Carnivore Diet

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.

They furnish Beaver, Martin, Wolfs, Pichou, Bear & Deer Skins, and have about 40 Traders among them. The Dar co tar (Dakota) or Suouez rove & follow the Buffalow raise no corn or any thing else the woods & praries affording a sufficiency, they eat Meat, and Substitute the Ground potato which grow in the Plains for bread.