Name: Myrna Burgess
Tribal Affiliation: Northern Cheyenne
Interview No.: NC027MB061504
Topic: Cheyenne Woman/Berry Picking, Pemmican
Language: English
Time Code In: 00:24:14:17
Time Code Out: 00:27:37:20
Tape 1 of 2 - Clone
Q: “Today we’ll be discussing picking berries to make pemmican? What is pemmican?”
A: “Pemmican is dried deer meat or buffalo meat that you make into jerky and then you bake the meat in the oven and then you mix it with crushed berries or choke cherries or you know any other kind of berries and then you mix it together, you crush the meat, now you can use a meat grinder but a long time ago they used to like I was saying when I was growing up we did it on rock we did it with these river rocks and we would pound the meat and the berries. We didn’t have meat grinders when I was growing up and we always dried all our berries by crushing them on rocks and making the paddies and drying the paddies. I brought some paddies with me I still make choke cherry paddies I don’t know if very many people do it. I freeze a lot of my berries now too and but I still make choke cherry paddies and I dry a lot of my food yet, my plums and my corn, I still make dry corn and dry…. And when I do when I do my sand painting I use dry corn. What I do is I crush the corn and then I color it and then I do my sand painting with that because I don’t have sand.”
Q: “What is the process of making pemmican like where do you start and end up with pemmican?”
A: “First you get the meat and dry it and after it’s dry you bake it and then you start crushing it and your berries that are dried, what you do is you soak them in water and kind of soften them up and then what I do is re-crush them a little bit and that makes the pemmican and then you mix the dried meat and the berries together. Sometimes I use the fresh choke cherries and if you want to leave the seeds out I usually have all the kids taking the seeds out of the choke cherries and just crushing the berry itself and then we mix, we mix that and make the dried meat that way.”
Q: “So that’s all that’s in there?”
A: “Uh huh, it’s just the dried meat and the berries and that makes the pemmican and it’s very good it’s delicious.”
Q: “Do you know if the different tribes make it differently or would you say this is a Northern Cheyenne pemmican?”
A: “I would say this is the Northern Cheyenne pemmican because a lot of people don’t know what choke cherries are and we have a lot of choke cherries in Montana and…. I know a lot of people make choke cherry jam, choke cherry pudding and a lot of things with the choke cherries now, jellies and syrups and all that. I make all that but not all the time.”