Buffalo Jerky

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Hello, Guys, I read the posts on cjbills about deer jerky. I have a question, I have an original photograph of an indian camp on musselshell river...next to teepe's, are poles with strips of meat hanging..I am assuming buffalo..but could be anything? My question is what if anything did the native americans put on their meat while drying? What about flies?
 
You don't have to put anything on it to make jerky or dry meat. If the climate is dry and a crust forms quickly on the outside flies aren't a factor. They can only lay their eggs on wet meat. Same goes for drying fish.


The natives of interior Alaska make dry moose meat all the time. Some spice it up and marinade it a bit, but most just cut it into strips and hang it on a drying rack next to the woodstove.
 
Buffalo are in Africa.

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You mean BISON Jerky, right
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Oh Hell, lets get picky. Everyone calls them buffalo, just as we call Wapiti Elk. Who cares if it ain't scientific proper. I'm gonna start calling all Magazines "CLIPS".

As too the original poster, most times they just smoke it, leave it out like you described and build a smoky fire under it. The smoke keeps the flies off as does the crust as mentioned.

Sometimes, after cutting the meat in strips, they roll it in Berries and such to give it flavor and then dry it.

Same with the Eskimos. I use to hang around them quite a bit when I was a company commander of the Eskimo NG units. They dried fish pretty much the same way. To get flavor they would dip it in seal oil as the ate it.

To each his own, I found seal oil tasted like crap.
 
As said above, you don't have to add anything to make jerky. It's simply dried, uncooked meat. I'm sure most native americans new where to find salt, and were pretty knowledgeable about herbs and such, too.

If flies are a problem, then smoking the meat as it dries will prevent most flies from doing much. It also adds some flavor.

I still have 5 lbs of buffalo (ok, bison) meat that's cut for the purpose. Need to get it out soon and cure it. It makes wonderful road snacks for holiday travel. :)

Daryl
 
The smoke is what made it taste bad to flies. Native Americans did not add anything else other than letting it dry over a fire. Once the jerky was done they would then use it to make other products, like pemmican (not sure I spelled that right) wich would be jerky mixed with fat, berries, and other stuff, which I guess tastes as good as it sounds.
 
Hello, Guys, I read the posts on cjbills about deer jerky. I have a question, I have an original photograph of an indian camp on musselshell river...next to teepe's, are poles with strips of meat hanging..I am assuming buffalo..but could be anything? My question is what if anything did the native americans put on their meat while drying? What about flies?
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meat curing is a must do, fresh meat goes bad pretty fast, whether its beef, pork, or whatever... curing is done with salt plus sodium nitrates/nitrites which occurs naturally in most salt and then applied to meat... this process has been going on for thousands of years...


as far as the "native savage drying meat" goes, they were far more adapt in survival than most nowadays... salt rocks, here is an example.... http://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=567

just a thought

cheers
 
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