Food

• Venison was an excellent source of food for the Iroquois, providing both protein and needed calories from the fat on the animals. Many of the deer brought back to camp were consumed almost immediately. When there was a surplus, the venison was dried into jerky or partially dried and then mixed with fat, fruit and other ingredients to make pemmican. Both jerky and pemmican were high-calorie, easily transportable food that could be stored and eaten months later.
  
  

Skins

• Almost as important as the meat and edible organs of the deer was the hide. Tanned with the hair removed, deerskin was the main material used to craft into coats, pants, leggings and other garments. Winter-harvested deer hides were often tanned with the hair left on the skin. The hollow, winter hair became warm bedding and sometimes warm coats used in the winter.
  
  

Fiber

• Iroquois women quickly learned the strong tendons found in the lower legs of deer made an excellent thread used to stitch together clothes and moccasins. Deerskin was often stripped and turned into rawhide, which was the "duct-tape" of the day, used to make and repair a variety of tools. Both deer sinew and rawhide were used to lash the stone points to the wooden shafts of their arrows, spears, axes and clubs.
  
  

Tools

• The bones and antlers of the deer were used as tools or formed into a variety of tools. Fishhooks, awls, needles and other tools were crafted from deer bones. A piece of deer antler was the main tool an Iroquois flint knapper used to form arrowheads, knives and spear points. Antlers also became rakes and cultivators used in Iroquois farm fields.