Reading — Feeding the brigades
Read both passages. Then answer the questions. Some questions ask you to estimate.
Passage A — A food factory on the prairie
The North West Company post on the Qu'Appelle River, now called Fort Espérance, was the company's main pemmican depot. Cree and Nakoda hunters, and later Métis hunters, brought bison meat to trade. Women did the skilled work of drying and pounding the meat and mixing it with melted fat. In spring 1795, the post's journal records that 275 bags were finished and sent downriver in two loads. In 1812, Cuthbert Grant, a young Métis clerk, came to work at the post.
Passage B — Fuel for paddlers
Paddlers worked 14 to 16 hours a day. They needed food that was light for its energy and would not spoil. Pemmican could keep for many months. Each bag weighed about 90 pounds, the same as a standard piece of cargo. A North canoe could carry about 3,000 pounds with a crew of five or six. Planning how much food to pack was serious math: too little, and a crew could go hungry far from any post.
- pemmican
- depot
- clerk
- brigade
- estimate
