Cree Food Storage in the Eighteenth Century

They eat as much flesh at a time as will serve three or four Europeans; but then they can fast three or four times as long and these habits of abstinence and voraciousness seem to be determined by their natural temper and taste of life, for they are lazy and improvident, lying in their tents and feasting upon their stock until they have not a day's provision left; and if they are unfortunate enough to fail of a supply before their power of fasting is gone, they perish with hunger. (Robson 1965 [1752]:51)

Robson's comments on the Crees trading on Hudson Bay in the 1730s are typical. For European observers of the eighteenth century, Cree consumption patterns were both logically and morally objectionable. Europeans perceived the subsistence base of the Crees as precarious but as one in which hardship could be minimized by industry and rational management of food supplies. The Crees were neither industrious nor rational by these criteria. Two of their practices were especially inexplicable to English and French observers. First, the Crees ate up all their stores on hand before resuming hunting. What this means in practical terms is that any kind of surplus—meat in quantities greater than those consumable at a single meal—was the occasion for the suspension of further productive effort. After the surplus had been consumed, the men would again go hunting. Second, Crees threw meat away instead of preserving it. In either case, the Crees were criticized for not preserving sufficient meat as an insurance against future want. Rationally unaccountable, these dispositions were also sinful to men who thought of meat as scarce. Consequently, overtones of sanctimonious satisfaction sometimes intrude upon the traders' accounts of Indians in the throes of famine.

It is of considerable interest that the traders ascribed the precariousness of Cree production neither to the uncertainties of hunting nor to a scarcity of game but rather directly to the Cree organization of work and consumption. Some observers contrasted the resources available in the inland plains to those in the Canadian Shield and Hudson Bay lowlands on the coast. Graham, for example, distinguished between the two areas but identified the same consumption patterns in both:

The country beyond the lakes is so well stocked with various kinds of animals that the Indians can indulge their indolence and never be in want of food; but those who inhabit lower down towards the sea shore are frequently in great distress. For while they have a sufficiency or abundance, they never have any thought to provide for the future; but lie in the tent and indulge their enormous appetites. (1969 [1767-1791]: 154)

Crees during this period knew and used various techniques for preserving meat by freezing or smoking and drying (Drage 1968 [1748-49], 1:216). It was not the case, as Steward (1955) argued for Great Basin Shoshonean foragers, that the techniques were unknown. The traders wrote not that Crees preserved no food at all for the future but that they preserved too little to provide effective insurance against hardship:

These Natives are often starv'd and in Want of food. Especially in the winter season that Keeps by the Sea side, but upland [inland] Indians are Seldom put to these shifts,—having plentier of Beast of all sortts, than what is to be gott by the sea shore,—I have oft'n observ'd these Natives need not, or wou'd not be in want of provender if they would be at the pains to cure itt, or all the meat they Kill which they do not, Curing a small Quantity only for to serve them for the present by Drying itt in the smoak then pounding itt small, which they Style (Ruhiggan). (Isham 1949 [1743-1749]:80-81)

Isham here distinguishes the coastal Crees from those inland but ascribes the same prodigality to both. Ellis (1967 [1748]:90) wrote similarly that the Crees "dry only a little venison and fish."

This optimistic inattention to food storage would be comprehensible enough in certain tropical ecosystems; in the boreal forest, it is perplexing. Bishop (1975:245) initiated a controversy by representing the boreal forest, exclusive of the Hudson Bay lowlands, as posing little resource uncertainty: "In aboriginal times and for a considerable period after contact, the threat of starvation for most Ojibwas was nonexistent." Smith (1976) and Waisberg (1975) responded by arguing that long-term and short-term fluctuations in resource populations sometimes produced both local and regional game shortages independently of and prior to the fur trade. During the eighteenth century, resources were probably ordinarily reliable on the Canadian Shield and less so in the lowlands but subject in both areas to periodic shortage. Other factors could also threaten starvation. The famine cannibal described by Isham (1949 [1743-1749]:226-227) had elected to hunt and trap alone with his family, and the crisis developed when he became lame and could not hunt. They successfully reached a food cache that they had prepared which was three days journey away but found that the stores had been removed by others. In another context, Isham (ibid.:141) observed that wolverines posed a serious threat to Indian winter survival by getting into caches and eating or removing the stored provisions. Graham (1969 [1767-1791]:154-155) observed,

Depending, as the Indians generally do, upon each day to procure them food, it may easily be supposed they are often in great distress. I have known instances when they have been driven to that extremity that they have eaten one another. A few years ago a man came to the Factory [York] almost naked; and had eaten all the skins he had procured, and afterwards the wife and children were devoured, and he himself was almost dead with hunger. The cause of this misfortune is frequently the breaking of a gun, or the sickness or death of the men when at a great distance from the English settlements.

Starvation and cannibal tragedies were not limited to the coastal area but occurred also inland in the full boreal forest in the eighteenth century. Thompson (1962 [1784-1812]:101-104) described three famine incidents caused by poor hunting skills, lack of winds for moose hunting, and broken beaver chiseling tools. These cases suggest not that starvation was a continuous threat but that shortages or accidents sometimes interrupted food acquisition, making a continuously renewed supply of emergency food a potentially useful adjustment.

Intensive food storage is not intrinsically incompatible with frequent residential mobility but imposes limits on it. Graham was the only European to consider nonstorage in this light:

They have a method of drying meat in the smoke; would they thus preserve the venison they throw away, hunger would less frequently assail them. But frugality and prudence in this respect are not among the virtues of these natives. Though, to be impartial, it is just to mention that the reason of a conduct, so unaccountable to Englishmen, may proceed from the difficulty that would arise from conveying a stock of provisions from place to place in their migratory way of life. We ought therefore not to be rash in our censures. The natives about the Factory, indeed have taken our advice; but then they lay it up in places they intend to visit in the winter. (1969 [1767-1791]:154)

By storing and living on the meat they threw away, Crees could, of course, have been less migratory than they were, decreasing the number of residential moves necessary during the winter round. Desire for fresh meat or the demands of fur trapping might promote movement sooner than the surplus could be consumed. Even if the meat was substantially reduced in weight by drying, the energy costs to women entailed in drawing it by toboggan through the series of residential movements in winter would presumably be formidable. The obvious alternative is the cache that Graham represented, perhaps correctly, as an English innovation for some of the coastal Crees. Drage (1968 [1748-49], 1:216) registers similar variation, noting that certain individuals, perhaps also those most subject to English influence, hunted consistently to maintain an existing stock of food on hand.

Caches, too, are subject to material constraints. First, they are vulnerable to predation by animals and free goods to anyone with critical need of them. Second, the cache imposes limitations not on nomadism but on unplanned nomadism. To be useful, food surpluses must be positioned across the landscape in such a way that they are available in times of scarcity. If the objective is risk aversion, food caches must be accessible when emergency conditions dictate their use.

If sizable territories were traversed in winter, the effort of building and traveling to caches could be considerable, especially prior to dog traction. Caches do not require that the same territory be hunted each year, but they necessitate seasonal or annual planning, which compromises the foraging groups flexibility and spontaneity. Crees hunting in the Churchill River drainage during the 1820s seemingly returned to the same general territories each winter, so a system of caches would have been technically possible, at the cost of additional planning and labor.

By the 1820s, the game shortages in the Churchill River country and elsewhere had created a state of uncertainty in which the reliability afforded by storage would presumably be welcomed. In 1815, for example, nine case of famine cannibalism are mentioned at Nelson House (HBC B.141/e/1), and by 1825, the Crees were described as starving every winter (B.141/e/2 [1825-26]). In this context, the traders reported the same behavior recorded in the preceding century near Hudson Bay.

In their habits they are indolent at least in the summer or during the season the deer [caribou] are crossing the Rivers, and they are remarkably improvident or else they might make themselves comfortable comparatively to what they generally are. For while they have anything, they feast and enjoy themselves as long as it lasts and let tomorrow provide for itself. Some seasons, when the deer happen to cross the Rivers late in the Season, that the meat can be preserved with little trouble, they lay up stores for the winter but it's but seldom. (HBC B.91/a/8 [1822-23])

The traders, in short, reported the same prodigality both prior to and in the midst of the game shortages. On the coast and inland, in the 1700s and during the shortages of the 1820s, the Crees were disposed to "let tomorrow provide for itself."