Carnivore Diet

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The strangers were so well pleased in our society, that they showed no wish to leave us, and, when the market had quite ceased , they began dancing and playing with our people on the ice alongside : this exercise again set many of their noses bleeding (which at their first arrival we had observed to be the case) , and discovered to us a most nasty custom , which accounted for their gory faces ; and which was, that as fast as the blood ran down, they scraped it with the fingers into their mouths, appearing to consider it as a refreshment or dainty, if we might judge by the zest with which they smacked their lips at each supply. Some of the most quiet came on board the ship, and behaved very well ; while others walked quietly alongside, gazing occasionally at the men, but more frequently at some quarters of Old English beef, which were hanging over the stern, and had a most attractive appearance. 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. One  woman in particular attracted general notice by her unwearied application for presents, and by feigning to be hurt, and crying to excite compassion ; in which she no sooner succeeded, than a loud and triumphant laugh proclaimed the cheat. Of all horrible yells, this laugh was the most fiend - like I ever heard ; and her countenance corresponded with her voice. She had lost all her front teeth, with the exception of the eye-teeth; her mouth was plentifully ornamented by blue tattoo- lines ; and a vast profusion of black, straight, and matted hair, hung all round her head and face. At her back was an imp not more prepossessing in features than herself, and screaming itself black in the face . Although the countenances of the other young children were generally rather pretty than otherwise, yet, from their dress and man ner of walking, they might, without any great stretch of the imagination, have been taken for the cubs of wild animals ; particularly some who were laid for safety in the bottom of the women's boats, amongst blubber, the entrails of seals, &c. of which they were continually sucking whatever was nearest to them.

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. Towards midnight all our men, except the watch on deck, turned in to their beds, and 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, and with knives or fingers scraping the blood and grease which ran down their chins into their mouths. I walked quietly round to look at the different groupes, and in one of the women's boats I observed a young girl, whom we had generally allowed to be the belle of the party, busily employed in tearing a slice from the belly of a seal, and biting it into small pieces for distribution to those around her. I also remarked that the two sexes took their meal apart, the men on the ice, the women sitting in their boats. At midnight they all left us, so exhausted by their day's exertions, that they were quite unable either to scream or laugh . The men paddled slowly away, and the women rowed off with half their party asleep. A few went only to a piece of floating ice astern, where they lay down for the night, while the others made their way to the shore, which was about eight miles distant.

of sand or a light coloured barren earth, which is in many places wholly destitute of the least semblance of vegetation. 

In relation to the subsistence of men and horses, I will remark that nothing now is actually necessary for the support of men in the wilderness than a plentiful supply of good fresh meat. It is all that our mountaineers ever require or even seem to wish. They prefer the meat of the buffaloe to that of any other animal, and the circumstance of the uninterrupted health of these people who generally eat unreasonable quantities of meat at their meals, proves it to be the most wholesome and best adapted food to the constitution of man. In the different concerns which I have had in the Indian Country, where not less than one hundred men have been annually employed for the last four years and subsist altogether upon meat, I have not known at any time a single instance of bilious fever among them or any other disease prevalent in the settled parts of our country, except a few instances (and but very few) of slight fevers produced by colds or rheumatic affections, contracted while in the discharge of guard duty on cold and inclement nights. Nor have we in the whole four years lost a single man by death except those who came to their end prematurely by being either shot or drowned. 

In the summer and fall seasons of the year, the country will afford sufficient grass to subsist any number of horses in traversing it in either direction and even in the winter season, such is the nutritious quality of the mountain grass that, when it can be had plentifully, although perfectly dry in appearance, horses (moderately used) that partake of it, will retain in a great degree their flesh, strength, and spirits. When the round leaf or sweet-bark cottonwood can be had abundantly, horses may be win—

In recommending nutriment adequate to the increased demands of the system, it is not understood that stimulation also is indiscriminately advocated. ‘The object is not stimulation, but power, and that diet must be the best which is capable of imparting the greatest degree of vital power to the various textures, as well as to the blood itself. For this purpose, vegetable food, however nutrient, is very inadequate ; animal diet, on the contrary, stimulates the digestive functions, enriches the blood, invigorates the whole system, and, under judicious regard to existing circumstances, is unquestionably the most restorative of lost power. 

Animal and invigorating diet has been, it is true, generally deprecated in pulmonary cases ; and increase of fever, with aggravation of organic disorder, are usually apprehended as the result. ‘That this idea cannot be always well-founded, the above cases decidedly demonstrate. 

That in certain circumstances of pulmonary disorder injurious Consequences are to be apprehended from the liberal and indiscriminate use of animal diet, Iam ready to concede ; and also, that caution is necessary to adapt the kind and quantity to existing circumstances,—otherwise fever, disorder, and debility, will result, instead of vigour and health. But, on the other hand, I am convinced that, under groundless, or, at all events, mistaken fears of this kind, a system of exclusive abstinence is pursued to the certain aggravation of existing disorder, when a discriminating adoption of a system directly opposite to it is that which is indicated. 

On this point, an interesting feature in the last-detailed case merits attention :—the exacerbation of the cough and febrile symptoms shortly after the adoption of animal diet. ‘This is a result which I admit is of very frequent occurrence in circumstances of great general debility, and in proportion to the degree of debility. It has been usual to regard such an occurrence as highly unfavourable, and as an immediate urgent ground for withholding animal diet in future, and for having recourse to less stimulating vegetable preparations. I am disposed to view the matter in a different light. Knowing, on incontrovertible principles, that the constitution, in these circumstances, absolutely requires the nutritious and invigorating influence of animal diet, the symptoms in question cannot be owing to these properties, but necessarily are due to some other coexistent circumstance. This, | believe, usually consists of such disorder of the alimentary viscera, whether dependent on general debility and habitual organic atony, or upon existing depravity of secretions, as is incompatible with the adequate conversion of animal diet to its proper use. It lodges unreduced in the duodenum, irritating to morbid action that organ ; and as the various secretions have been deficient or depraved, the excitement of the circulating activity locally takes place without corresponding activity of the glandular function of the liver, and the other secreting actions connected with digestion, whence necessarily morbid local action and febrile excitement. To relinquish measures so essential to restore the constitutional powers on this account, is a mistaken course. Correct the existing disorder; stimulate the secreting functions of the liver and the other secretions ; promote habitually the alvine evacuations ; and perseverance in animal diet is no longer injurious, but beneficial, and what the very debility, indicated by the febrile exacerbations in question, urgently calls for. It is an interesting practical fact that, in such circumstances, the excitement of fever by the use of animal diet is generally in a degree moon to existing debility; and as vigour is regained by the use of that means, the febrile exacerbations in question are less liable to occur, and, when occurring, produce much less influence either on the constitution or on the local disorder. In chronic catarrh and mucous secretion of the bronchiz dependent on slighter pulmonic congestions, increased freedom of expectoration supervenes after every meal, and seems, in such cases, a favourable symptom rather than otherwise, indicating the beneficial effects of food in restoring and invigorating the system. When, as in the above-detailed case, the same disordered condition is associated with great general debility, increase of expectoration is naturally to be expected from the remission of chronic congestion under an invigorating diet ; and in such circumstances, being analogous to the critical expectoration in acute inflammations, is rather favourably symptomatic of returning vigour, than an indication for farther reduction of power. 

 These remarks by no means imply the propriety of adopting animal diet in all cases indiscriminately. Where, from existing disorder of the lungs or digestive organs, or from extraneous circumstances of impure air, the digestive power is materially impaired and counteracted, what good can be effected by administering food ? The injurious consequences supervening are naturally in a degree proportioned to existing debility and incapacity Sr digestive action. A just estimate of the digestive capacity is not less essential than a just estimate of the existing demands of the debilitated frame. 

The question naturally occurs, what was the real nature of the pulmonary disorder in the foregoing case? No evidence appearing of the existence of tubercles, the inference is, that the purulent expectoration proceeded from brochial secretion or ulceration. But regarding the attendant symptoms and the rapidly progressive decline of the powers, the result of porerarenes in abstinence and antiphlogistic treatment may e anticipated. As no criterion for judging of the existence of tubercles usually is afforded* farther than the symptoms manifested in this case, the practical deduction is, that an invigorating system of dietetics is now generally deserving of trial in sumilar cases. It may be objected that, however useful animal diet may be in chronic catarrh, purulent secretion, or even ulceration, this system of diet is not applicable to the case of tubercular ulceration.

The mountain man was a rugged individualist of whom Washington Irving wrote, "You cannot pay a free trapper a greater compliment than to persuade him that you have mistaken him for an Indian." In fact, he virtually had to become an Indian in order to survive. "A turned leaf," wrote George Frederick Ruxton in Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of wild animals, the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in Nature's legible hand." 

In addition to his other talents, the mountain man had to be a master of buffalo hunting, for meat comprised almost one hundred per cent of his normal diet--at least when in the buffalo country. As in everything else, he had to develop new techniques for "making meat." When hunting horseback, according to the traveler Rudolph Kurz, the hunters (those operating from fixed forts, at any rate) did not use long-barreled rifles because "they think the care required in loading them takes too much time unnecessarily when shooting at close range and, furthermore, they find rifle balls too small. The hunter chases buffaloes at full gallop, discharges his gun [a short- harreled shotgunk and reloads it with out slackening speed.

Buffalo meat has been called the greatest meat man has ever fed on. The mountain man usually boiled the outs from the hump, and roasted other pieces. He cracked the marrow bones to make "trapper's butter", or he used the marrow to make a fine thick soup.