top of page
History List
Schwatka addresses a dinner in his honor - "It was the first expedition wherein the white men of a party lived solely upon the same diet, voluntarily assumed, as its native allies. This fact, coupled with those already stated, shows that white men are able to live the same as Esquimaux in the Arctic"
Epilogue
October 28, 1880
Schwatka explains the Arctic diet. "When first thrown wholly upon a diet of reindeer meat, it seems inadequate to properly nourish the system and there is an apparent weakness and inability to perform severe exertive, fatiguing journeys. But this soon passes away in the course of two or three weeks. Our trip was also our first continued experience with a raw meat diet"
Summer on King William Land helps make Search Complete
September 5, 1878
Lieutenant Schwatka: "On June 15 the last of the hard bread was used and the time was now rapidly approaching when our diet would be a la Innuit until Camp Daly was again reached - some six months hence. Arctic aquatic fowl were now getting quite plentiful, and, to vary our monotonous diet of reindeer and seal meat, we secured many. "
King William Lord - Last Tragic Trail
June 15, 1879
The dogs, many of them old musk-ox hunters and with an appetite sharpened by hard work, and a diminishing ration, tugged like mad at their harnesses and hurried along at a rate that threatened a broken neck many a time over the rough gorges. We soon came upon them and dispatched ten, including calves.
The Long Sledge Journey Begins
May 3, 1879
Schwatka sets out on his journey to find the Franklin Expedition with 18 people, 44 dogs, 3 sleds, 15 guns, 4000 rounds of ammo while expecting to hunt meat for up to a year and live off a carnivorous diet. "Dependent as we would soon become upon the game of the country, we had fair reasons to believe such existed in sufficient quantities to support us and our dogs if our hunters were only vigilant."
The Long Sledge Journey Begins
April 1, 1879
Schwatka was annoyed at the Inuit superstition that different animals had to be butchered in different igloos due to two Gods antagonistic to each other, one ruling the seas and the other the land, and had to hold true allegiance to only one at a time. "When the reindeer hunting season is over the walrus and seal come into the Esquimaux market, completely excluding the reindeer, which from that date becomes forbidden fruit."
Last Visit with Whalemen - Preparation for Departure - Page 44
February 1, 1879
Lieutenant Schwatka "I found a great deal of scurvy prevailing among the ships and the large number of crews. The greater variety of animal life in the frigid zones over the vegetable (the latter having hardly an edible representative in the whole arctic flora) makes it the main dependence on which the polar voyager must rely to secure exemption from that disease."
Last Visit with Whalemen - Preparation for Departure
February 14, 1879
"In such manner has the work of the semi-annual hunts been conducted for over half a century, and in the same way will it continue, growing less in importance yearly, until the last buffalo shall have ceased to exist. Their importance the years gone by can hardly be overestimated. They have furnished the main support of a population numbering ten thousand souls."
The Great Fur Land - The Great Fall Hunt
August 2, 1867
"Pemmican forms the principal product of the summer buffalo-hunt, when, to preserve from decay the vast quantities of meat taken, some artificial process is necessary. Each bag weighs one hundred pounds, the quantity of fat being nearly half the total weight, the whole composition forming the most solid description of food that man can make. It is the traveling provision used throughout the Fur Land."
The Great Fur Land - The Great Fall Hunt
August 1, 1867
The Great Fall Hunt of the buffalo is depicted in which thousands of hunters charge into a massive herd and shoot them point blank. "The hunter pauses not a moment, but loads and fires with the utmost rapidity, pouring in his bullets at the closest range, often almost touching the animal he aims at."
The Great Fur Land - The Great Fall Hunt
July 27, 1866
"Two active hunters, taking in their hands the long lines of raw-hide, called "shagnappe," isolate a buffalo cow from the herd. Then, seizing either end of the line, they proceed to revolve about their victim in opposite directions, so entwining her legs in the folds of the cord as to throw her to the ground by the very struggles she makes to escape."
The Great Fur Trade - The Great Fall Hunt
July 10, 1866
The diets of the people in the Forts in the Rocky Mountains and the Arctic are shown to be mostly fish and red meat, but imported goods such as flour, sugar, vegetables, and fruits are considered rare luxuries. "In many of the extreme Arctic stations the supply of provisions is limited the year round to reindeer-meat, and fish, and not infrequently to the latter alone." However, "the climate favors the consumption of solid food, and, after short residence, the appetite becomes seasoned to the quality of the fare obtainable."
The Great Fur Land - Life in a Company's Fort
January 3, 1805
Dr Densmore explains the already common occurrence of vegetarians in 1890's America and mentions how if health is the doctor's primary duty, he must encourage the eating of meat. He mentions that those who attempt to live on bread and fruit without animal products end in disaster. "The flesh of animals...may be said to be a pre-digested food, and one that requires the minimum expenditure of vital force for the production of the maximum amount of nutrition."
How Nature Cures
January 2, 1892
Dr Emmet Densmore describes the rationale of the meat diet basing it on Dr Salisbury and Emma Stuart's recent work. "A good quality of beef or mutton, roasted or broiled, to the average stomach will be found quite easy of digestion. All persons who are at all corpulent, having more adipose tissue or fat than is natural, will find this diet of special value."
How Nature Cures
January 2, 1892
Dr Densmore promotes an "exclusive flesh diet" to cure obesity and comments how family doctors give poor advice.
How nature cures: comprising a new system of hygiene; also the natural food of man; a statement of the principal arguments against the use of bread, cereals, pulses, potatoes, and all other starch foods.
January 2, 1892
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."
The Savage Country
January 2, 1802
The full importance of pemmican is understood as a vital survival food that could last "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." Two pounds of pemmican was worth eight pounds of buffalo meat.
The Savage Country
January 5, 1802
"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 Canadian voyageur's appetite for fat meat is insatiable." Meat, fat, and pemmican were hunted and stored for long winters at fur trading camps, but some of them were supplemented with summer harvests or traded wild rice. Some even got fat by eating maple syrup.
The Savage Country
January 3, 1803
"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." The best fish was the whitefish.
The Savage Country - Rum, Women and Rations
January 2, 1802
The fur traders of the Nor West Company often faced starvation and hunger and would have to boil animal skins for nourishment. However, when even this was unavailable, they could eat herbs or a rock lichen called tripe de roche. When eaten in excess, it weakened the body and led to violent vomiting and acute spasms of the bowels.
The Savage Country - Rum, Women, and Rations
January 2, 1801
I have been eating the natural human dietary regime for over 47 years now. I do not eat anything whatsoever from vegetable sources. The only things veggie I use are spices. My diet is usually 60% fat and 40% protein by calories. I used to eat 80/20 when younger and about twice as much quantity of meat also, but that seems too much energy at my age, which is 71- even though I am very active
Owsley Stanley The Bear Forum Posts
January 5, 1958
"Long ago, when I was young, said Albert Iyahuk, "people were never sick." Now cancer and heart disease were common; one of the causes may be a partial change to Western food. Recent studies by scientists have shown "that the incidence of cancer [among Inuit] has increased significantly following westernization."
Arctic Memories - Return to Diomede
April 15, 1990
Ten walruses were dead. The men pulled the umiak onto the floe, patched the hole, and with amazing speed and precision cut up the 2-ton carcasses. Blood flowed everywhere; piles of steaming guts lay on the ice; men with axes cut heavy-boned skulls to remove the precious ivory tusks. Ivory and a sea of blood; it seemed the essence of the hunt. We loaded the boat to the gunwales with meat, fat, and ivory, and headed for Diomede.
Arctic Memories - Island Between Two Worlds
June 2, 1975
"What is the most important thing in life?" He reflected for a while, then smiled and said: "Seals, for without them we could not live." Seal meat and fat, raw or cooked, was the main food of most Inuit and their sled dogs. The high-calorie blubber gave strength, warmth, and endurance to the people; it heated them from within.
Arctic Memories
March 2, 1578
We lacked fat. The spring caribou were thin after their long migration and our main food, mipku, dried caribou meat, was leathery and lean. We ate pounds of it each day, yet were forever hungry. Living on an exclusive protein, fatless diet took its toll. We tired easily, and after a month developed the first signs of protein poisoning: diarrhea and swollen feet. As soon as we could supplement our lean-meat diet with fat fish, we felt fine again.
Arctic Memories
May 15, 1969
Bruemmer explains the importance of the caribou to the Inuit and reminisces about a hunting trip he took with them. "Caribou meat was eaten fresh, or cut into strips and air-dried for future use. Fat fall caribou, often killed far from camp, were cut up and cached, food for the coming winter."
Arctic Memories - The All-Purpose Caribou
April 15, 1967
"The general conclusion is that cancer patients, particularly those with a high level of blood sugar, should be put on a low carbohydrate diet which should contain little or no sugar."
Find Sugar is Fuel for Cancer - Develops Fastest Where Blood Has High Sugar Content - ADVISE DIET LOW IN CARBOHYDRATES
September 3, 1931
"Sugar was offered to many of the grown people, who disliked it very much, and, to our surprise, the young children were equally averse to it. The fatigued and hungry Eskimaux returned to their boats to take their supper, which consisted of lumps of raw flesh and blubber of seals, birds, entrails, &c.; licking their fingers with great zest"
The Private Journal of Captain G.F. Lyon, of H.M.S. Hecla
July 22, 1824
According to Caption Lyon, the Sadlermiut Inuit board the HMS Hecla and devour some beef, but refuse biscuits. "Some slices were cut off and thrown down to them , and these they instantly devoured with great satisfaction ; but they refused to eat the biscuit which was offered at the same time."
The Private Journal of Captain G.F. Lyon, of H.M.S. Hecla
July 21, 1824
The Sadlermiut were "discovered" in the summer of 1824 by the explorer Captain G.F. Lyon of the Royal Navy. 150 years later, a visit to this island found "Ashore were ancient stone houses, man-high cairns, box-like graves built of large flat stones, and everywhere masses of bleached bones of caribou, walrus, bowhead whale, and seal." The Sadlermiut were killed off by infectious diseases by 1902.
Arctic Memories
July 8, 1824
Settle says about the Inuit "Those beastes, flesh, fishes, and fowles, which they kil, they are meate, drinke, apparel, houses....[they] are contented by their hun∣ting, fishing, and fowling, with rawe flesh and warme bloud, to satisfie their gréedie panches, whiche is their onely glorie."
A true reporte of the laste voyage into the west and northwest regions, &c. 1577. worthily atchieued by Capteine Frobisher of the sayde voyage the first finder and generall With a description of the people there inhabiting, and other circumstances notable. Written by Dionyse Settle, one of the companie in the sayde voyage, and seruant to the Right Honourable the Earle of Cumberland.
March 2, 1577
Superb sea-mammal hunters, Thule-culture Inuit pursued and killed everything, from the small ringed seal to the giant bowhead whale, and, according to archaeologist Robert McGhee of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, they had evolved "a technology more complex than that of any other preindustrial society, which allowed not only an economically efficient but also comfortable way of life throughout arctic North America."
Arctic Memories
June 1, 800
bottom of page