Doug's Dig: Frontier diet

What did the fur traders eat?

There wasn't much food in the winter. Traders and Indians called January and February the "starving time." Severe winters made survival an uncertainty. Fur-trade records tell that some people ate their woolen blankets and leather moccasins to survive.

Judging from the bones tossed out the cabin door, voyageurs ate mostly wild game: white-tail deer, bear, elk, beaver, plus some fish and probably bison. They bought meat from the Indians, and did some hunting themselves. The Indians might have disapproved of the visitors' hunting. They considered the land and its creatures theirs, and they wanted payment for hunting rights.

Game was dried or smoked on scaffolding. Wild rice, supplied by the Ojibwe people, was the starch. Flour didn't get this far, and other plant foods were scarce in winter. Perhaps there were dried cranberries. Certainly there were nuts. Archaeologist Doug Birk has found corn kernels, brought west by the traders.

For beverages, there was Mississippi River water for tea, some of which was made from dried plants, and for "high wine," a potent liquor brought by canoe in kegs and greatly diluted with water.

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