Moose-Nose and Buffalo Hump: The Amerindian-European Food Exchange in the British North American Fur Trade to 1840

Abstract

‘The list of meats’, fur trader H. M. Robertson wrote in 1879 of his experience of North America, ‘is so extensive, and each requiring a particular mode of cooking, that a long time may elapse without a repetition of dishes’. In this, one of many descriptions of food in the fur trade, Robertson drew from his years of service to note the surprising range and variety of meat food sources deep in the North American interior. His post was ‘well stocked with all the delicacies and substantials afforded by the surrounding country’. His plate was filled with buffalo hump and moose-nose, ‘the finest and most savoury waterfowl, and the freshest of fish’. Robertson claimed to know 94 different types of animal meat available and suggested he knew how to cook them all.¹