When fresh, pemmican has a waxy, gritty texture and a fatty, beefy flavor. While pemmican can store indefinitely if kept dry, its flavor does not improve with age.

Pemmican is a food made of a mix of dried meat and fat. As George Colpitts notes in his book, Pemmican Empire: Food, Trade, and the Last Bison Hunts in the North American Plains, 1780-1882, the name came from the Cree word pemigan and means “he makes grease.” The grease came from bone marrow and was mixed with harder fats by Native Americans to produce traditional pemmican, sometimes referred to as sweet pemmican.

Two types of pemmican were commonly made foods. Sweet pemmican consisted of a mixture of more palatable fats, including bone marrow grease and unsaturated fats, which made it softer and more palatable than its more prolific counterpart, trade pemmican. It was prepared with care using the best meat and fat. Dried fruit was sometimes mixed into it. For instance, in the Red River Valley, the highbush cranberry, also known as the Pembina berry, would have been added.

Trade pemmican, by contrast, was a hurriedly mass-produced food made by Euro-American and Métis fur traders from whatever was most accessible. It contained more saturated fats and was thus much harder. It often contained other ingredients such as fur, bits of bone, or even bark, which inadvertently found their way into the mix during processing. Despite its rough and unappealing taste and texture, the calories packed into every pound of pemmican helped to drive the fur trade.

Fur traders first came to Pembina in the 1790s to hunt beavers. By 1804, they switched to hunting bison for meat and making pemmican to feed fur traders who operated in the far north of Canada. The Métis quickly took over the pemmican industry, dominating in the middle 19th century with their annual bison hunts at Pembina and Walhalla, then called St. Joseph. Pemmican was so important to feeding people working and living in the Red River Valley that in 1814 the Pemmican War broke out between competing fur trade companies and their allies when the governor of the British territory of Assinaboia (modern southern Manitoba and the Red River Valley) tried to forbid its export. The pemmican trade, like much of the industrial fur trade, ended when bison herds were hunted to near extinction in the late 19th century, a problem exacerbated in part by intensive bison hunts of the Métis pemmican trade.

Despite reading about pemmican in the accounts of many writers who described it in varying degrees of admiration or derision, I still didn’t know what it tasted or looked like. So I embarked on some experimental archaeology to find out. Having no easy access to bison bones, I made a version of trade pemmican, though I left out the fur and bark. I used beef fat since the butchers near me did not carry bison fat. Though bison was historically the most common meat base, pemmican can be made with the meat and fat of any animal, even wild game or fish.

I started with dried bison, which to me tasted almost flavorless but slightly gamey. Adding some beef fat, the dish tasted like fatty ground beef with only a hint of the bison, but the texture is that of a wax candle mixed with gravel. That may not sound appealing, but at almost 4,000 calories per pound, pemmican couldn’t be beat as a source of shelf-stable nutrition in the 19th century.

Two pounds of raw meat and a ½ pound of suet. The meat will reduce to a quarter of its weight when dried, leaving ½ pound of dried meat and ½ pound of suet for 1 pound of pemmican.

If you are up for an adventure and want to make your own pemmican, you’ll need only two or three ingredients:

• 2 pounds of raw meat (bison or beef), as lean as can be found
• ½ pound of suet or fat (bison or beef)
• 1 cup of finely chopped dried fruit (optional)

Begin by cutting the meat into strips as thin as possible. Cut against the grain to make the meat dry faster and easier to pulverize later. Lay the cuts of meat on a wire rack. Place the rack on a baking sheet to catch any errant fat drips.

Cut against the grain to dry the meat faster and make it easier to grind.

Set your oven to the lowest possible temperature—for me that was 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake the tray of meat in the oven for 10 to 12 hours. The historical method of drying meat was to hang it outside in the sun for one or two days. The hot sun and prairie winds would desiccate the meat and dry it into jerky. Smoke and fire were sometimes employed to aid the drying process. A more hygienic option is to use an oven or dehydrator.

The dried meat should be brittle and tear apart easily. Place the dried meat in a food processor or blender and use the pulse setting until the meat is mostly ground into a stringy powder; a few remaining small chunks are fine. The longer you process the meat, the finer it will become, which will improve the texture of the final product. If you are including dried fruit, now is the time to mix it thoroughly into your ground meat.

Grind as fine as you wish. Sweet pemmican would have been made with meat pounded into a literal powder. Trade pemmican would have been rougher, which is what I ended up making here.

Next render the fat in a saucepan over medium-low heat. With a metal strainer or spoon, remove any chunks that do not melt so only liquid fat is left. Pour the fat mixture over your ground meat and begin mixing it together with a spoon. Once cool enough to touch without burning your hand, begin mixing by hand to cover everything thoroughly in fat. It is best to wear gloves while mixing. After mixing, but before the fat has set, you may choose to pour your pemmican into a muffin tin or other shaped dish. Let the mixture rest until it has fully hardened.

Pemmican when kept dry has a shelf life measured not in months or years but in decades, though added fruit will shorten it. Historically, pemmican was stored in bags made of bison hide with the seams sewn with rawhide and coated in tallow to keep air and moisture out. A freezer bag or plastic container will suffice to store your pemmican. You may choose to refrigerate your pemmican, but it is not necessary. I made a bag from rabbit fur purchased at the Pembina State Museum store, and my pemmican has kept without refrigeration for over a year. The pemmican is still gritty and a bit unpleasant to my taste buds but completely edible and should remain so for many years.

For added flare, I bought a rabbit fur and sewed it into a pocket to more authentically store my pemmican. You may prefer a plastic freezer bag.

I cannot count all the ways people can send an electronic message to one another these days. Email, text, Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn, Teams, Zoom, Twitter, direct message—the list seems endless. Even the once exalted method of the telephone has receded into a dim, distant place behind these other forms of messaging. People now regularly text me to see if I am able or willing to take a call. While most days I don’t feel particularly old, I fondly remember dial phones and the excitement of coming home to a blinking answering machine light! That all seems like ancient technology to me now.

On a personal level, I rarely see regular mail these days. I get forms and reports for review at the office, but personal mail is mostly just bills and junk punctuated a couple times a year with holiday or birthday cards. Truth is, I have received very few handwritten letters in the mail lately. But when I do get them, I treasure them. Before I came to the State Historical Society, I found that writing to other people the old-fashioned way—with paper, pen, and in cursive—brought me great joy. It turns out that it brought much happiness to the recipients of those letters as well. A couple of my friends confided that the letters meant more to them than I could have imagined.

My letter-writing habit got me thinking about stationery. I often used blank note cards or plain paper. But I wondered if something slightly more personalized might also fit the bill when it came to designing my director’s letterhead. I believe that answers to most of our issues in life can be found by looking back at our history. Most people think of archives as simply a way to source the past, but our State Archives contain thousands of examples of the very best historical graphic design as well. To this end, I asked Sarah Walker, head of reference services, for examples of stationery in our collections. Walker and Lindsay Meidinger, head of archival collections and information management, then served as sounding boards as I sifted through many samples. Just as I had suspected, I was richly rewarded with a plethora of beautiful, artistic, elegant, and professional examples of stationery that made me long for the days past when we communicated with each other by setting pen to paper and writing. TBH, BTW, NGL, those were the days—the days before we communicated primarily in emojis and acronyms! SMH.

A couple of the best examples I found included the stationery of the Lesmeister & Son Automobile Garage in Selz, North Dakota. I loved the graphics in this one with the old cars and the color. It just hollers “adventure.” I also liked the work on the Dakota Territory Centennial Commission stationery and other examples of company stationery that highlighted the organization’s officers. The Bismarck Diamond Jubilee graphic used the original streetscape of historic Bismarck to cleverly cast a shadow of the future Bismarck. What brilliant graphic design and use of color in that one! The steamboat and subtle other nuances in that letterhead caused my gaze to linger. Many businesses’ letterheads contained renderings of their buildings, indicating a great source of pride by the sender in the places they worked.

Lesmeister & Son Automobile Garage stationery, circa 1918. SHSND MSS 11354

Stationery made for Bismarck’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1947. SHSND MSS 11354

Dakota Territory Centennial Commission stationery, 1961. SHSND MSS 11354

After looking at a few of these, Dannie Dzialo, a talented graphic artist who also works in the State Archives, and I sat down to discuss things we liked or didn’t like about the archived stationery. Reference staff also weighed in on what was attractive to them. And then we thought about a few things that are important to me. After some back and forth, Dzialo submitted the finished letterhead, which includes images of the state Capitol and ND Heritage Center & State Museum as well as the names of the agency’s departmental directors, people with whom I am honored and proud to be associated. These elements are mixed with a few others that have deep meaning to me, including, of course, my faithful Labrador retrievers and a steamboat, an expression of my early love of maritime and North Dakota history. 

My new director’s stationery reflects my love of North Dakota history as well as other elements from my past with deep meaning to me.

In past blog posts, I gave a sneak peek at the initial processing lab and the main archaeology lab. Today, let’s take a tour of the big archaeological collections storage room.

Comparisons have been made to the warehouse at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”—but don’t worry, we have much better finding aids. We want people to be able to find the artifacts in the big archaeological collections storage room and use them for research, exhibits, and educational events.

This room was designed to hold at least 20 years of future incoming collections and related materials, with moveable shelving adding extra storage space. This gives us room to store large, oversized objects not currently on display, like this earthlodge model.

This large model of an unfinished rectangular earthlodge shows how it was constructed.

In this room we keep educational, federal, and state collections as well as accession paperwork and storage supplies.

The archaeological educational collection is one of my favorite collections to show people. You don’t just get to peer at items in this collection from afar—you can touch, hold, and look closely at them.

Some objects in the educational collection are replicas, objects that were made recently but from the same materials people used in the past. Because things like wood, hide, and sinew usually do not last long in North Dakota’s environment, replicas are often the only way to show objects made from these materials. For instance, the wooden paddles that were used to shape pottery.

Replica wooden pottery paddles and pottery sherds from the educational collection.

Sometimes replicas are used for experimental archaeology. Experimental archaeology involves using the same kinds of tools used in the past to learn more about how something was done, such as making stone tools. Replicas are often used so the original artifacts are not damaged or destroyed in the process.

A replica flintknapping kit for making stone tools. From left: a leather pad, a stone abrader, a deer antler tine flaker, a hammerstone, and an elk antler billet.

Other objects in the educational collection are cast replicas. Casts are made from a mold or 3D scan of a real artifact. This is useful for artifacts that are too fragile or rare to handle, or for artifacts that come from places outside of North Dakota. Only North Dakota collections are currently accepted into the archaeology collections. But sometimes it is useful for researchers to have access to comparisons from other places. This projectile point is a synthetic cast of a real Paleoindian projectile point from the Mill Iron site in Montana.

A realistic cast replica of a Goshen Paleoindian projectile point from the Mill Iron site in Montana.

The real artifacts in the educational collection have little or no provenience (i.e., we do not know exactly where they are from or what was found around them). While this means they are not very useful for scientific study, they are still useful for learning about objects and material types. Many of these artifacts are donated.

Examples of real artifacts with low provenience. Even though such artifacts might not be scientifically studied, they are very useful for training volunteers and staff to identify different kinds of materials in collections.

Collections from federal lands in North Dakota are kept in this room. We help curate North Dakota’s federal collections for the U.S.  Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

This is just part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s North Dakota collections!

Artifacts from projects on state, county, or municipal lands are also stored here, in addition to donations from private landowners.

These boxes hold artifacts from Fort Abraham Lincoln (32MO141) and are part of North Dakota’s state collections.

Filing cabinets and storage supplies might not be too exciting to look at, but they are important. These are the accession files. Accession files tell us who donated a collection or what federal agency owns the collection and where the artifacts came from.

These accession files might not look exciting, but they hold treasures of information, such as where collections come from and who donated them.

Storage space for supplies means we can continue moving North Dakota’s collections out of old acidic boxes and into better materials to preserve the artifacts for the future.

Archival boxes ready and waiting to be put to good use.

If you would like to schedule an in-person tour of the archaeology collections, please contact us.

If your Spidey senses are tingling, it may be because Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross is coming to the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum. The traveling exhibition, developed by the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County, Illinois, will bring the gravity-defying world of Marvel Comic illustrations to Bismarck from March 16 through June 9, 2024.

Spider-Man, Marvelocity Cover, 2018

The exhibition includes more than 50 original illustrations, including cover art, storyboards, preliminary drawings, sculptures, and even a set of homemade action figures fashioned by Alex Ross when he was a child in Lubbock, Texas.

Ross is a prolific and award-winning illustrator, writer, and fine artist. He created his first cartoon at age three after seeing a live action Spider-Man sequence on “The Electric Company” television program. As a teenager he carefully studied the visual techniques of comic book and graphic novel artists before following in his mother’s footsteps and studying at the American Academy of Art in Chicago.

In 1990, Ross’ first published comic book illustrations appeared in Now Comics’ “Terminator: The Burning Earth.” His initial Marvel cover art was printed in 1993. Ross’ work in the 1990s was primarily for DC Comics. Beginning in 2000 he became more closely associated with the world of Marvel.

Dr. Strange, Marvelocity Cover, 2018 

His work is now synonymous with the images of the Avengers, Captain America, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel, Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, and many, many other superheroes.

The fantastical world Ross creates lives outside human parameters, allowing him to push his visual representations of superheroes into a dramatic realm even beyond the limitations of computer-generated imagery (CGI). His characters are monumental and epic in scale, enhanced by exploding compositions that burst from the page. Ross works in the medium of gouache, an opaque watercolor. It allows for layering colors and is popular with commercial artists for its precise control and matte finish.

In 2018, Ross created a new series of cover images as part of a publication project documenting his career with Marvel. These illustrations form the Dunn Museum’s Marvelocity traveling exhibition and feature his signature hyperrealist style and dynamic poses.

Captain America, Marvelocity Cover, 2018

So if action is your reward, come get your fill at Marvelocity: The Art of Alex Ross, on exhibit in the James E. Sperry Gallery at the State Museum, March 16-June 9, 2024. Radioactive spiders not included.
 

Take the time to fill in the State Archives’ survey and help us serve you better.

The State Archives has launched a short demographic survey, the first in a series, and we invite you to participate! As stewards of the documentary history of North Dakota and its people, we want to know the people we serve, how we can improve our services, and how we can bring new interest to the wonderful world of archives and historical research.

The State Archives’ resources can help patrons solve genealogical mysteries.

Our overarching goals are to get better acquainted with those we serve and increase services and outreach to grow all audiences. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of reasons for why getting to know our clientele will help us reach these goals:

1. Communication: We can devise the best strategies to communicate who we are and what we do.

2. Engagement: Those who have fun together learn better together. We can share our love of history with our users in more effective ways.

3. Collection description and access: We can prioritize the identification, description, and digitization of items and collections of significant research interest. 

4. Technology: We can utilize technologies that are familiar to our audience to provide better access to our collections as well as identify and assist with less familiar technologies. 

5. Programming: We can design programming to engage our current patrons and draw in groups of people not previously reached. 

6. Collection acquisition: We can focus on acquiring collections that align with the research interests of our users and identify and fill topical gaps in our collections. 

7. Overall experience: We want visitors to have fun here (and on our website), to use our resources to solve mysteries, answer questions, and formulate new ideas. We want the journey of conducting research and finding information to be as streamlined as possible. As archivists, we are proud of the history we get to work with every day and want to share our love of history with everyone, whether they are virtual or on-site, a first-time visitor or a regular. We truly believe that history is created by everyone, and that history is for everyone.

February is the month of love. Do you know what I love? Dogs! Here are some artifacts in our museum collections that make me say, “What a good boi!”

1. Doorstops

Shaped like Boston terriers, this set of cast-iron doorstops held open doors in the Devils Lake area around the 1930s. The Hubley Manufacturing Company is well-known for cast-iron toys, but they also created doorstops, bookends, and door knockers. These helpful pups were originally sold with a leather collar and a leash.

Sturdy silent types. SHSND 16695.1-2

2. Nutcracker

Everyone knows dogs love treats. Gustav and Bertha Helm used this cast-iron canine cruncher in their home three miles south of Mandan. Although its age is not known, the nutcracker was likely produced in the 1910s or 1920s.

Ready to crack your toughest nuts. (Shown with a photoshopped nut for full effect.) SHSND 2007.80.95

3. Dachshund Woodcarving

Ben Ehreth of Mandan carved this little pal in March 2001. Ben first started carving in 1973. He was largely self-taught in the craft and gave away his creations as gifts. Ben’s son and daughter-in-law Mike and Linda Ehreth received their dachshund friend along with many other Ben Ehreth originals.

So cute you can almost see his tail wag. SHSND 2018.6.2

4. Stuffed Animals

These two chunky puppies kept Hazel McCulloch company while growing up near Washburn in the early 1900s. The homemade hounds are stuffed with straw around a wire frame. Hazel became one of the first 12 faculty members at the Minot Normal School (now Minot State University). She served on the staff from 1913 to 1959 as a training school supervisor and history professor. Students can now stay in a residence hall named in her honor.

Loved so much, their eyes fell out. SHSND 15574.1-2

5. Salt and Pepper Shakers

The Wahpeton-based pottery company Rosemeade was well known for its eclectic salt and pepper shaker sets. You can get the spice of life from any number of flora and fauna: flickertail gophers, a prairie rose, pheasants, cacti, and 13 different breeds of dogs! Made sometime between 1953 and 1961, these disembodied cocker spaniel shakers are ready to add excitement to your meal. But they don’t seem happy about it.

They're making that face to let you know they also want to be eating your food. SHSND 2017.55.16