Pemmican

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Pemmican is a concentrated food consisting of dried bison, moose, elk, or deer meat, pounded into a powder, and mixed with dried berries and rendered fat. The very best pemmican was made from lean meat and bone marrow fat. The dried fruit was frequently saskatoon berries.

It was invented by the Native peoples of eastern North America, and widely used in the fur trade as a high-calorie food that could be stored for long periods of time.

To conserve scarce food, in 1814 Governor Miles Macdonell of Assiniboia (or Red River Colony) forbade, in the Pemmican Proclamation, the export of pemmican from his jurisdiction. However, the founder of the colony was the chief shareholder of the Hudson's Bay Company, while pemmican was exported by the Métis to the North West Company, the Hudson's Bay Company's chief competitor. The proclamation led to the destruction, twice, of the chief Red River settlement of Fort Douglas by the North West Company, and to the Battle of Seven Oaks.