It was disagreeable work, and yet we were all, even to the smallest
girl, content to do our part, knowing that we were thus laying up food
for the future when it might not be possible to procure game, and when
all the stores we had brought with us from Pike County had been eaten.
The arms of the men who acted as carvers were stained with blood to the
elbows, while the hands and even the faces of the women and children
who carried the sliced meat to hang it on the framework of sticks, were
colored in the same way.
In addition to curing the meat in the sun and smoking it, some of the
men made what is called pemmican, a most disagreeable looking mixture
of flesh and fat which I afterward came to eat greedily, when we had
nothing else with which to satisfy our hunger.
Pemmican is made by first drying the very thinnest of thin slices of
meat in the sun, until they are so hard that it is possible to rub or
pound them to a powder.
A bag is then formed of the buffalo skin, and into it is packed
powdered meat sufficient to fill it considerably more than half full,
after which tallow is melted and poured into the bag until it can hold
no more. Then the entire mass is allowed to cool and harden. It is then
fit for eating, so father said; but mother, when the time came that
we were glad to have our portion of the stuff, always boiled it so it
might be served hot.
It is not appetizing to me, and because I have seen the mixture
prepared I can eat it only when I am very hungry.