THE AMERICAN BISONS. 193 



for, as indeed I have never tasted, finer beef than the buffalo meat, which 

 was almost exclusively used. Often at the hotel in Hays City, as well as at 

 other public tables in the buffalo country, have I heard the beef praised by 

 Eastern travellers, who frequently expressed their surprise at the excellent 

 quality of this article set before them. Often, too, in the same connection, our 

 Eastern traveller would ask about buffalo meat, whether it was fit to eat, 

 whether it was much used for food, and whether he would be likely to get a 

 chance to taste it in his journey across the plains. When told that he had 

 just partaken of it, that it was buffalo beef which he had been praising, and- 

 that it was the staple meat of the table throughout the buffalo country, 

 at the hotels and restaurants as well as in the hunter's camp, his surprise 

 amounted almost to incredulity, which only the strongest assurances would 

 remove. The age and condition of the animal, as already stated, has much 

 to do with the quality of the meat, and a more miserable semblance of food 

 could hardly be set before one than a steak cut from one of the old " lords 

 of the prairie." 



The tongue of even an old bull is always regarded as a delicate morsel, 

 and is often saved when no other part of the animal is touched. The hump 

 is generally considered to be next in delicacy and tenderness. A few hunters 

 killed buffaloes during the autumn months for the purpose of curing the 

 meat. The best pieces only, from young and tender animals, were selected, 

 and. when properly cured were fully equal to the best dried and smoked beef 

 found in the Eastern markets. A single hunter at Hays City shipped annu- 

 ally for some years several hundred barrels thus prepared, which the con- 

 sumers probably bought for ordinary beef.* 



Further northward, on the plains of the Saskatchewan, Assinniboine, Red 

 River, and Upper Missouri, large quantities of the meat were formerly made 

 into pemmican. In this form it proves invaluable to the Northern voyagews 

 and trappers, of whose commissariat it formed the chief resource. Hind 

 states that the Hudson's Bay Company formerly obtained from the Plain 

 Crees, the Assinniboines, and the Ojibways, pemmican and dried meat to 



* Dr. Richardson's testimony respecting tlie quality of bison meat is as follows : " The Mesh of die bison, 

 in good condition, is very juicy and well flavored, much resembling that of well-fed beef. The tongue is 

 deemed a delicacy, and may be cured so as to surpass in flavor the tongue of an English cow. The hump 

 of flesh covering the long spinous processes of the first dorsal vertebrae is much esteemed. It ... . has a 

 fine grain, and when salted and cut transversely, it is almost as rich and tender as the tongue." — Fauna 

 Boreali-Americana, Vol. I, p. 282. 



