Another important method of preserving food is drying. The meat of caribou, sea mammals, and fish is dried, but never that of birds. The meat is cut into thin slices or strips and is dried in the sun, thus forming a hard, dark crust over the fresh meat inside. This is then called [nipko]. Fish is cut up the back, the back bone is removed before drying, after which the fish is called [piphe] or [pipxe].
No form of preserving with blubber or fat seems to be in use now; Hearne, however, mentions from the eighteenth century that the Coast Eskimos preserved caribou meat, seal meat, walrus meat, and salmon in blubber; the blubber bags were of sealskin.[1] Pemmican, as made by the Chipewyan of pulverised meat and melted fat, is quite unknown. On the other hand some Pâdlimiut in the interior have learnt from the Indians how to smoke caribou meat by the fire. Smoked meat is called [adgᴇq].
The most common form of "white man's food" among the Caribou Eskimos is a sort of flap-jack of flour, mixed with baking powder in
- ↑ Hearne 1795; 160 footnote, 391.
