60 



The Ottawa Naturalist 



[Vol. XXXII. 



things to recall to memory. As Sir George Back 

 wrote of Indian cookery on one of his extended 

 overland winter trips, good moose meat can hardly 

 be spoiled by any cook's treatment, and the same 

 applies to many other kinds of game as well. 



The Eskimo, even less than the white man, dis- 

 likes to be rationed, and when he has plenty of food 

 likes to eat heartily, without worrying about a 

 problematical shortage later on. Sometimes he may 

 have to feed caribou-skin robes and sleeping skins to 

 his dogs, or even eat them himself, but a period of 

 shortage usually comes to an end somehow. Native 

 "tanned" skins, merely broken and scraped soft, 

 when boiled soft and tender, probably contain as 

 much nutriment as an equal weight of meat or the 

 gelatinous attachments of the ordinary well-boiled 

 soup-bone, and eating boots or boot-material is not 

 really as bad as it sounds. 



a week, than those with a limited choice of food. 

 When one expects whitefish (or caribou) as the 

 piece de resistance, or perhaps the whole meal, three 

 or four times a day, it does not usually occur to 

 him to quarrel with it any more than with the thrice 

 daily bread of civilization "The full soul loatheth 

 an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter 

 thing is sweet." 



If the party is large and the pots are small, the 

 meals are often supplemented, prefaced, or finished 

 with a few strips of sun-dried or smoke-dried meat, 

 a side of ribs or a flat shoulder-blade set up to roast 

 beside the coals, and the long marrow-bones cracked 

 for dessert. Sometimes the marrow-bones are 

 roasted, but not often, for to the Eskimo cooking a 

 marrow-bone is like "painting the lily or gilding the 

 rose." In winter a piece of frozen raw meal very 

 often forms a part of the meal. 



Barren Ground C'ariliou: imkiv Mdml Ulver. N.W.T. 



On the land, the most important food animal in 

 most districts is the caribou. In a deer-camp there 

 is apt to be little food but caribou-meat ("tuk-tu" ), 

 as all energies are devoted to the caribou chase. 

 Boiling is the most general way of cooking meat, 

 the easiest manner of preparing large quantities, 

 cooked in a fairly uniform and thorough manner, 

 and if you are finicky enough to insist upon it, prob- 

 ably the cleanest way of preparing meat in a native 

 camp. Where meat and fish "straight" (i.e., with- 

 out other foods) form the steady diet, most people 

 find boiling the least monotonous style of cooking. 

 In this connection, it seems that people with the 

 greatest variety of food to choose from, are more 

 apt to say they are "tired" of a certain article, let 

 us say prunes three times a week or beans twice 



When the caribou are fat in the late summer and 

 early fall, and the hunters roam over the so-called 

 "Barren Grounds," while the early frosts are tinting 

 the bearberry leaves scarlet, the dwarf willows lemon 

 yellow, and the blueberry leaves purple, and the 

 keen pure air whets the appetite of the heavy-laden 

 packer, the open fire at night and the feasts of juicy 

 caribou-meat that properly go with it, are attrac- 

 tions not to be despised. 



On hunting trips, either summer or winter, the 

 Eskimo, expecting to move shortly, tries to get rid 

 of the waste as quickly as possible, using the bulky 

 and bony parts of the animal first. When hunting 

 for ships or white men in general, the natives 

 usually save the saddle (i.e., the pelvis with two 

 hams attached), which parts are more suitable for 



