Our roots run back to the Red River. Long before bear oil went into our tins, bear grease was part of everyday life in the country that became Manitoba. Red River Métis families used bear grease, and many still do. Fur traders and our Cree and Anishinaabe neighbours valued it too, and even the British wanted it, enough to ship it across an ocean. Here is a short look at that story.
Red River Métis: a living tradition
Red River Métis families used bear grease, and many still do. It is not just history for us. It is knowledge handed down through the generations, along with the respect that comes with taking an animal and using it well.
The Métis Nation of Ontario's educator guide explains the practical side. A bear taken in the fall carries a thick layer of fat, which is rendered into bear grease for cooking, as an insect repellent, as medicine and for making soap. A spring bear, lean after the winter, gives far less, so a harvester who wants to restock their supply, or share some with the community, looks for a fat fall bear.
Grease was also at the heart of pemmican, the food that fuelled the fur trade. In the Métis Cookbook and Guide to Healthy Living (Métis Centre at NAHO, hosted on the Gabriel Dumont Institute's Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture), a Métis speaker explains the word itself: "we say pimmihkkan, because we add pimi to it, moose grease or bear grease," with crushed chokecherries for flavour. The result was a brick that "will keep forever," so you could take a little chunk out and be eating and walking at the same time.
Red River: the pemmican country
At Red River, most pemmican was made from bison taken on the great Métis buffalo hunts. It was dried, pounded meat mixed with grease, and it was so important that the Manitoba Historical Society calls it "the fuel on which the canoe brigades ran." The North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company both depended on it. In 1814 the colony's "Pemmican Proclamation," banning food exports from Assiniboia, helped set off years of conflict. The idea travelled far: during the Boer War (1899–1902), British soldiers in South Africa carried a sealed emergency ration tin with concentrated beef, described in one museum record as pemmican, at one end and cocoa at the other, meant to keep a man going for about 36 hours when regular supplies were cut off.
Nobody greased the famous Red River cart. As the Manitoba Métis Federation explains, any grease on the wooden axles would gather dust and wear the cart out, so they were left dry, and the carts screeched across the prairie loud enough to be heard for miles.
The Selkirk settlers learn from their neighbours
When Lord Selkirk's settlers arrived in 1812, they were new to prairie winters and leaned heavily on the people already here. They wintered at Pembina with the Métis buffalo-hunting community, and Chief Peguis and his Saulteaux (Anishinaabe) band greeted them with gifts of fish and wild rice and shared food through the hard early years. The settlement's records mostly mention buffalo tallow for cooking and sturgeon or catfish oil for lamps, wool and hides, and the first lamps were simply a bowl of grease with a rag for a wick. Much of what they came to know about living off this land, they learned from their Métis and First Nations neighbours.
Neighbours on the water: Cree and Anishinaabe knowledge
The Cree, Anishinaabe and Assiniboine peoples of this region knew the value of bear fat long before any trader arrived, and that knowledge belongs to those communities. A few practical uses are well documented. The U.S. National Park Service describes how Anishinaabe/Ojibwe builders at Grand Portage sealed the seams of their birchbark canoes with a mix of spruce pitch, bear grease and soot. Those were the canoes that carried the trade to Red River and beyond. A 2024 study in PLOS One tested historical accounts of bear grease used against mosquitoes and found it did keep them away for a short time, which suggests the old knowledge was sound. These are only small glimpses, and the full story is for those nations to tell.
On the fur-trade routes
For the voyageurs paddling between Lake Superior, Lake Winnipeg and the Red, bugs were a daily misery. Accounts of voyageur life describe men growing their hair long and covering themselves in bear grease against mosquitoes and black flies. Bear skins and oil were trade goods in their own right. The Park Service notes that at times a single black bear skin was worth as much as five beaver pelts.
Even the British wanted it: the bear's grease craze
Bear grease wasn't valued only on this side of the ocean. In Georgian and Victorian Britain, "bear's grease" was one of the most fashionable things a person could put in their hair. Historian Helen Cowie, writing for Cambridge University Press, calls it the hair conditioner of its day.
Demand took off in 1795, when William Pitt's government taxed hair powder to help pay for the war with France. Perfumers, druggists and hairdressers sold the grease for about two shillings and sixpence a pot, and much of it was imported from Russia.
It travelled from our part of the world too. The Hudson's Bay Company bought and sold bear fat, and a James Atkinson bear grease pot from London, now in the Manitoba Museum's HBC Collection, tells the story: raw fat went overseas to be made into pomade, and the finished product came back to Canada priced at that same two shillings and sixpence.
With that much money involved, plenty of "bear's grease" turned out to be lard. Some sellers kept live bears on the premises to prove their product was real, and in 1824 two London hairdressers were called before the Lord Mayor because the Russian bears they kept on Threadneedle Street were a danger to passers-by. Atkinson's decorated lids with their chained bear are collectors' items today. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum holds one dated to about 1879–1923, so bear's grease was still on British shelves many decades after the craze began.
Frontier and pioneer uses
Across North America, bear oil was the do-everything fat of camp and homestead. The Lewis and Clark expedition fried their food in it and carried it in kegs, and Lewis even touched the works of his damp chronometer "with a little bears oil." The Gatineau Valley Historical Society describes an 1805 household guide in which bear's grease was rubbed on the neck for croup or a sore throat.
A tradition carried forward
For us, this is a living tradition, not a museum piece. Our Métis and Red River heritage is a heritage of using what the land provides, wasting little, and sharing what you have with your neighbours. That is what we try to carry forward.
Today, BearRoot Botanicals makes small-batch salves, creams, butters and oil by hand near Gimli and Sandy Hook in Manitoba's Interlake, not far from the waters those canoes and York boats once travelled. If you would like to see what we make, take a look at our Skin & Body Care collection.
Sources
- Métis Nation of Ontario, Science and Technology Educator Guide (2024): metisnation.org
- Métis Centre at NAHO, Métis Cookbook and Guide to Healthy Living, 2nd ed. (2008), via the Gabriel Dumont Institute's Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture: metismuseum.ca
- Manitoba Historical Society, “The Selkirk Settler Bicentenary,” Manitoba History 69: mhs.mb.ca
- Anne Matheson Henderson, “The Lord Selkirk Settlement at Red River, Part 3,” Manitoba Pageant (1968), Manitoba Historical Society: mhs.mb.ca
- Manitoba Historical Society, “The Ojibwa, Red River and the Forks, 1770–1870”: mhs.mb.ca
- Manitoba Historical Society, “Peguis – Friend of the Pale Face,” Manitoba Pageant (title as originally published): mhs.mb.ca
- Peguis Selkirk 200, “A history of relations between Selkirk settlers and Indigenous residents at Red River”: peguisselkirk200.ca
- National Army Museum (London), “Emergency ration for field service, or ‘Iron Ration’, 1899”: collection.nam.ac.uk
- City of Parramatta History and Heritage, “Emergency food ration tin” (Boer War, beef extract “pemmican” and cocoa): historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
- Manitoba Métis Federation, “Red River Cart” (Métis Minute): mmf.mb.ca
- U.S. National Park Service, “Canoes of Grand Portage”: nps.gov
- U.S. National Park Service, “Bear Skins in the Fur Trade”: nps.gov
- Esmaeili et al., “Rancid rumors or Native wisdom,” PLOS One (2024): journals.plos.org
- Encyclopedia.com, “Bear Grease” (Fashion, Costume, and Culture): encyclopedia.com
- Voyageur's World, “Know-how: Health”: rendezvousvoyageurs.ca
- Canada's History, “Hair Pomade” (The Manitoba Museum, HBC Collection): canadashistory.ca
- Helen Louise Cowie, “Bear's Grease: A Potted History,” Cambridge University Press blog (2022): cambridgeblog.org
- Royal Pharmaceutical Society Museum, “James Atkinson's Bears Grease c1879–1923”: museum.rcpharm.org
- U.S. National Park Service, “Bear Oil”: nps.gov
- Frontier Life, “Uses of Fat on the Frontier” (quotes Lewis's journal): frontierlife.net
- Gatineau Valley Historical Society, “To Cure a Sore Throat: First Kill a Bear”: gvhs.ca