As the past few months have come and gone, several things have been happening. During the Leaves Changing Colour Moon (September) I was busy focusing on harvesting ducks, rice and geese. Much of this sadly due to my school and work schedules ended with very little success.
The title Leaves Changing Colour Moon is fairly self explanatory, however it is truly awe-inspiring as to how much it changes. Subtly at first, with speckles of orange yellow bleeding into the poplar leaves. The birches and beeches begin to gain an ochre hue and by the time of the full moon, the maples and sumacs have climaxed to a vast series of red shades. Sometimes a soft painting of a red sunrise, and sometimes the darkness of freshly spilled blood.
This correlates almost perfectly with the star constellation Ursa major (The Big Dipper) becoming almost perfectly horizontal. This near exact parallel line to the horizon is truly spectacular, and each year leaves me in awe.
There is a traditional story (Many of the Anishnaabeg do not like the terms mythology or legend) regarding a great bear, that is seen in the constellation of Ursa major. The "bowl" of the big dipper represents the bear. The "handle" of three stars represent three hunters tracking and hunting the great bear. Right at the beginning of the Leaves Changing Colour Moon, the hunters finally shoot the bear, and it falls onto its' back. The great bear's blood drains from the sky and paints the maple and sumac leaves red.
This may sound like a quaint and simple folk's little story to explain the stars changing their directions, but let us look more critically. The metaphor regarding the hunters becoming successful at the beginning of the moon is fairly critical. Especially in regards to a bear (which symbolizes in and of itself "fat" and "meat"). It symbolizes the concept of the killing of large game. In much of Anishnaabeg history, the summer months are almost primarily fishing and wild fruit gathering. Whole communities would move to the best fishing grounds in their territory, and remain there come the Ricing Moon only if the waters were rich in rice as well. If not, they moved onto the ricing lakes, and then proceeded to work on duck blinds and decoys while there.
Decoys would be made out of tamarack, willow, dogwood and even cattail. Look at the Cree, Innu and Algonquin people, and the very popular craft of Tamarack Ducks and Geese. These were at one time easily made, deployed and extremely effective decoys for ducks and geese of many varieties. The most well known is the Cree Tamarack Goose. The hollow space on the "head" of the decoy when set on the snow would look white, with the rest of the decoy being a dark brown. This would mimic a Canada goose with its' brown body and white cheeks very effectively. Another variation used in this region (central Ontario) was to bundle a bunch of cattail together and with simple tufting of the leaves and stems, with good basswood bark strips, a very believable duck would be seen sitting amongst the reeds. With a few dozen of these set up, with good ground and swamp blinds and the well trained voices of experienced duck hunters, it was sometimes a little too easy.
As the rice began to peter out, the Anishnaabeg would focus their energy towards harvesting any and all migratory waterfowl. Ducks and geese were obvious targets, but lesser known targets would include; swans, bitterns, herons, cranes, and even loons. These birds would be plucked (feathers saved to be used for feather fletchings, lures, paintbrushes, decorations and ceremonial items), cleaned and then smoked to help preserve them. Geese and their high fat content were the main objective.
Anybody who has lived in the north country long enough knows how important a high caloric intake is to remain warm. With fish, berries, roots, ducks, geese and wild rice, the calories for the beginning of winter were already looking pretty good. Add some large mammals and maybe a couple bushels of acorns, and it was looking like a no-brainer for surviving the winter. As long as grouse, hares, squirrels, and the occasional winter moose were slain, high vitamin intake was easy. Fresh meat is high in Vitamin C. The minute it was dried or frozen however, this vital part of our diet was lost. This means either an intake of fresh meat on occasion, or the brewing and drinking of evergreen teas (cedar, pine, spruce and hemlock tree needles all make good Vitamin C rich brews). It is an evolutionary detriment in practically all primates that we can neither produce, nor contain Vitamin C. We must ingest it on a regular basis, in fear of scurvy or other illnesses taking their toll. Many a European explorer died from scurvy, with their deathbeds being spruce boughs. All the while their native counterparts flourished, because of simple spruce needle tea.
But Vitamin C was only one component. Without the high caloric value of protein and fat, the body would not survive long in -40. Protein requires three calories to be burned for every calorie of it to be burned. This makes for a hot digestion. This is one of the reasons meat is not needed in the heat of summer as much as fruit is. It is also the exact same reason it is needed for winter. Incomplete proteins made by plants (legumes, grains, etc) are effective, but are not running rampant in pre-European contact times. Yes, we had beans and wild rice, but the problem was, these did not also offer a high fat content like large mammals could.
Ah yes, fat. The part most of us could use less of in our diets (along with many other things). However, for any of us whose ancestors once lived in northern climates, fat was life. The oils were needed to help keep our internal furnace flourishing, and sadly if we lived off of strictly lean meat, starvation would set in. The threat was called Rabbit Starvation, and it has claimed enough people in the past -including members of the Franklin Expedition- to make it a dangerous truth about life in the wilderness in winter. Needless to say it is a horrible way to go, and there are many theories regarding what really causes it, but regardless it is well known that without fat and carbohydrates, the body slowly tilts into this condition. Though I hate citing Wikipedia, it has a good description about what we know of the condition. So let me cite something more effective in regards to historical importance of meat .
I was gifted a copy of a 1984 report regarding the McIntyre Site (located on the southern shore of Rice Lake). The report is titled "Johnston RB (ed) 1984 'The McIntyre Site: Archeology, Subsistence and Environment. Archeological Survey of Canada Paper No. 126. Ottawa: National Museum of Man. (Mercury Series)". Sounds pretty legitimate to me, so here we go.
Inside of the report is an accumulation of animal remains from the one site. This being Table 10 of the report, titled "Meat Yield from McIntyre Site Features (Extrapolated Flotation and Combined Large Bone and Flotation Samples)". For this, we'll focus on the combined two samples.
In total, the usable meat is precisely 1,629,341 grams. In Kilograms, that is about 1,629.34 Kg. In pounds, that is approximately 3,592Lbs of meat. The five largest sources of usable meat are as follows:
1)White-tailed deer (590,200g)
2) Black bear (286,000g)
3) Beaver (204,000g)
4) Sucker/Tullibee/Chub fish (182,686g)
5) Freshwater Drum (127,673g)
Now I want to point out three things;
The first part is the fact that a total of thirty-five species were consumed. Of that, fifteen were mammal species (ranging from vole to bear), twelve were fish species, five were reptile (mostly types of turtle and a single snake specie), two were bird (both ducks), and one was an amphibian (that being leopard frog).
The second thing was that this part of the report was focusing on meat, there is a whole other part of the report focusing on plants. Though meat was invaluable, plants were just as important for daily survival, let alone long-term living on the land.
The final point I want to make is that this is just one site. Over 3,500 pounds of usable meat was consumed in this site alone. How many people lived there, and for how long? Well, we can only guess. However this is a valuable insight into what was consumed back then. Were moose, elk, bison or other large game in the site? Other than black bear and white-tailed deer, practically everything else was the size of a wolf or smaller. But what about geese and turkeys? No finding on the McIntyre Site according to this report has shown large birds of any kind consumed. But we see a lot of water animals being consumed. Beaver, fish (a dozen varieties at that!), turtles, frogs, ducks, muskrats and raccoons are all marshland and lake animals. In fact, of the top five species eaten, three are water animals (beaver, sucker and drum)!
Once the birds finished their movements, the people focused on the mammals, snaring rabbits, trapping beaver and hunting for the deer, bear and other fauna of the woodlands. As they migrated north to the winter camps, they prepared jerky, pemmican, tallow and hides. This lifestyle was cyclical and vital for the land to remain in balance. Much of Ojibway culture and healing revolves around balance, and their hunting practises are no exclusion.
So let us celebrate the hunting season with these thoughts in mind. Remember, you eat what you kill, and you only kill what you need. Waste not, want not!
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