448 REPOKT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



once as low as 2d. per pound, but in 1883 a very small quantity which 

 was brought in sold at 16 cents per pound. This was probably the last 

 buffalo peininican made. H. M. Robinson states that in 1878 pemmican 

 was worth Is. 3d. per pound. 



The manufacture of pemmican, as performed by the Red River half- 

 breeds, was thus described by the Rev. Mr. Bel court, a Catholic priest, 

 who once accompanied one of the great buffalo-hunting expeditions : * 



"Other portions which are destined to be made into pimikehigan, or 

 pemmican, are exposed to an ardent heat, and thus become brittle and 

 easily reducible to small particles by the use of a flail, the buffalo-hide 

 answering the purpose of a threshing-floor. The fat or tallow, being 

 cut up and melted in large kettles of sheet-iron, is poured upon this 

 pounded meat, and the whole mass is worked together with shovels 

 until it is well amalgamated, when it is pressed, while still warm, into 

 bags made of buffalo skin, which are strongly sewed up, and the mixt- 

 ure gradually cools and becomes almost as hard as a rock. If the fat 

 used in this process is that taken from the parts containing the udder, 

 the meat is called fine pemmican. In some cases, dried fruits, such as the 

 prairie j>ear and cherry, are intermixed, which forms what is called seed 

 pemmican. The lovers of good eating judge the first described to be very 

 palatable; the second, better ; the third, excellent. A taurean of pemmi- 

 can weighs from 100 to 110 pounds. Some idea may be formed of the 

 immense destruction of buffalo by these people when it is stated that a 

 whole cow yields one-half a bag of pemmican and three fourths of a 

 bundle of dried meat; so that the most economical calculate that from 

 eight to ten cows are required for the load of a single vehicle." 



It is quite evident from the testimony of disinterested travelers that 

 ordinary pemmican was not very palatable to one unaccustomed to it as 

 a regular article of food. To the natives, however, especially the Ca- 

 nadian royageur, it formed one of the most valuable food -products of 

 the couutry, and it is said that the demand for it was generally greater 

 than the supply. 



Dried, or "jerked" meat. — The most popular and universal method of 

 curing buffalo meat was to cut it into thin flakes, an inch or less in 

 thickness and of indefinite length, and without salting it in the least 

 to hang it over poles, ropes, wicker-frames, or even clumps of standing 

 sage brush, and let it dry in the sun. This process yielded the famous 

 "jerked " meat so common throughout the West in the early days, from 

 the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan. Father Belcourt thus described 

 the curing process as it was practiced by the half-breeds and Indians 

 of the Northwest: 



" The meat, when taken to camp, is cut by the women into long strips 

 about a quarter of an inch thick, which are hung upon the lattice- work 

 prepared for that purpose to dry. This lattice-work is formed of small 

 pieces of wood, placed horizontally, transversely, and equidistant from 



* Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, IV, p. 107, 



