THE GREAT DENE RACE.

CHAPTER X.

Cooking and Eating.

To attempt an enumeration of the many items which may enter into
the menu of some thirty-five tribes scattered over half a continent would be
both tedious and difficult. By describing in the three following chapters the
main pursuits of the Dénés, we will place the reader in a position to gather
that venison, fish and berries are their staple food. We know already that
the flesh of the reindeer in the northeast, salmon in the west, and mutton
with the Navahoes constitute the normal sources of subsistence. When we
come to treat of the various tribal occupations, we shall have an occasion
to enlarge on the various results of their exertions in that line. Before giving
an account of their cooking and eating, we must expose the nature of
several of their delicacies, a subject which does not logically fall under
any other heading than that of this chapter. Then will it be realized that,
while the Dénés relish dishes that seem, to say the least, strange to a
European palate, they carefully abstain from others that we know to be
genuine treats for the gourmet.

Unspeakable Dishes.

Let me first introduce the great luxury of the northern Epicures, a mess
which is as esteemed to-day! as it was in the days of Hearne, I mean the
half digested contents of the reindeer’s stomach. In order that I may not be
suspected of exaggeration, I shall quote that author’s description of the dish
and of its preparation.

“The most remarkable dish among them, as well as all the other tribes
of Indians in those parts, both Northern and Southern, is blood mixed with
the half-digested food which is found in the deer’s stomach or paunch, and
boiled up with a sufficient quantity of water, to make it of the consistence
of pease-pottage. Some fat and scraps of tender flesh are also shred small
and boiled with it. To render this dish more palatable, they have a method
of mixing the blood with the contents of the stomach in the paunch itself,

" Cf. Whitney’s “On Snow-Shoes to the Barren Grounds”, p. 234. Speaking of a journey
by George Kennan’s party through the land of the Tchuktchis, R. J. Bush says that “soup
made from the contents of the deer’s stomach succeeded their own well selected rations”
(“Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-Shoes”, p. 344). As everybody knows, the Tchuktchis are aborig-
ines of northeastern Siberia.