Pioneers in Canada

by Harry Johnston

The Amerindians of the regions west of the Rocky Mountains made kettles or cooking vessels out of blocks of "cedar" (Juniper) wood; east of the Rocky Mountains the birch-bark kettle was universal. Of course these vessels of wood or bark could not be placed on the fire or embers to heat or boil the contents, as was possible with the "kettles" of stone or the cooking pots of clay. So the people using them heated the water in which the food or the soup was boiled by making stones red-hot in the fire and then dropping them into the birch-bark or cedar-wood tubs. Many of the northern Indians got into the way of eating their food raw because of the difficulty of making a fire away from home.

In regard to food, neither Amerindian nor Eskimo was squeamish. They were almost omnivorous, and specially delighted in putrid or noisome substances from which a European would turn in loathing, and from the eating of which he might conceivably die.

It was only in the extreme south of Canada or in British Columbia (potatoes only) that any agriculture was carried on and that the natives had maize, pumpkins, and pease to add to their dietary; but (as compared to the temperate regions of Europe and Asia) Nature was generous in providing wild fruits and grain without trouble of husbandry. The fruits and nuts have been enumerated elsewhere, but a description might be given here of the "wild oats" (Avena fatua) and the "wild rice" of the regions of central Canada and the middle west. The wild oats made a rough kind of porridge, but were not so important and so nourishing as the wild rice which is so often mentioned in the stories of the pioneers, who liked this wild grain as much as the Indians did.

This wild rice (Zizania aquatica) grew naturally in small rivers and swampy places. The stems were hollow, jointed at intervals, and the grain appeared at the extremity of the stalk. By the month of June they had grown two feet above the surface of the shallow water, and were ripe for harvesting in September. At this period the Amerindians passed in canoes through the water-fields of wild rice, shaking the ears into the canoes as they swept by. The grain fell out easily when ripe, but in order to clean it from the husk it was dried over a slow fire on a wooden grating. After being winnowed it was pounded to flour in a mortar, or else boiled like rice, and seasoned with fat. "It had a most delicate taste", wrote Alexander Henry the Elder.

Fish was perhaps the staple of Amerindian diet, because in scarcely any part of the Canadian Dominion is a lake, river, or brook far away. In the region of the Great Lakes fish were caught in large quantities in October, and exposed to the weather to be frozen at nighttime. They were then stored away in this congealed state, and lasted good—more or less—till the following April.

Pemmican—that early form of potted meat so familiar to the readers of Red-Indian romances—was made of the lean meat of the bison. The strips of meat were dried in the sun, and afterwards pounded in a mortar and mixed with an equal quantity of bison fat. Fish "pemmican" was sun-dried fish ground to powder.

A favourite dish among the northern Indians was blood mixed with the half-digested food found in the stomach of a deer, boiled up with a sufficient quantity of water to make it of the consistency of pease porridge. Some scraps of fat or tender flesh were shredded small and boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable they had a method of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch itself, and hanging it up in the heat and smoke of the fire for several days—in other words, the Scotch haggis. The kidneys of both moose and buffalo were usually eaten raw by the southern Indians, for no sooner was one of those beasts killed than the hunter ripped up its belly, snatched out the kidneys, and ate them warm, before the animal was quite dead. They also at times put their mouths to the wound the ball or the arrow had made, and sucked the blood; this, they said, quenched thirst, and was very nourishing.

The favourite drink of the Ojibwé Indians in the wintertime was hot broth poured over a dishful of pure snow.

The Amerindians of the Nipigon country (north of Lake Superior) and the Ojibwés and Kris often relapsed into cannibalism when hard up for food. Indeed some of them became so addicted to this practice that they simply went about stalking their fellow Indians with as much industry as if they were hunting animals. "These prowling ogres caused such terror that to sight the track of one of them was sufficient to make twenty families decamp in all the speed of their terror" (Alexander Henry). It was deemed useless to attempt any resistance when these monsters were coming to kill and eat. The people would even make them presents of clothes and provisions to allow them and their children to live. There were women cannibals as well as men (see p. [171]).

As the greater part of their food came from the chase, and their only articles of commerce likewise, they devoted themselves more entirely to hunting and fishing than to any other pursuit. The women did most of the fishing (and all the skin-curing for the fur market and for their own dress), while the men pursued with weapons the beasts of the chase, trapped them in pitfalls or snares, or drove them into "pounds" (excavated enclosures).