Once upon a time, in the middle of nowhere... (Pic heavy!)

[Janne]

No, you are right, sort of Both Working Equitation and Doma Vaquera are south European versions of the American cowboy. They are disciplines aimed at farm tasks, like cutting, herding, etc.

Endurance riding is also starting to grow here

I would think the American cowboy is a version of the Doma Vaquera? Thinking as the South American cattle ranching was derived from the open range Spanish cattle farming and the South American cow scene was developed several hundred years before the N. American?

 

[Arya]

I would think the American cowboy is a version of the Doma Vaquera? Thinking as the South American cattle ranching was derived from the open range Spanish cattle farming and the South American was developed several hundred years before the N. American?

I think you are quite right Janne!
It was just me being a proper foreigner, not putting the sentence in the right order

 

[Robson Valley]

Unlike South America, organized cattle ranching was hampered by the presence of millions and millions of bison.
Migrating herds so large that they could stop a train for several days as they passed.
Just took a long time to kill enough of them to make room for white-faced range maggots.

 

[Janne]

I have read that Bison tongue was a delicacy.
The mid west was empty of Pale faced Gringos before what, 1840's?
The Texas/ Nuevo Mexico were populated by Spaniards since 1600' ( plus the old owners too of course)

Not sure if there were any Bison in that arid area though.

 

[Robson Valley]

For the last 15 years, I have found that a bison T-bone steak is my kind of delicacy.
Burger is good for so many things, the roasts are fine and I've stuffed a couple of hearts.
On average, I've bought a side per year, got it hung for 7 days and butchered according to my cut-list.
In general, and this is no exaggeration, cooked bison is cut-it-with-a-fork tender. No, you have to learn. It isn't beef.
I'd eat tongue to try it but I'd have to ask well in advance to get a couple saved in the initial slaughterings.
I did get some liver one time. Sliced, floured and fried with lots of onions and bacon, just as I like it = very good.

Bison are ruminant Bovidae from the Grassland Biome. Not a chance of finding them in the arid SW at all.
So cattle reigned supreme, the heat tolerant kinds, without the impediment of the bison for resource competition.

As you come further north of the 49th into Canada you get into the Aspen Parkland Biome where the plains bison range overlaps
with the woodland bison. I can't tell you if they are separate species or not. Side-by-side, they do look quite different.
I can't even tell you which one it is that I buy. Keep forgetting to ask.

They do get into the Boreal Forest Biome. I'm thinking of Prince Albert National Park and Wood Buffalo National Park (what else?)
Highway 16 runs east/west through Elk Island National Park.
The plains bison are south of the highway and the woodland ones are on the north side.
Ordinary cattle fencing is hopelessly inadequate. Where you can drive into the Park,
do be smart enough to stay in the car during the rut. The bulls are worse than just simple aggressive.

My family didn't come west to homestead until 1884, at Tregarva, north of a city called "Pile 'O Bones"
I'll let you sort that one out. The pictures tell the bison story.

 

[santaman2000]

No, you are right, sort of Both Working Equitation and Doma Vaquera are south European versions of the American cowboy. They are disciplines aimed at farm tasks, like cutting, herding, etc.

Endurance riding is also starting to grow here

I would think the American cowboy is a version of the Doma Vaquera? Thinking as the South American cattle ranching was derived from the open range Spanish cattle farming and the South American cow scene was developed several hundred years before the N. American?

Yep. Vaqueros were the original "cowboys" in Mexico and the American ranching traditions began in Texas (a former Mexican state) I believe that the saddle horn was added in the New world though.

Indeed it was the Spanish who brought domesticated cattle to the New World.

 

[Janne]

Saddle horns, the American way to control the population?..

 

[Robson Valley]

The Spanish brought horses to the New World in 1509. When did cattle come along?
I don't doubt that cattle ranching got off to a slow start everywhere.
What's the point if there isn't the population to create the market demand with zero refrigeration as well?

What was happening in Europe? Salting? Smoking? What other preservations were there?

 

[santaman2000]

The Spanish brought horses to the New World in 1509. When did cattle come along?.....

According to this article Columbus brought cattle on his second trip in 1493. www.livescience.com/28154-new-world-cattle-origins.html

 

[Janne]

The Spanish brought horses to the New World in 1509. When did cattle come along?
I don't doubt that cattle ranching got off to a slow start everywhere.
What's the point if there isn't the population to create the market demand with zero refrigeration as well?

What was happening in Europe? Salting? Smoking? What other preservations were there?

Salting, brining snd smoking, drying. Sausages made from muscle meat and fat could be smoked or lactic scid fermented and dried.
Potting meat was another way. Preserving boiled meat by storing in fat.

I guess the N. American Indians had similar methods for preserving the meat from Caribou and Buffalo?

 

[Robson Valley]

Probably smoking and drying for big game and fish. Probably some of the meat and fat was made into pemmican
which does have a substantial storage life.

The invading Europeans were not to know that the bison population before 1800 was estimated at 60,000,000.
Travelling in herds, a buffalo jump killed far more than the natives could use or process or both.
Consequently, the native indians sometimes ate only the prized parts = lots more where that came from.

Bison never had any seasonal migration. You can't get away from winter in any direction over here.
So they made the best of it and thus the bison could be hunted all year long.
In fact, I got up to a white world again this morning and it's been snowing ever since.

There was one major bison migration with no return from the Regina plains district westward to the Wainwright, Alberta area.
That led to the closure of Last Mountain House trading post but I can't give you the date.
There's been some recent conjecture that the bison shifted grazing districts almost as if they understood the dangers of overgrazing,

On the Pacific coast, the salmon spawning runs were extremely serious business as that's food for the year. Dried and smoked.
Oolichan fish ( like a sardine/smelt) were caught in huge numbers and fermented for the fish oil which eventually rose to the top
of the watertight kerf-bent boxes. I'll bet that smelled just wonderful in process.
Clams and oysters were cultivated and propagated all along the coast. Shelled and dried and threaded on long cords of cedar bark fiber.

Rearguard Falls on the Fraser River is about an hour by car east of my place.
That's the upstream limit for salmon migration and they look none too appetizing by the time they get here.
Much closer to the coast, alder-wood smoked salmon is about as good as it gets.

 

[Janne]

The fat in Pemmican is not only a source of energy, it also preserves.
Exactly same principle as the European Potted meats.
The fat prevents the oxygen reaching the cooked meat.
Pemmican is more an allround meal though, with the berries in it.

Weird how people arrived at similar solutions around the world.
Just wait until Arya posts a recipe for Potted Whole Horse!

 

[Robson Valley]

I've got the bison meat and fat to make pemmican. What puts me off is the taste and smell of bison fat. Disgusting.
Go ahead. You do it, you eat it. Bacon fat would be my choice.
Berries were rarely added. Too sweet and a source of yeasts, bacteria and fungi to spoil the pemmican. Very labor intensive harvest, too.
Saskatoon berries (Amelanchier alnifolia) are hard as rocks dried and take forever to rehydrate. Not in my pemmican.

The British business, The Hudson's Bay Company (1670), expected their trading post managers to keep meticulous records of everything.
It is recorded that Rocky Mountain House made up 40,000lbs of pemmican, mostly done up in 90lb bison hide bags. The best quality was
done up in 60lb bags, none of that annual effort contained berries. That was the annual quota and they did it all in 9 days.

So, we're going to need at least 20,000lbs dried meat (what? maybe 35,000lbs fresh meat?). Then pound it all into fiber.

Made up as a stew with root vegetables called burgoo, it was to feed the traders en route to the fur trappers, not as House-food.
Throw it in the river and eat the pot.

 

[Janne]

Interesting, I thought Pemmican was made with berries ! So it is basically Potted Bison. Is it a Trader invention or did the Indians originally prepare it?

Have you tasted the fat surrounding the Kidneys of the Bison?
That fat was considered the best in the old days. Not Bison of course, but cow, pork and sheep. Easily melted, mild taste.

Fat was more precious than the meat. After WW2 our taste changed.

 

[Robson Valley]

I'm pretty certain that pemmican, in one form or another, was made all across North America that had easy access to bison.
Not something that you whip up as the main dish for supper.
I wanted to make certain that I used the old ways so I asked some Cree elders what to do.
They told me to use bison backstrap fat, even bear fat is good (I've got that, too). No berries.

In December, I was gifted a bunch of flint blades which are fantastic for slicing bison, venison, pork and wild birds.
I'll cut the meat for drying with one of them. Because the stone breaks at the molecular level, far sharper than steel can ever be.

Maybe in the east they could have used venison but don't forget the difference in the hunting strategy.
Deer stalking and bow & arrow hunting is a solitary venture.

Run 40 bison over a jump and the whole village has to help from start to finish. Head-Smashed-In has been used for some 10,000 years.
Wanuskewin village was occupied for 6,000 years, well protected from winter storms and had it's own Jump, about a mile upstream.

In the Aspen Parkland Biome, the bison will go into bluffs of trees for the shade on hot summer days.
Natives built corrals in some bluffs. Just ever so gently push the bison into the trap then spear them.

 

[santaman2000]

.....Maybe in the east they could have used venison but don't forget the difference in the hunting strategy.
Deer stalking and bow & arrow hunting is a solitary venture......

Or maybe they used woodland bison web.utk.edu/~nolt/radio/lostspecies.html

Also in the southeast deer (or eastern elk) hunting wasn't always a solitary venture. Every few years the Choctaw burned their land much the same way we still do controlled burns. By rotating which land was burned there was a certainty of at least one such burn per year. It was as common for them to have hunters wait ahead of the flames to pick off escaping large animals as it was for the Plains peoples to do a buffalo jump.

All that said, everybody I've talked to are of the opinion they simply dried the meat into jerky in the east and south.

 

[Robson Valley]

The simplest and most straight-forward preservation would be smoking and drying, whatever sorts of meat you have.
I did not know about the eastern woodland bison. They stood in the way of land clearing for cattle ranching so they must be eliminated.
And they were.

I'd rather put on my boots, grab my home-made fishing rod and try out the river Arya shows in her original post.

 

[Arya]

Just wait until Arya posts a recipe for Potted Whole Horse!

Hahaha! I might actually be mad enough to attempt it. I do have an old horse somewhere around here....
(Just joking)
But it would be a shame if I didn't get it right, and all that meat was spoiled.

 

[Janne]

Horse meat is delicious. Dark, lean.
In Sweden we have a pre sliced meat called Hamburger kott ( = hamburger meat) but it is called by most people ' Solvalla" after the best Swedish horse race track.
It is horse meat. ( or used to be when I lived there.

Remember the Horse Meat scandal some years back? Most people had Horse meat then, and liked it.

 

[Leshy]

Horse lasagna!!! Yum yum😊

Very nice , but still... would prefer to try Arya 's hot pot ... 😀