Cut and Dried 
Preserving meat by drying it is a simple, prehistoric process 
by Raymond Sokolov 
After going 12 miles we were fortu- 
nate enough to find a few willows, which 
enabled us to cook a dinner of jerked elk 
and the remainder of the dogs pur- 
chased yesterday. 
The History of the Lewis 
and Clark Expedition, 
by Meriwether Lewis and William 
Clark, entry for April 26, 1806. 
Even the Indians whom Lewis and 
Clark met during their overland trek to 
the Pacific Northwest thought it dis- 
gusting that white explorers would eat 
dog meat. But fresh meat was some- 
times desperately scarce, especially to 
the west of the Continental Divide, and 
the Indian taboo against eating dog left 
many a cur for less fastidious visitors. 
Lewis and Clark’s other mainstay was, 
of course, shot game. But since they 
couldn’t refrigerate all the elk, deer, and 
buffalo they killed, they jerked it. 
Modem campers still carry strips of 
beef jerky with them on the trail. It is a 
light, compact source of protein with a 
long “shelf life,” and it is tasty. I had 
some in my pack this summer and en- 
joyed chewing it on the way up Tucker- 
man’s Ravine, the sheer glacial gouge 
that runs up to the summit cone of 
Mount Washington. Almost any coun- 
try store sells beef jerky over the counter 
these days, packaged in plastic for con- 
venient snacking. And from time to 
time, the alert consumer will chance 
Painting of rhea hunt by George Catlin. From the Mellon Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 
