Hunting at High Altitudes 



the sacks held open, and rammed down and packed 

 tight with a big stick, every effort being made to ex- 

 pel all the air. When the bag was full and packed 

 as tight as possible, it was sewn up. It was then put 

 on the ground, and the women jumped on it to make 

 it still more tight and solid. It was then laid away 

 in the sun to cool and dry. It usually took the meat 

 of two cows to make a bag of one hundred pounds; 

 a very large bull might make a sack of from eighty 

 to a hundred pounds. 



"A much finer grade of pemmican was made from 

 the choice parts of the buffalo with marrow fat. To 

 this dried berries and pounded choke cherries were 

 added, making a delicious food which was extremely 

 nutritious. Pemmican was eaten either dry as it came 

 from the sack or stewed with water." Blackfoot 

 Lodge Tales, p. 206. 



The word pemmican comes from the Cree language, 

 the original term being pimikan, which is said by some 

 to mean a bag full of grease and pounded meat, or 

 by others to mean, manufactured grease. The root is 

 pimu or pimiy, which means grease. The work of 

 collecting grease by pounding up the bones of animals 

 into small pieces, boiling them and skimming off the 

 grease, which was then put in a vessel to cool, in 

 primitive days occupied much of the time of old 

 women. 



This is only one of a large number of Indian words 

 which have been adopted into the English as spoken 

 in the United States. 



16. Dr. Southworth. Dr. John W. Southworth 

 264 



