Aboriginal hunters were driving buffalo over steep riverbanks in the Hartney, Lauder and Melita areas along the Souris River in Manitoba. But by the 1860s, only scattered individual animals could be found in the Souris River Valley, where once there had been hundreds forming a single herd. The carnage wrought upon the buffalo was not the direct result of aboriginal survival requirements – the buffalo and natives had shared the plains for thousand of years without an appreciable drop in the animal’s population – but the commercial demand for hides and meat converted into pemmican.
For aboriginal hunters, virtually all parts of the animal were useful. Meat was cut from bones using stone or bone knives held in wood or bone handles. Some of the meat was immediately consumed, but most was made into pemmican.
Daniel, a North West Company fur trader who spent five years in the Swan River and Assiniboine River regions of Manitoba in the early 1800s, described the butchering of a buffalo: “The Natives generally cut up the body of an animal into eleven pieces, to prepare it for transportation to their tents, or to our forts. These pieces are the four limbs, the two sides of ribs, the two sinews on each side of the back bone, the brisket, the croup, and the back bone. Besides these, they save and use the tongue, heart, liver, paunch, and some part of the entrails. The head, they carry home, the meat which is on it they eat; and the brains they rub over the skin, in dressing it.”
Using special tools hafted into bone or wood handles, buffalo skins were scrapped free of tissue and fat. If the hide was to be used as a robe, the hair was left intact. Otherwise, the hair was removed and the hide tanned into leather for the making of clothing, footgear, pouches and bags. The “thread” for sewing the latter articles was provided by buffalo sinew, the tough fibrous tendons split into thin strands.
Bison bones were another valuable commodity. Large fragments of limb bones were sharpened and used for cutting and butchering. Other pieces could be fashioned into awls and used to pierce hide when sewing. Barbed tips for fishing spears were made from bone. The outer covering of bison horns became cups and ladles, and hooves were boiled to make glue.
Since they are rich in fatty marrow, the bones were smashed open and the marrow extracted for consumption. Most of the discarded bones were which were boiled with water in pottery, bark or leather cooking vessels. As the fat from the bones rose to the surface of the liquid, it was scooped off into a container. This “bone grease” or “butter” was used to flavour other dishes and with the other fat from reserves from buffalo, became a major component of pemmican.
Today, we may cringe at the thought of consuming such a fat-filled diet, but in the context of the plains, fat was essential for the survival of aboriginal people and early European settlers, explorers and fur traders – lean-meat animals were invariably shunned unless intense hunger led to desperation. When hunting buffalo, aboriginals intentionally targeted the plumpest animals – cows preferred – which in turn, had the most fat content.
Fur trader Alexander Henry wrote in 1808, “Small openings are left (in the buffalo pounds) to admit the dogs to feed upon the carcasses of the bulls, which are generally left as useless.”
The bull’s usefulness resulted from having little of the energy-rich tissue to satiate the craving for fat.
“Despite their smaller size,” according to Jack Brink, cows have a greater absolute weight of fat than makes do, for most of the year. This is a characteristic of females in many species (again including our own); reproduction requires greater fat reserves for energy, and since the females have to carry and nurse the young, they are genetically disposed to have greater fat reserves..Aboriginal bison hunters learned this lesson thousands of years ago.
Brink related the story of American artist George Catlin, who singled out and shot the biggest bull only to suffer ridicule and laughter from the rest of his party “for having aimed at an old bull, whose flesh was unsuitable for food.”
The only time of the year Metis and natives intentionally hunted bulls was in the spring and early summer when they were generally fatter than cows coming off stingy winter grazing.
