Pemmican

The serious decrease in the number of buffalo, which has been observed year by year, threatens to produce a very disastrous effect upon the provision trade of the country; and the time can not be far distant when some new provision must be found to take the place of the old. We recollect very well when pemmican, which now can be procured with difficulty for one shilling and three pence a pound, could be had at two pence, and dried meat formerly costing two pence now costs ten pence. This is a fact which threatens to revolutionize in a manner the whole business of the territory, but more particularly the transport service of the company. The camp, which has for days been on the verge of starvation, after the return of the hunters from the chase becomes a scene of feasting and revelry; and gastronomic feats are performed which seem incredible to those unacquainted with the appetite begotten of a roving life, unlimited fresh air, and the digestible nature of the food. As with the daughters of the horse-leech, there is a continued demand for more, until the consumption of tongues, melting hump, and dripping ribs, bids fair to threaten the entire camp with immediate asphyxia. All night long the feasting continues among the groups formed about the camp-fires, and roasting, boiling, and stewing are the order of the hour. Were the supply certain to be exhausted on the morrow, the consumption would go on just the same, the improvident hunter entertaining no idea of reserving of present excess for future scarcity. Happily, the supply is abundant, for it sometimes happens that the carts are fully loaded with meat in a single chase. In that event, the major part of them are at once started homeward in charge of boys and the younger men, while the hunters follow up the herd to obtain a further supply of robes. A view of the prairie, after a run in which the acquisition of robes is the sole object, reveals the enormous waste of life which annually occurs. The plain for miles is covered with the carcasses of buffalo from which nothing has been taken save the hides, tongues, and it may be the more savory portions of the hump; the remainder being left to the wolves and carrion-birds. Should the first run fail to secure a sufficient supply of meat, however, the chase is continued until the complement is obtained, each hunter starting his carts homeward as they are filled.

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, and furnished the trade with a great part of its annual supplies of robes and furs. An enterprising and flourishing province is springing up about the site of the little colony of hunters, rendered all the more easy of establishment by the stability and wealth derived from the chase. But, unfortunately, the older nomads are crowded by this civilization. They belong to a race apart, and are scared by fences and enclosures, as if they confined even the free air within bounds and limits. Gradually they retire before it, following the buffalo closer and closer to the Rocky Mountains, until finally both will disappear together.

The Fat of the Land is a 1956 update of Not By Bread Alone, and I will review both here, as they appear to be identical, with the addition of commentary at the front of The Fat of the Land by Frederick J. Stare, Paul Dudley White, and the author, Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

Mr. Stefansson seems to have been quite a character, and led an interesting life of anthropology and arctic exploration. Many controversies surround the man and his actions, which led me to take his words with a grain of salt at the beginning. But his captivating writing style and generosity of spirit soon won me over. I don't know how accurate his interpretation of anthropology would have been considered during his lifetime, and how well it has stood the test of time - I think one should read many sources to formulate an opinion. But I found the various subjects covered in the book quite interesting. I especially enjoyed the chapter titled: "And Visit Your Dentist Twice a Year."

This book tells the story of the 1928 experiment conducted by the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology at Bellevue Hospital in New York and affiliated with the Medical College of Cornell University, in which Karsten Andersen and Mr. Stefansson ate essentially nothing but meat for one year, and how very well they fared on this diet - provided they had substantial amounts of fat as well as lean.

Two chapters of the book discuss scurvy, and give examples of people who became ill (and some who died) with it, in spite of having citrus fruit juice; whereas many traditional groups of people that rarely ate fruits or vegetables never encountered the disease. The author proposes that the necessity in preventing scurvy lay in obtaining fresh foods, whether meat or plant-based. (I am currently reading Weston Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, and he states that American Indians in northern Canada explained to him that eating small parts of adrenal glands of animals prevented the disease. And it looks like vitamin C was originally isolated from adrenal glands by Albert Szent-Györgyi.)

The last five chapters of the book tell everything one would probably ever wish to know about pemmican - originally a "travel food" made from dried lean bison meat combined with rendered fat; occasionally with berries added. Mr. Stefansson sings the praises of this compact and energy-dense food not only to his readers, but tells of his efforts to sway the United States military establishment to include it in rations for soldiers. After reading these chapters, I would like to try pemmican - also biltong, a southern African dried meat which the author mentions.

I first learned of this book in William Campbell Douglass's lively work, The Milk of Human Kindness . . . is Not Pasteurized, and had wished to read it for some time. Mr. Stefansson is also mentioned by Broda Barnes in his classic, Hypothyroidism - Unsuspected Illness; and the arctic explorer and meat-eater opens the first paragraphs in Nina Teicholz's wonderful new book: The Big Fat Surprise.

 

At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour, drove their quarry over a cliff and into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below. Author Jack Brink, who devoted 25 years of his career to “The Jump,” has chronicled the cunning, danger, and triumph in the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported. He also recounts the excavation of the site and the development of the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, which has hosted 2 million visitors since it opened in 1987. Brink’s masterful blend of scholarship and public appeal is rare in any discipline, but especially in North American pre-contact archaeology.