Carnivore Diet

In the society of these Indians, there is a rigid apportionment of all labor. Upon the man fall the duties of hunting, fishing, and dog-mushing, and all matters related thereto; upon the woman fall all others. 

Of man's work, caribou-hunting comes first of all. Today, as much as ever before, it is upon this that the Indian's very existence depends throughout the major portion of each year. Trapping is an activity which engages him, if he has time. If he succeeds in harvesting enough pelts to exchange for necessities, such as ammunition, sled, dogs, and harness, he says " heap of skins " and is satisfied with these. If there is enough meat cached beside his tepee, thus permitting him to stretch out on his caribou-skin in the tent, he will smoke, eat, and sleep, and experience not the slightest prick of curiosity. 

Of caribou-hunting as it is carried on today I have already spoken; I shall here set forth briefly a few points covering the older methods. Not more than thirty years ago these were in general use, although fire-arms must surely have been introduced into the regions east of Great Slave Lake prior to this time. The older Indians still recall the days when the caribou were slain by means of spears and bow and arrow. Old Chief Marlo once told me about his hunting experiences with weapons of this type, and stated that with a three-foot how of good stout birchwood he could bring down a caribou at a range of between seventy-five and a hundred yards. Nor had he forgotten even then the art of shaping flint. He once showed me an arrow tip he had made, a remarkably fine piece of work. 

In former times hunting was carried on mainly in the narrow passes and at the habitual swimming-places of the caribou during the great spring and fall migrations. In the water the beasts were speared from birch-bark canoes, on land they were sometimes speared, sometimes shot. Mass slaughter was common. The Indians would slay as many caribou as they possibly could, cut out the tongues, and leave hundreds of full carcasses behind to rot. The senselessness of such wanton destruction never seemed to enter their heads. They were following in the ways of their fathers, they reasoned, and the country had always managed to feed them. 

When the herds had scattered, other methods of hunting were employed. To a large extent this took the form of hunting by dog-sled. By means of much shouting and howling, the game were driven either past an ambush of bowmen or into huge corrals. In accomplishing these devices use was frequently made of primitive fences — hedgerows of spruce or pine brush planted in the snow, coupled with stone barriers which would tend to deflect the fleeing game in the desired directions. Snares to entrap the caribou were also common up until comparatively modern times. The snares were made from thongs of caribou hide and were placed in the regular game trails in the forest.

During this period the musk-ox was also preyed upon by the Indians to a considerable extent. This species was plentiful and maintained its numbers as long as the natives had only their own weapons to use against it. The effect was otherwise with the introduction of fire-arms, for then the Indians' lust for killing was given full play. The mentality of the musk-ox was such that it refused utterly to flee from danger. As robust as a mountain, it challenged everything, and for the purpose of defense it had its " hollow square " — side by side, with lowered heads, these animals would form a fortress of powerful horns which no beast ever dared to attack. But the hunter armed with modern weapons could stand within easy range and mow these creatures down. A fair number of these rugged warriors of the Barren Lands still remain in existence, but theirs is a dying race, considering their original numbers. The musk-ox now enjoys complete protection, and a large region has been reserved for them in the Thelon Game Sanctuary. 

Compared with caribou-hunting no other quest for game, now as formerly, is of the least significance. During the long winter months there is no other food problem save that of venison. During the remainder of the year moose, ducks, swans, geese, muskrats, et cetera, come to the fore. And the Indian seldom allows a year to go by without tasting a beaver tail. Beaver-hunting sometimes calls for stalking, sometimes for the art of decoying. The Indian's ability to imitate the calls of the various animals is almost inconceivable. I have seen one of them cause a flock of wild geese to swerve from their course and alight on the surface of a lake directly in front of the hunter. 

The staple food of the Indian during the summer months is fish, but he finds this variety of diet acceptable only when no other is available. Hunting is his most honorable pursuit, and meat his proper food. All else seems to dwell on a lower level. It would be an easy matter for the natives to place a greater safeguard upon their existence by fishing beyond their immediate needs and storing up a reserve supply during the autumn. But such a type of activity is alien to their nature. The fish can swim by in solid phalanxes right under an Indian's nose, but he will do no more than throw out a couple of lines. He neither shifts nor disturbs his nets, merely pulls the ends far enough out of water for him to lift out what fish he can reach. There lies his seine week after week, drifting in wind and stormy sea, whilst slime collects in the meshes. All is well as long as he is able to make a fair catch from day to day. And what about the future? Good heavens, when the fishing season is over, the caribou will have arrived!

I have already spoken of the ways in which the edible portions of the carcass are prepared. I have mentioned how the fundamental principle is to seek first the fattest and most nourishing parts, and how the necessary variety of food is achieved by making use of marrow, heart, kidneys, liver, fat, stomach contents, cartilage of the larynx, brain, tongue, tooth-nerves, nose, blood, teats, horns in velvet, unborn calf, et cetera, boiling or roasting the above to no more than a superficial degree. Meat and every other kind of food are prepared and eaten without the addition of salt. The food is washed down with unsweetened tea. As a supplement to fresh food, there are dried meat and fat. The dried meat is often ground up between stones and preserved in pulverized form; when this is mixed with fat, the result is " pemmican," a product of modern Arctic research. 

Here, in a nutshell, is the secret of all Indian cuisine. These foods, as developed by a primitive people, not only make it possible for one to endure an exclusive diet of meat throughout eight months of the year, but also keep the Indians in excellent physical condition. During the meat months fresh cases of sickness seldom break out (I have never heard of a case of scurvy), and even the undernourished seem to regain their strength.

 Nowhere have I been able to discover that this excessive meat-eating has developed in the Indian a need for other forms of nourishment. If his meat-supply is adequate, for example, he will never go to the trouble of making a journey merely to procure flour; but it is a different matter if he finds himself running low on tea or tobacco! If it so happens that he is invited to partake of a civilized meal, he will eat a few mouthfuls and seem to enjoy the change. But on finishing he gives it no further thought and makes straight for the nearest kettle of steaming fragrant venison. 

The Indian people must have adopted an exclusive meat diet a great many years ago, and it may well be that their physical constitution has, to a certain degree, been modified by it. My own experience has been that the food of these Indians is both adequate and satisfying to the white man as well. The year I spent with the Caribou-Eaters, I nourished myself during about eight months of the winter by confining myself to the eating of wild game according to their principles. So long as I had venison enough to supply me with plenty of fat, I found myself in high spirits and noticed not the slightest indication of any kind of illness. On the other hand, whenever I was short of fat, I soon began to run down, could eat no end of meat without feeling satisfied, and became more susceptible to cold. I should like to mention in this place that, unlike most other white trappers, I neither used any salt nor missed it; I ate dried meat, dried fat, and raw marrow whenever I had the opportunity. This was food which I felt gave me ample and lasting strength to work, and on a cold winter's day a piece of bread and butter, smeared with cheese, was not to be compared with it. Naturally, one may have moments of weakness when one's thoughts wander off to a heavily laden dining-table, but these are probably due to nothing more than the remnants of old habit. 

It is a custom of the Indians to devour untold quantities of food during a meal, but, on the other hand, it is possible for them to endure hunger and terrific hardships for long periods of time without experiencing dire effects. This the Indian holds in common with the Eskimo dog. In this particular the difference between the Indian and the white man, and between the Eskimo dog and the more civilized breeds, is strongly marked.

The Indians' world of ideas is extremely limited and is confined, as it is reasonable to expect, to hunting and wilderness life. They know little about anything that lies outside their immediate sphere of existence, and they have not the slightest interest in improving their knowledge. It has therefore been extremely difficult for the spiritual impulses of the white race to make any impression upon these people. 

The ancient heathenish conceptions are combined to form an implicit faith in spirits resident in the various beasts of the forest, in the sun, wind, stars, et cetera. In many instances the exact influence of a particular spirit is somewhat vague. When a person falls ill, it is a sign that a spirit has got into him. The spirit must therefore be expelled by means of divers rites. In other cases it is important that one should avoid doing anything which might invoke the displeasure of a certain spirit, lest its vengeance be visited upon the entire tribe. Ideas of punishment and reward beyond the grave have no place in the belief of these Indians. The origin of man is interpreted, in terms of legends dealing with animals and spirits. There are further indications of a myth concerning a deluge which, at the dawn of time, inundated all the land. 

The Indians of today are moved by teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, whose rituals find great response in their souls. How deeply rooted their faith has become is another matter entirely. It is possible that the Indians, even with the advent of the new teaching, remain faithful to their old superstition; the following will possibly throw some light on this subject. 

Presumably the old rites are continued in secret. I do not make this statement from personal experience, but from the observations of white men who, for certain specific purposes, stand in direct contact with the natives. 

The old belief in souls incarnated in the bodies of animals may still be traced. The Indians thus believe that misfortune will result from the killing of such creatures as the raven, the wolf, the wolverine, and the dog, and they avoid such killings whenever possible. It would be a simple matter for them to harvest wolf pelts in the same quantity as do the white trappers, but they refuse to slay a wolf, although a bounty of thirty dollars per head is offered for these creatures. There are Indians farther west who will even go so far as to throw away their rifles in the event of killing a wolf. This same superstition is probably responsible for the ancient custom of abandoning the old and infirm in the wilderness as sacrifices to the beasts of prey. 

The common rule is that the bear, too, must be preserved. But here another thought appears to be involved, a thought based upon the conception of guardian animals, in whose bodies reside spirits responsible for man's well-being. No guardian animal must ever be slain, and no use whatever may be made of its pelts, above all by women, if misfortune is to be avoided. It is a known fact that the bear is not preyed upon east of Slave Lake. It is slain only when there is a definite food shortage or in self-defense. 

In this connection, I once heard a story of a white man married to an Indian woman. The wife had been poorly for some weeks and was showing no signs of improvement. She could not understand what ailed her, until one day the thought came to her that perhaps her husband had a bearskin somewhere in the cabin. She set about to look for it. Sure enough, up under the rafters she found the pelt of a bear cub. The manner in which these married people reached a final agreement, we may just as well skip over, but the result was that the bearskin went out the door, and the wife recovered the very next day from her illness. 

Amongst the tribes living along the Mackenzie River guardian animals are determined in a particular manner. When a young boy or a young girl attain a certain age, they betake themselves unaccompanied into the forest. There they build a fire and lie down beside it. Without taking any nourishment whatever, they sit there keeping themselves awake for two or three days, until at length, from sheer exhaustion, they fall into a deep slumber. The first animal they see in their dreams becomes their guardian beast throughout their lives. 

In connection with their belief in spirits incarnate in animals and in the elements, the Indians also have their legends. These are handed down from one generation to the next whenever the Indians are gathered together for some special occasion. The legends often have to do with the characteristics of the various animals and are fantastic explanations of how these characteristics came into being — how the beaver came to have a flat tail, how the lynx came to have a spotted coat, et cetera. As an example, I shall repeat the story of the man who snared the sun: 

One winter a hunter and his squaw were roaming about after the caribou. They had packed everything they had to their name in a deerskin which the squaw was dragging along behind her. Farther and farther north they proceeded, but the caribou were nowhere to be seen. At last they found themselves in the Land without Trees. Here it was bitterly cold and this cold increased as the sun sank lower and lower until at length it had almost reached the edge of the world. " Now we are losing the sun, and that means we shall freeze to death," they said to each other. In one way or another they must prevent the sun from disappearing altogether. So the squaw took the deerskin she was dragging along, cut it up into long strips, and made an enormous lasso. The man then cast the noose about the sun, drew it tight, and fastened the nether end to a huge stone. The sun was ensnared. That was the end of the cold, but in his haste the hunter had drawn too hard upon the lasso, so that now the sun was right over their heads like a glowing ball of flame. They had been on the point of freezing to death before, but now they were in danger of burning up. Their experience was so limited that they didn't know how to cut the rope, for the rock to which they had fastened it was directly under the sun, and it was so scorching hot there that no living thing could get near it. 

At this point a shrewmouse came up to them and asked why they were wailing so. They explained to the shrew their difficulty. " Could be worse," said the shrew, which then left them and dug a deep tunnel through the earth right up to the rock. There he poked no more than the tip of his nose up through the ground and gnawed the lasso in two. With that, the sun sailed off into the blue. But the shrew's front teeth were badly scorched and have been brown ever since that day. . . .

The Indians give expression to their superstition in diverse other ways. Often their notions have to do with hunter's luck, which must be safeguarded at all costs. Here the influence of woman is of the utmost importance. In many different ways she is supposed to drive the game in the direction of the hunter or to drive it away. 

Women are not permitted to have anything to do with hunting or trapping; they are forbidden to touch the family gun or to set foot in the hunting-canoe and under no circumstances may they paddle over a seine set in a lake — they must paddle round it. Even an article of dress which a woman has made use of may, in certain cases, bring about misfortune. For example, a hunter must be careful to refrain from placing himself beneath such an article and must under no circumstances accept such an article as a present. Once upon a time a starving Indian asked a white man married to a squaw for some clothes in place of the rags he had on. The white man felt sorry for the poor fellow, dragged a fine woolen blanket from the bridal bed, and handed it to him. Instead of thanks, the benefactor received no more than a volley of abuse for having been wicked enough to wish misfortune upon another's head. Strangely enough, the same Indian would not have hesitated an instant to come in contact with the same woolen blanket had the white man's squaw under a different set of conditions been alone beneath it. 

Since ancient times women during their period of menstruation have been considered as unclean and obliged to maintain a separate existence. Even today traces of this custom are observable east of Slave Lake, but, in so far as my own experience has determined, the custom is more general amongst the tribes living along the Mackenzie River. In certain localities women during this critical period are forbidden to use the door of the cabin. There is a hole in the wall just beneath her bunk, and through this aperture she must crawl in and out. Nor is she permitted to follow along the common trails. A trapper once told me that he had come across the tracks of one of these "unclean" women. Mile after mile they went through the deep snow alongside a well-packed sled-trail. 

Thus the Indian's world of ideas reeks with mystical superstitions, as is always the case with those striving to maintain their lives in the wilderness. Just how their mental outlook came to develop will be perhaps best understood by those who have themselves tried living up there in the north. When the sun stands shedding its warmth over the snow-fields for the first time after a long winter, and when the caribou begin by the million to flood the wastes which formerly lay empty and desolate, it may then well happen that each and every one feels within himself a sudden wave of that same heathenish feeling which first caused the Indians to bow down before the sun and offer up their praise to the god of the hunters.