Sorry, lost my cookie. That was my post at 11:12, above.

Thanks for the clarifiction, Jack. You said, "What I was suggesting was that the "roots and herbs" would have to have a pharmacological effect rather than a nutritional one for the stuff to work as described"

I would respectfully suggest it is a possibility rather than a requirement. All of the various pemmican mixtures with which I am familiar combine high energy foods. The autumn and winter mixtures include rendered fat. Spring and summer mixtures might not. Powdered lean meats, maize (the meal mentioned), berries, maple sugar, honey, nuts, seeds, and acorns are high-energy foods. All are common ingredients in historical and current recipes.

While it is certainly true that many plant materials have pharmacological properties, and such plants were used more or less skillfully by those with the knowledge of appropriate medicinal applications, all of the pemmican mixtures I have researched in the past have functioned as high-energy foods based on nutritional aspects alone. It's an interesting point, and I look forward to looking further into the theory when I have time. Thank you for the suggestion.

Returning to the "green powder" described in Paul Burke's initial post, I'd also like to look into the travel foods of the geographical and cultural bounderies of the cited excerpt. When considering such historical accounts I remind myself that the details are only as good as the understanding of the original reporter and the accuracy of the recorder. This will be a fun exploration. Thanks for the original post, Paul Burke. How did you come across the excerpt you quoted?

For now, here is an offering of some interesting sites related to the thread subject.

http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/food/

http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/pemmican.html

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~haskell/HSP/PEMMICAN.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pemmican

http://www.aurora-inn.mb.ca/food.html#chart

maeve