558 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



had enough dried meat in their haversacks to last until they could find 

 additional food in the civilized settlements. 



In the days before wheeled transportation, it was very important to 

 carry meat in some form that would not spoil and yet could be con- 

 veniently borne by travelers on foot or horseback. Even before re- 

 corded history began, swarms of warriors, traders, and travelers were 

 traversing the trade routes along the Mediterranean Sea — the famed 

 "Course of Empire." Wild food animals disappeared rapidly, and 

 farmers that dwelt along the highways could not raise enough cereals 

 or domestic livestock to meet the needs of the villages already in the 

 course of development. Ultimately, market centers grew up where 

 pastoral tribes, hunters, and farmers, operating in areas lying off the 

 trade routes, could bring their meats and grains for sale in a form the 

 wayfarer could use. Jerky was a prime market product. 



The practice of meat drying undoubtedly came to this continent by 

 the great migration across the Bering Strait several millennia ago. 

 It was the most convenient method of preserving meats, at a minimum 

 weight, that the Asiatic tribes reaching North America then knew. No 

 one can date the calendar for this event, but it was at least 40 to 60 

 centuries ago. Possibly the method of desiccation with which this 

 continent was acquainted had originated in several places but, because 

 it was so uniform among all the primitive tribes in America, it seems 

 likely that it sprang from one source. 



In the Western Hemisphere, dehydration of meat was practiced all 

 the way from the Arctic Circle to Patagonia. On the east coast of 

 South America, numerous Brazilian and Paraguayan tribes, including 

 those in the swamp areas, dried their seasonal meats over smoke. The 

 Portuguese explorers called this meat xarque ; the Spanish explorers, 

 char-qui; and the English, jerky. In North America the term jerky 

 was confined principally to the United States, with only slight usage 

 in Canada — probably adopted from the fur traders. 2 However, 

 Charles J. Lovell calls attention to the fact that references to pemmi- 

 can were in the literature of Canada as early as 1743 and 1772. 3 The 

 Mexicans used still another word, tasajo, which may be nearer the 

 original Indian sound, but now it cannot be identified. 



2 V. Stef ansson to author, February 16, 1955. 



* Charles J. Lovell to author, February 16, 1955, quotes James Ishman's Ob- 

 servations on Hudson's Bay, 1743, p. 156, Toronto, 1949, where it is called 

 "Pinimegan," and the Cumberland House Journal of the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany, September 23, 1777, which lists 2,924 pounds of beat meat, 1,720 pounds of 

 "Fatt," and 100 pounds of "Pimmacon." The first citation in print in England 

 is in the Oxford Dictionary in 1801, from Alexander Mackenzie, the great 

 Canadian explorer, and the first citation from an American source was from 

 the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804, though the dictionary purports to in- 

 clude only words that first entered the English language in the United States. 



