts although not so delicious as those of the moose -it was the fat cuts, especially the long depouilles of back fat, that were most prized. "The Canadian voyageur's appetite for fat meat is insatiable," Franklin observed. And the bourgeois had no less a fondness for the grease and tallow that are mentioned so often and almost as a delicacy in their journals. In this they were following a sound instinct. For, as Vilhjalmur Stefansson and other arctic explorers have often pointed out, a man could live long and well on meat alone provided he got enough fat along with the lean. Without it as the rabbit and fish eaters knew by experience he was likely to become sick, and even to die, from fat starvation.

Hence, the North West Company took good care to satisfy the craving of its men for fat. Thousands of kegs of grease– really buffalo tallow – were put up at the pemmican posts" for the northern departments. In one year at Pembina, Henry kegged up almost two tons of it, and another two tons in the form of pemmican. By the traders it was called "the bread of the pays d'en haut. Henry, incidentally, has left us this list of provisions "destroyed" at his Pembina post in one winter by 17 men, 10 women, 14 children, and 45 dogs:

• 112 buffalo cows -- 45,000 pounds

• 34 buffalo bulls -- 18,000 pounds

• 3 red deer

• 5 large black bears

• 4 beavers swans

• 12 outardes geese

• 36 ducks

• 1,150 fish of different kinds

• 775 sturgeon

• 410 pounds of grease

• 140 pounds of bear meat

• 325 bushels of potatoes and an assortment of kitchen vegetables

This adds up to about a ton of meat and fish apiece for every man, woman and child in the post; but more interesting, perhaps, is the inclusion of no small quantity of potatoes, and even kitchen vegetables, at the end of the list. Not every post was as fortunate as Pembina in this respect. Only the larger establishments were able to supplement their basic fish and meat diets with potatoes, cereals, and garden truck; but some of them did so on a rather large scale.

Like Bas de la Rivière, with its fields, barns, stables and storehouses, Rainy Lake also had its cultivated fields and domestic animals. And at Pembina, Alexander Henry himself did not do badly as a farmer. In the fall of one year he reported:

The men had gathered the following crops: 1000 bushels potatoes (produce of 21 bushels); 40 bushels turnips; 25 bushels carrots; 20 bushels beets; 20 bushels parsnips; 10 bushels cucumbers; 2 bushels melons; 5 bushels squashes; 10 bushels Indian corn; 200 large heads of cabbage; 300 small and Savoy cabbages. All these vegetables are exclusive of what have been eaten and destroyed since my arrival.

The virgin prairie soil produced not only abundandy, bur spectacularly for Farmer Henry: 

I measured an onion, 22 inches in circumference; a carrot is inches long and, at the thick end, 14 inches in circumference; a turnip with its leaves weighed 25 pounds, and the leaves alone weighed 15 pounds.

The North West Company's post at Fond du Lac, on the St. Louis River, kept two horses, a cow, a bull, and a few pigs. The fort at Leech Lake had a garden that produced a thousand bushels of potatoes, thirty of oats, cabbages, carrots. beets, beans, turnips, pumpkins and Indian corn. The Concern had also brought horses to the post, "'even cats and hens."

And how, one might wonder, did the Concern succeed in transporting horses, cows, bulls and other livestock through a roadless wilderness, traversable by only canoe and dog sledge, to forts a thousand miles or more from any civilized settlement? Were they brought out in the Company's small schooners, such as the Otter and the Beaver, to the Grand Portage, and thence over the winter ice to the Interior posts? Were they even carried while young and small, perhaps, in the great canots du maître? Or, had they already been brought to the pays d'en haut by the French, in the earliest days of the fur trade? Peter Pond, writing of his trip up the Fox River, in what is now Wisconsin, says: "I ort to have Menshand that the french at ye Villeg whare we Incampt Rase fine black Cattel & Horses with Sum swine."

It is something to speculate about like so many of the Nor' westers' doings!

In addition to his garden and livestock, there were other ways a trader could vary his diet of straight meat, or fish, or a combination of both. He could, for instance, buy certain items of food from the Indians. Among these, wild rice or, as the traders often called it, wild oats was perhaps the most important. Rainy Lake was the great source of supply Growing in the water to a height of more than eight feet, the rice was harvested by the Indians, who drove their canoes through the rice beds and beat out the grain. In ordinary seasons, Harmon tells us, the North West Company bought from 1200 to 1500 bushels of wild rice from the natives; "and it constitutes a principle article of food at the posts in this vicinity."

Maple sugar, also bought from the Indians, was more than a luxury on the trader's table: it was often an important staple, and sometimes all he had to eat for long periods of time. It was made from the sap of the true and bastard maples, and even a certain variety of birch. The work of gathering the sap and boiling it down was left mostly to the women. In the spring the whole tribe went to the sugar bush, where the men cut wood for the fires and hunted game for food, while the squaws gathered and boiled the sap. The elder Henry describes one sugar-making expedition that produced 1600 pounds of sugar, besides 36 gallons of syrup not counting 300 pounds consumed on the ground. During the whole month in the bush, he tells us, sugar was the principal food. He knew Indians, he adds, who lived wholly on sugar and understandably enough grew fat.

Game was bought from the Indians, or procured by the trader's gun: venison, moose, bear, antelope, as well as ducks, geese, swans, and occasionally their eggs. By the voyageurs, if not always by the bourgeois, dogs were frequently purchased for food. A small dog, of a species specially bred for eating, was regarded as a great delicacy by the Canadians.

Nov 19: Monday — a Cold day the ice continue to run our Perogue of Hunters arrive with 32 Deer, 12 Elk & a Buffalow, all of this meat we had hung up in a Smoke house, a timeley supply. Several Indians here all day. the wind blew hard from the N.W. by W, our men move into their huts, Several little Indian aneckd" [anecdotes] told me to day 20':' 

Nov 20 Tuesday 1804 — Cap Lewis & my Self move into our hut,^ a very hard wind from the W. all the after part of the day a temperate day. Several Indians came Down to Eat fresh meat, three Chiefs from the 2*1 Mandan Village Stay all Day, they are verry Curious in examining our works.

Dec 7, 1804 - Cap Clark Set out with a hunting party Killed 8 Bulfalow & returned next day — a verry cold day wind from the NW. the Big White Grand Chief of the Village, came and informed us that a large Drove of Buffalow was near and his people was wating for us to join them in a chase. Cap Lewis took 15 men & went out joined the Indians, who were at the time he got up, Killing the Buffalow on Horseback with arrows which they done with great dexterity,^ his party killed 10 Buffalow, /x'f of which we got to the fort by the assistance of a horse in addition to what the men Packed on their backs, one cow was killed on the ice after drawing her out of a vacancey in the ice in which She had fallen, and Butchered her at the fort, those we did 

Biddle gives a more detailed account of the Indians' buffalo hunt. Gass says (p. 89) that Lewis took eleven men with him, who killed 11 buffalo, while the Indians killed 30 or 40. — Ed. 

 AT FORT MANDAN not get in was taken by the indians under a Custom which is established amongst them i e. any person seeing a buffalow lying without an arrow Sticking in him, or some particular mark takes possession, many times (as I am told) a hunter who kills many Buffalow in a chase only Gets a part of one, all meat which is left out all night falls to the wolves which are in great numbers, always in the neighborhood of the Buffalows.

13th of January Sunday 1805 -- On a Cold Clear Day, a great number of Indians move down the River to hunt. Those people Kill a Number of Buffalow near their Villages and Save a great proportion of the Meat, their Custom of making this article of life General leaves them more than half of their time without meat.

 Their Corn & Beans & they keep for the Summer, and as a reserve in Case of an attack from the Soues, [of] which they are always in dread and seldom go far to hunt except in large parties, about the Mandans nation passed this today to hunt on of Tribe.

23rd January 1805 Wednesday A Cold Day Snow fell 4 Inches deep, the occurancies of this day is as is common. I went up with one of the men to the villages. They treated us friendly and gave us victuals. After we were done eating they presented a bowlful to a buffaloe head, saying, " eat that."' Their superstitious credulity is so great, that they believe by using the head well, the living buffaloe will come, and that they will get a supply of meat. — Gass (pp. 98, 99).

[Feb. 5 and two frenchmen who together with two others, have established a small hut and resided this winter within the vicinity of Fort Mandane under our protection, visited by many of the natives today, our stock of meat which we had procured in the Months of November & December is now nearly exhausted ; a supply of this articles is at this moment peculiarly interesting as well for our immediate consumption, as that we may have time before the approach of the warm season to prepare the meat for our voyage in the spring of the year. Capt. Clark therefore determined to continue his rout down the river even as far as the River bullet' unless he should find a plenty of game nearer, the men transported their baggage on a couple of small wooden sleighs drawn by themselves, and took with them 3 pack horses which we had agreed should be returned with a load of meat to fort mandane as soon as they could procure it. no buffaloe have made their appearance in our neighbourhood for some weeks {time shorter) ; and I am informed that our Indian neighbours suffer extremely at this moment for the article of flesh. Shields killed two deer this evening, both very lean, one a large buck, he had shed his horns.

Feb 8 - the chief dined with me and left me in the evening, he informed me that his people suffered very much for the article of meat, and that he had not himself tasted any for several days.

Feb 16 — The Buffalow Seen last night proved to be Bulls. lean & unfit for to make use of as food, the Distance from Camp being nearly 60 miles and the packing of meat that distance attended with much difficulty. Determined me to return and hunt the points above, we Set out on our return and halted at an old Indian lodge 40 miles below Fort Mandan, Killed 3 Elk, & 2 Deer. 

Feb 17 — a cold Day wind blew hard from the N.W. J. Fields got one of his ears frosed determined to lay by and hunt to day killed an Elk & 6 deer, all that was fit for use [of] this meat I had Boned and put into a Close pen made of logs.

Feb 22 Capt Lewis returned with 2 Slays loaded with meat, after finding that he could not overtake the Soues War party, (who had in their way distroyed all the meat at one Deposit which I had made & Burnt the Lodges) deturmined to proceed on to the lower Deposit which he found had not been observed by the Soues. He hunted two day Killed 36 Deer & 14 Elk, Several of them so meager, that they were unfit for use, the meat which he killed and that in the lower deposit amounting to about 3000 pounds was brought up on two Slays one Drawn by 16 men had about 2400 pounds on it.

April the 2nd, Friday (Tuesday) 1805 — a cloudy day, rained all the last night we are prepareing to Set out all thing nearly ready. The 2nd Chief of the 2nd Mandan Village took a miff at our not attending to him particularly after being here about ten days and moved back to his village. The Mandans Killed twenty one elk yesterday 15 miles below this, they were So Meager that they [were] Scercely fit for use. 

Biddle describes the manner in which the Indians capture buffaloes which, trying to cross the river, have become isolated on ice-floes. Mackenzie states that the Indians on the Missouri also search eagerly for the carcasses of buffaloes and other drowned animals that float down the river in the spring season ; these, although rotten and of intolerable stench, "are preferred by the Natives to any other kind of food. ... So fond are the Mandans of putrid meat that they bury animals whole in the winter for the consumption of the spring " — Ed.

Thursday April \ith. Set out at an early hour; I proceeded with the party and Capt. Clark with George Drewyer walked on shore in order to procure some fresh meat if possible, we proceeded on about five miles, and halted for breakfast, when Capt. Clark and Drewyer joined us ; the latter had killed, and brought with him a deer, which was at this moment excep[t]able, as we had had no fresh meat for several days, the country from fort Mandan to this place is so constantly hunted by the Mountainaries that there is but little game, we halted at two P.M. and made a comfortable dinner on a venison steak and beaver tails.

Capt. Clark walked on shore this morning, and on his return informed me that he had passed through the timbered bottoms on the N. side of the river, and had extended his walk several miles back on the hills; in the bottom lands he had met with several uninhabited Indian lodges built with the boughs of the Elm, and in the plains he met with the remains of two large encampments of a recent date, which form the appearance of some hoops of small kegs, seen near them we concluded that they must have been the camps of the Assinniboins, as no other nation who visit this part of the missouri ever indulge themselves with spirituous liquor, of this article the Assinniboins are pationately fond, and we are informed that it, forms their principal inducement to furnish the British establishments on the Assinniboin river with the dryed and pounded meat and grease which they do. they also supply those establishments with a small quantity of fur, consisting principally of the large and small wolves and the small fox' skins, these they barter for small kegs of rum which they generally transport to their camps at a distance from the establishments, where they revel with their friends and relations as long as they possess the means of intoxication, their women and children are equally indulged on those occasions and are all seen drunk together, so far is a state of intoxication from being a cause of reproach among them, that with the men, it is a matter of exultation that their skill and industry as hunters has enabled them to get drunk frequently, in their customs, habits and dispositions these people very much resemble the Siouxs from whom thev have descended. The principal inducement with the British fur companies, for continuing their establishments on the Assinniboin river, is the Buffalow meat and grease they procure from the Assinniboins, and Christanoes, by means of which, they are enabled to supply provision to their engages on their return from rainy Lake to the English river and the Athabaskey country where they winter ; without such resource those voyagers would frequently be straitened for provision, as the country through which they pass is but scantily supplyed with game, and the rappidity with which they are compelled to travel in order to reach their winter stations, would leave them but little leasure to surch for food while on their voyage. while the party halted to take dinner today Capt. Clark killed a buffaloe bull ; it was meagre, and we therefore took the marrow bones and a small propor- tion of the meat only, near the place we dined, on the Lard, side, there was a large village of burrowing squirrels.

April 18th - 1805 -- Went out to hunt, Killed a young Buck Elk, & a Deer, the Elk was tolerable meat, the Deer very poor. Butchered the meat and continued untill near Sunset before Cap' Lewis and the party came up, thev were detained by the wind, which rose soon after I left the boat from the N W. & blew very hard until very late in the evening.

in the after part of the day we passed an extensive beautiful plain on the Starside which gradually ascended from the river. I saw immense quantities of buffalow in every direction, also some Elk deer and goats ; having an abundance of meat on hand I passed them without firing on them ; they are extremely gentle, the bull buffalow particularly will scarcely give way to you. I passed several in the open plain within fifty paces, they viewed me for a moment as something novel and then very unconcernedly continued to feed. 

May 5 --In the evening we saw a Brown or Grizzly bear on a sand beech, I went out with one man Geo Drewyer & Killed the bear, which was verry large and a turrible looking animal, which we found verry hard to kill. We Shot ten Balls into him before we killed him, & 5 of those Balls through his lights. This animal is the largest of the carnivorous kind I ever saw we had nothing that could weigh him, I think his weight may be stated at 500 pounds, he measured 8 feet 7 In! from his nose to the extremity of the Toe, 5 feet around the breast, i feet 11 Ins: around the middle of the arm, 3 feet 11 In! arround the neck his tallents was 4 Inches long, he was [in] good order, and appeared very different from the common black bear in as much as his claws were blunt, his tail short, his liver & lights much larger, his maw ten times as large and contained meat or flesh & fish only, we had him skined and divided, the oil fried up & put in Kegs for use. we camped on the StarSide, our men killed three Elk and a Buffalow to day, and our Dog cought an antilope a fair race, this animal appeared very pore & with young.

There were three beaver taken this morning by the party, the men prefer the flesh of this animal, to that of any other which we have, or are able to procure at this moment. I eat very heartily of the beaver myself, and think it excellent; particularly the tail, and liver.

Sent out some hunters who killed 2 deer 3 Elk and several buffalow ; on our way this evening we also shot three beaver along the shore ; these animals in consequence of not being hunted are extremely gentle, where they are hunted they never leave their lodges in the day, the flesh of the beaver is esteemed a delicacy among us ; I think the tail a most delicious morsal, when boiled it resembles in flavor the fresh tongues and sounds of the codfish, and is usually sufficiently large to afford a plentiful meal for two men.