Pemmican
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pemmican is a concentrated food consisting of dried pulverized meat, dried berries, and rendered fat. It was invented by the native peoples of North America, and widely used during the fur trade and later by Arctic and Antarctic explorers such as Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen as a high-calorie food. Properly packaged, it can be stored for long periods of time.
The specific ingredients used in it were usually whatever was available; the meat was often bison, moose, elk, or deer. Fruits such as cranberries, saskatoon berries were common, though cherries, currants, chokeberries and blueberries were also used, but almost exclusively in ceremonial and wedding pemmican.
The highest quality pemmican is made from lean meat and bone marrow fat; the pemmican buyers of the fur trade era had strict specifications.
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[edit] The Pemmican War
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. Pemmican was exported by the Métis not only to the Hudson's Bay Company, but also to the North West Company, the HBC's chief competitor that happened to be enjoying better success in the fur trade at the time. The proclamation led to the destruction, twice, of the chief Red River settlement of Fort Douglas by the North West Company, the destruction of the North West Company Fort Gibraltar by the HBC, and to the Battle of Seven Oaks, all in 1816.
[edit] Modern commercial usage
The brand name Pemmican currently refers to at least two unrelated ranges of food products in the United States. Both are marketed primarily for outdoor enthusiasts:
- A brand of beef jerky, based in Omaha, Nebraska and owned by ConAgra. Website: http://www.pemmican.com
- A range of high-energy food bars sold under the brand names MealPack and Bear Valley Pemmican by Intermountain Trading Co. Ltd. in Albany, California. These bars are baked from malted corn and barley (with no meat). Website: http://www.mealpack.com. Bear Valley Foods was threatened with a lawsuit over the use of the Pemmican name, by a multinational corporation (presumed to be ConAgra); however they were ultimately allowed to keep the name. [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Metis Nation in the Pemmican Trade
- Pemmican recipes - Nature's perfect food Recipes for pemmican with and without meat
- Bear Valley Pemmican American commercial producer of packaged Pemmican
