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Pemmican was a travel food made by Indigenous peoples of the North American plains: dried bison meat pounded to a powder and mixed with melted fat, sometimes with berries. It packed a lot of energy into little weight and kept for months.

Pemmican

FoodHistory

The story behind the card

The name comes from the Cree word pimîhkân, built on pimî, 'fat'. Drying removed the water that lets meat spoil, and sealing the powder in fat, often inside rawhide bags, kept out the air. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the fur trade came to depend on it: Métis hunters, people of mixed Indigenous and European descent, ran large bison hunts and supplied pemmican to the canoe brigades of the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company. In 1814 Miles Macdonell, governor of the Red River Colony, banned its export from the colony, which set off the conflict known as the Pemmican War. Later, polar explorers such as Amundsen and Shackleton took pemmican on their expeditions.

Türkçe oku
Pemmikan, Kuzey Amerika ovalarındaki Yerli halkların yolculuk yiyeceğiydi: kurutulmuş bizon eti dövülüp toz hâline getirilir, eritilmiş yağla, bazen de yabani meyvelerle karıştırılırdı. Az yer kaplayan ama çok enerji veren bu yiyecek aylarca bozulmadan kalırdı.

Adı, Kri dilinde “yağ” anlamına gelen pimî sözcüğünden türeyen pimîhkân'dan gelir. Kurutma, etin bozulmasına yol açan suyu uzaklaştırır; tozun yağla, çoğu zaman da ham deriden torbalar içinde kapatılması havayla teması keserdi. 18. yüzyılın sonu ile 19. yüzyılın başında kürk ticareti bu yiyeceğe bağımlı hâle geldi: Yerli ve Avrupalı karışık kökenli Métis avcılar büyük bizon avları düzenleyip North West Company ile Hudson's Bay Company'nin kano kafilelerine pemmikan sağladı. 1814'te Red River Kolonisi'nin valisi Miles Macdonell pemmikanın koloniden dışarı çıkarılmasını yasakladı; bu karar “Pemmikan Savaşı” denen çatışmayı başlattı. Daha sonra Amundsen ve Shackleton gibi kutup kâşifleri de keşif yolculuklarına pemmikan götürdü.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Pemmican
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