Pemmican

'Pemmican\' is a concentrated food conisting primarily of finely pounded cooked red meat mixed with melted fat, similar to beef jerky. Pemmican often includes a number of other ingredients, flour, molasses, and suet being common.

It was invented by the Native peoples of eastern North America, and widely used in the fur trade as a high-calorie food that could be stored for long periods of time.

To conserve scarce food, in 1814 Governor Miles Macdonell of Assiniboia (or Red River Colony) forbade, in the Pemmican Proclamation, the export of pemmican from his jurisdiction. However, the founder of the colony was the chief shareholder of the Hudson's Bay Company, while pemmican was exported by the Metis to the North West Company, the Hudson's Bay Company's chief competitor. The proclamation led to the destruction, twice, of the chief Red River settlement of Fort Douglas by the North West Company, and to the battle of Seven Oaks.