Even when they had gentle animals and good instructors, many Indians were a little dubious of the large, strange creatures. The Flatheads tell how one of their hunting bands managed to capture a gentle mare from a Shoshoni camp after hiding and watching for several days how the horses acted and how they were handled. Even so, they kept their distance for a time, forming a ring of men around the mare and marching along. In a day or so they ventured to pet her, then to use a lead rope on her, and so take her home. Even though these were brave and intelligent men, if they handled a tame horse like this, it is difficult to imagine that they would ever attempt to catch even a foal from a wild herd.
Nez Percé tradition says that their first animal, a white mare in foal, was bought from the Shoshoni. Before anyone tried to ride her, the whole band spent many days sitting around and watching her every move, learning her habits, the kind of feed she liked, and how she rested.
A rather timid band of Sanpoil learned to ride their first horse by having one person lead the horse slowly, while the brave rider balanced himself with two long sticks, thrusting them against the ground on either side. These incidents are cited to show that a tribe needed both a gentle horse and an instructor if its members were to learn quickly.
In each band the bold young men learned to ride first, then taught their younger brothers. In about ten years, when these men were the respected warriors of the tribe, all the fighters and many of the others would have learned to ride. As long as the band could secure more horses this transition worked rather rapidly.
Each tribe was friendly with one or two others farther to the north and east. When a tribe had secured enough horses for its own use, it would trade a few to these friends and teach them horsemanship, and so the horses spread throughout the plains.
The whole movement was speeded up by the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, when the village people drove out or killed the Spanish colonists. The Spanish fugitives retreated hastily to the south, leaving most of their livestock in the hands of the rebels, who then began to fight among themselves. Several Apache bands that had helped in the revolt now took a large number of horses as their share of the booty. Then other wild tribes began raiding the herds and took most of the rest. Some horses had been traded off to ransom Pueblo Indians who were held as prisoners on the plains, and more went in exchange for buffalo productsmeat and robes. In two or three years many thousands of horses reached the Indians in the Great Plains, and the horse frontier moved rapidly to the north and east across the buffalo country.
In 1685 horses were reported among the tribes in southern Texas. Five years later they were seen at the mouth of the Colorado River in Texas and on the Red River near the Texas-Arkansas border. Charles C. DuTisne, a French trader, found horses in Oklahoma in 1719, Etienne Venyard Sieur de Bourgomont, another French trader, reported them in eastern Kansas in 1724, and they approached the Mandan villages in Dakota by 1739. By 1770 horses had reached the northeastern limits of the grasslands: the Sioux country in western Minnesota.
Buffalo-hunting tribes soon learned that the best of their horses could outrun a buffalo on the open plain, and they made changes in their hunting patterns to take advantage of this. They could kill a few animals any time they found a herd. In a short time the tribes were living better, with more meat the year around. A band with a few good horses could kill an ample supply of fresh meat at almost any season, and could get a large surplus in the fall to dry for the hungry time.
With horses to carry the people and their packs from place to place, a band could follow the wandering herds for a hundred miles or more. Their pack horses carried in the meat from the kill and transported the dried meat from camp to camp. This allowed the band a wider choice of good camping spots.
A camp for the winter could be in the best timber patch along a stream, for the hunters could ride out to hunt between storms. The tipis were made larger, with good liners and rugs on the floor to keep out the cold. Many packs of dried meat fed them through winter storms, and in times of real distress, when hunting failed and all the dried meat was eaten, a few of the pack animals could be butchered to stave off starvation.
The ample diet and easier living conditions produced healthier people. More babies were born, and more of them were raised to maturity. In many tribes the introduction of the horse led in a generation or so to a rapid increase in the population.
Even a small band of Indians consumed an enormous quantity of meat when that was all they had to eat. When fresh meat could be secured, about ten pounds each day for each man, woman, and child was considered desirable. When the buffalo were near and in good condition, a band of a hundred people would eat all the meat from two or three animals each day; two or three hunters on good horses could kill a week's supply in a single run. When hunting was good, not every scrap of meat was used. Often the less desirable parts of a small kill went to the camp dogs. After a large kill, the wolves cleaned up the remains of the carcasses.
When the buffalo were not in good condition it took more of them to supply the meat. Then it might require from seven to ten buffalo for each person, or more than 2 million each year to feed all the buffalo-hunting tribes. This was still only a small portion of the annual birth rate, which averaged one calf a year for every five animals of both sexes and all ages in the herd, or 6 million new calves a year in herds totaling 30 million.
The buffalo chase was exciting, dangerous, and efficient. For this the rider had to have a horse that was swift, strong, brave, and intelligent, a real buffalo horse. Since buffalo have poor eyesight, horsemen could usually approach them slowly upwind within a quarter of a mile before they became alarmed. Then they took off at full speed, and a good horse could catch them in a half a mile. If the horse did not catch the herd in two miles, he was considered too poor a horse for the chase, but might be used as a spare to ride up to the vicinity of the herd while the good runner was led.
Once the horse caught the herd, he had to have the courage to plunge into the dust and confusion of the jostling, galloping beasts, work his way through the rear fringe of old, slow bulls, and place the hunter within a few feet of the chosen animal.
Such a horse was a treasure to be guarded. A few of them in the village herd of several hundred could mean the difference between easy living or short rations for the whole group. On rare occasions when a good buffalo horse was sold, it might bring the price of ten, twenty, or even fifty ordinary horsesand be worth every bit of it. It had to be guarded at all times against thieves from other tribes. At the first sign of enemy scouts or thieves near the camp, the buffalo horses were caught and picketed near the master's tipi and fed with grass plucked by the little girls. In time of extreme danger, the horses would be taken into the tipis for the night, even though the women and girls had to sleep outside to make room.
Once the hunter had a good horse, he needed a weapon that would kill efficiently at close range. This was usually a short bow, which could be handled well on horseback, and a quiver of a dozen or so arrows, each with its owner's individual mark. On the southern plains some hunters preferred a slim lance with a long, slender point, perhaps because good cane for lances was plentiful but good wood for bows was scarce. Either weapon was deadly in the hands of a skilled hunter on a good horse.
In preparing for the chase, the hunter stripped to his breechclout and moccasins, and slipped a knife into a sheath at his belt. On his horse he placed a small pad saddle or a piece of buffalo robe secured by a wide band of soft-tanned hide for a cinch. This band could be left loose so the rider could thrust his knees beneath the band during the run to give himself a firmer seat and better control of his weapon. The horse was guided by a thin rawhide thong, often called a war bridle, looped over his lower jaw; the ends were tucked under the rider's belt, leaving both hands free to handle the weapon. The rider directed the horse by knee pressure and a slight shifting of his weight.