[5] The Lakota (or Sioux) word is wasná, originally meaning 'grease derived from marrow bones', with the wa- creating a noun, and sná referring to small pieces that adhere to something.

Dried fruit may be added: cranberries, saskatoon berries (Cree misâskwatômina), and even blueberries, cherries, chokeberries, and currants—though in some regions these are used almost exclusively for ceremonial and wedding pemmican[12]—and European fur traders have also noted the addition of sugar.

[13] Traditionally, the meat was cut in thin slices and dried, either over a slow fire or in the hot sun until it was hard and brittle.

[16] In some cases, dried fruits, such as blueberries, chokecherries, cranberries, or saskatoon berries, were pounded into powder and then added to the meat-fat mixture.

A bag of bison pemmican weighing approximately 90 lb (41 kg) was called a taureau (French for "bull") by the Métis of Red River.

However, calcified bone fragments from Paleo-Indian times do not offer clear evidence, due to lack of boiling pits and other possible usages.

The first written account of pemmican is considered to be Francisco Vázquez de Coronado records from 1541, of the Querechos and Teyas, traversing the region later called the Texas Panhandle, who sun-dried and minced bison meat and then would make a stew of it and bison fat.

The first written English usage is attributed to James Isham, who in 1743 wrote that "pimmegan" was a mixture of finely pounded dried meat, fat and cranberries.

[22] The voyageurs of the North American fur trade had no time to live off the land during the short season when the lakes and rivers were free of ice.

Their main food was dried peas or beans, sea biscuit, and salt pork.

[23] Trading people of mixed ancestry and becoming known as the Métis would go southwest onto the prairie in Red River carts, slaughter bison, convert it into pemmican, and carry it north to trade from settlements they would make adjacent to North West Company posts.

This iron ration was prepared in two small tins (soldered together) that were fastened inside the belts of the soldiers.

[34] A 1945 scientific study of pemmican criticized using it exclusively as a survival food because of the low levels of certain vitamins.

[36] Today, people in many indigenous communities across North America continue to make pemmican for personal, communal, and ceremonial consumption.

Some contemporary pemmican recipes incorporate ingredients that have been introduced to the Americas in the past 500 years, including beef.