Food on the Frontier
The diet of mountain men consisted primarily of meat with as much as 5 to 7 pounds eaten at a sitting.
One method of cooking was in a kettle suspended from an iron tripod.
Food and water were number one priorities for a frontiersman. Skills necessary to find nourishment were essential for anyone venturing beyond settled lands.
Fur traders and trappers mostly ate meat. When necessary, they could subsist on vegetable material-digging tuberous roots and eating ripe berries like a bear. They didn't consider themselves well-fed, however, unless they had prodigious quantities of meat. Accounts of mountain men eating 5 to 7 pounds (2 to 3 kilograms) of meat at a sitting are not uncommon and certainly within reason. The meat of game animals is lean and large quantities are needed to provide enough energy for outdoor living.
Meat was obtained mostly by hunting, but also as a by-product of trapping. Boiled or roasted beaver tail was considered a delicacy. Most meat, however, came from hunting large game animals such as bison, elk, antelope and deer. Small game was less important because the amount of meat obtained seldom justified the effort.
Hunting or shooting an animal was termed "making meat" by mountain men. Actual hunting methods are beyond the scope of this unit. (Consult the Department of Conservation's units on Trapper Education and Hunter Education for more detailed explanations.)
Early cooking methods
Meat was processed according to its intended use. If it was to be eaten immediately, it was cooked (usually, but not always). The cooking methods most often used were roasting, boiling and frying.
Roasting
Roasting meant skewering the meat on an iron or green wood spit and suspending it over a fire. A good roasting fire had an abundance of coals and little flame. Meat was turned periodically for even cooking. On occasion, pieces of meat were simply tossed onto the fire. When done, they were pulled out, the ashes dusted off and the meat eaten. Since no skillets or pots were required, roasting was popular, especially among groups traveling light and fast.
Boiling
Meat was occasionally boiled in a kettle. Native Americans also boiled meat; however, they used a skin or rawhide bag suspended from a tripod until they acquired an iron kettle. A fire could not be used because it would burn the hide. Therefore, the water was stone boiled, a method of boiling by adding rocks heated on a fire located some distance away.
Frying
Bread was often made in a skillet.
In early accounts, frying is mentioned less often than roasting or boiling. Frying produces less cooked meat for the preparation time since meat must be in contact with the heated surface. Also, the leanness of most game meats may have discouraged frying. A skillet or griddle was mostly used to prepare breads such as johnnycake or bannock.
Uncooked
Trappers and traders did not always cook meat before eating it. Like the native Americans, they often snacked on morsels of raw meat and liver when cleaning game animals. While such a practice may seem repugnant to some and certainly carries health risks (parasites), neither Europeans nor native Americans seemed to suffer. The mountain man was not a gourmet. His slogan was simply "meat's meat." His lack of squeamishness about what he ate and whether or not it was cooked saved his life on many occasions. History is filled with tales of lost and injured people subsisting on lizards, snakes, insects and even carrion.
If you are contemplating wilderness travel, it is a good exercise to consider your food prejudices. Most are culturally based; however, under sur-vival conditions such prejudices need to be discarded.
Preservation of food
For added flavor, jerkey was made by drying meat over smoky coals.
If meat was not eaten immediately, it had to be preserved. The abundance of game varied and fresh meat was not always available. Meat to be stored was preserved in several ways: drying, smoking or salting.
Drying
For added flavor, jerky was made by drying meat over smoky coals. Meat sun-dried in long strips was called jerky. The strips, 1/4 - to l/2 -inch (.6 to 1.3 centimeters) thick by about 1 inch (2.5 centimeters) wide and up to several feet (decimeters) long, were hung from a wooden rack in a sunny place. After several days, they were leather dry and ready for storage. Sometimes drying meat was sprinkled with pepper to discourage insects.
Berries and roots were also sun-dried. In addition to preserving food, drying reduced the amount of water in the food and made it easier to pack and carry. A high-energy food, called pemmican, was made from jerky, fat and dried berries. It was made by melting fat and stirring into it shredded jerky and dried berries such as chokecherries, currants or blueberries. When the fat cooled and hardened, it was cut into bars and wrapped in rawhide. Ounce for ounce, pemmican is still one of the most high-energy food sources available.
Smoking
Smoking consisted of drying meat in the heat of a smoky fire. Green hardwood such as hickory, placed on a bed of coals, provided the smoke. Fish to be smoked were split and hung on wooden racks above the fire. Meat was treated as for jerky. Smoking not only retarded spoilage, it also added flavor. The modern backyard smoker comes from this primitive technique; however, with modern-day smoking, the intent is not to dry the meat. The process, therefore, is carried out in an enclosure that reduces moisture loss. For details on how to make and use a smoker, see Project 4.
Salting
Sometimes meat was packed in salt or a brine solution to preserve it. Large expeditions carried barrels of salted pork. The process of salt-curing is still used today.
Early fire building
bow and drill
flint and steel
Fundamental to most food preparation was a good fire. Since matches were not available on the frontier prior to 1840, other methods were used to light a blaze.
Native Americans and mountain men, during emergencies, used the drill and the bow-and-drill methods to start a fire. In simplest form, the drill was a hardwood rod held upright between the palms of the hand. The lower end of the rod rested in a shallow socket which was cut into a flat piece of hardwood. Tinder, in the form of dry grass, fine wood shavings or shredded bark, was crumbled around the base of the rod. The firemaker twirled the rod between his palms by rubbing his hands together. Friction of the rod against the hardwood block generated heat which made the tinder smolder. Once the tinder was smoking heavily, it was picked up and blown on until it burst into flame.
In the bow-and-drill method (see Project 3), a small bow replaced the hand twirling. The bow string was looped around the drill. A sawing motion of the bow made the drill spin.
Since these methods required only natural materials, they worked well during emergencies. When the Europeans arrived with their steel and iron goods, however, they brought a superior method of starting fires. Among every frontiersman's equipment was a small piece of hard steel and several pieces of flint. Striking the flint and steel together produced a shower of sparks. Sparks would catch in dry tinder or charred cloth and be fanned into flames. For details on making a steel striker and charcloth, see Projects 1 and 2.
Other foodstuffs
While the frontiersman's staple diet was fresh meat, other food was eaten. Dried beans, dried corn, flour and salt pork were supplies carried along with condiments such as salt, pepper and sugar.
Corn was often boiled to make chowder. Flour and cornmeal were used to create biscuits, johnnycakes and hard breads like bannock. Baking soda was used as a leavening agent, although some breads were unleav-ened. Sourdough, a culture of live yeast, also was carried as a leavening agent.
For beverages, the frontiersman drank mostly water, coffee and tea. Although he occasionally overindulged in hard spirits, these were not staple beverages. First of all, liquor was a valuable trade item with native American tribes. It was too difficult to transport to be squandered on self-indulgence. Second, the lifestyle of the trapper demanded alertness, physical stamina and quick reflexes. Drunkenness was simply not safe most of the time.
