1. Man and Buffalo in North America
Here each hunter sprang in haste from the tired animal he had ridden, and leaped upon the fresh horse he had brought with him. There was not a saddle or bridle in the whole party. A piece of buffalo robe, girthed over the horse's back, served in place of one, and a cord of twisted hair, lashed around his lower jaw, answered for the other. Eagle feathers dangled from every mane and tail, as marks of courage and speed. As for the rider, he wore no other clothing than a light cincture at his waist, and a pair of moccasins. He had a heavy whip, with a handle of solid elk-horn, and a lash of knotted bull-hide, fastened to his wrist by a band. His bow was in his hand, and his quiver of otter or panther skin hung at his shoulder. Thus equipped, some thirty of the hunters galloped away to the left, in order to make a circuit under cover of the hills, that the buffalo might be assailed on both sides at once… at that moment each hunter as if by a common impulse, violently struck his horse, each horse sprang forward, and, scattering in the charge in order to assail the whole herd at once, we all rushed headlong upon the buffalo. We were among them in an instant. Amid the trampling and the yells I could see their dark figures running hither and thither through clouds of dust, and the horsemen darting in pursuit.
While we were charging on one side, our companions attacked the bewildered and panic stricken herd on the other. The uproar and confusion lasted but a moment. The dust cleared away, and the buffalo could be seen scattering from a common center, flying over the plains singly, or in long files and small compact bodies, while behind them followed the Indians, riding at furious speed, and yelling as they launched arrow after arrow into their sides. The carcasses were strewn thickly over the ground. Here and there stood a wounded buffalo, their bleeding sides feathered with arrows; and as I rode by them their eyes would glare, they would bristle like gigantic cats, and feebly attempt to rush and gore my horse.
This vivid account of a Sioux buffalo hunt in southeastern Wyoming was written by a young Harvard graduate, Francis Parkman, who spent the summer of 1846 with the Oglala band of Sioux. The type of hunt he describes was repeated, with infinite minor variations, hundreds of times each year for nearly two centuries on the Great Plains.
With its great size, vast numbers, and wide distribution, the buffalo was in sheer mass the largest game species ever known to mankind, and it exerted a profound influence on man from his first arrival in North America until the destruction of the herds in the late nineteenth century.
A mature bull, his massive head and shoulders covered with long, curly hair, is an impressive sight. He stands as much as seven feet tall at the shoulder, and in good condition weighs up to 2,000 pounds. Two curved horns project from the mass of hair above his weak eyes. His hindquarters are small and tapering, covered with short, light-colored hair and terminating in a short tail with a wisp of long hair as a tassel. The cows are built on the same pattern as the bulls, but on a smaller scale. They stand five feet tall at the shoulder and weigh from 700 to 900 pounds.
The buffalo is a gregarious animal, living in small bands containing from five to fifty animals of both sexes and all ages. In time of danger they form a compact mass and present a united front to their enemies, the younger animals in the middle of the band. Until the advent of man the buffalo bands had little to fear from predators. The packs of wolves that prowled around the herds killed off the weak, the sick, and the crippled, but seldom dared to attack the united band.
When the first hunters appeared, the plains were stocked with larger species of buffalo, now extinct. With only spears, darts, and later, bows and arrows, the hunters had a difficult time bringing down these huge, tough animals in open country. Their most effective hunting method was fire, used to stampede the animals over a cliff or into a ravine.
A marked change in climate about 25,000 years ago melted the ice sheet in the middle west, exposing large new areas of pasture land. As the pasture increased, for some unknown reason all the species of larger buffalo died off, leaving the open country to be occupied by the smaller buffalo of modern times, which came up from Mexico to fill the empty spaces. These buffalo multiplied and spread until at their peak they numbered about 40 million head and occupied nearly half the North American continent.
As the buffalo herds increased, new tribes of hunters were moving in from Siberia through the Alaskan corridor and on south to the plains. Most of them settled in small farming villages on the fringes of the buffalo country and went out on the plains each summer and fall to follow the buffalo herds for a few weeks and secure meat for winter and hides for robes.
A few small bands of Indians lived out on the plains among the herds the year around and did no gardening or farming at all, depending on meat from the buffalo supplemented by some small game and whatever fruit and nuts they could gather in the draws and along the streams. During the winter they sought shelter in a valley or canyon, hoping some buffalo would drift near their camp. All these bands of buffalo hunters suffered from hunger each year while buffalo by the thousands pastured just beyond their reach.
Then came the dramatic flowering of the picturesque plains culture, stemming from an abundance of food and a resulting rapid increase in population. The horse, introduced in North America by the Spanish, was the magic factor that brought the hunters from bare subsistence to abundance almost overnight, for this new servant enabled them to kill buffalo in large numbers at any time of the year.
The plethora of fresh meat supplied the energy and the ease of hunting furnished the leisure hours that enabled the men to devote much of their time developing the stylized war games and elaborate religious ceremonies that gave such color to the plains culture of the nineteenth century.
The Indians secured their first horses, starting about 1640, from Pueblo Indians who had become disgruntled with their Spanish masters in New Mexico and run off to join the wild tribes in the buffalo country. The runway with his tame, well-trained horses soon instructed his new friends in the use of horses and all the complexities of horse culture, and in about ten years had developed them into a horse-using tribe. Then they, in turn, could spare a few of their old, gentle horses for other tribes farther to the north and east. Thus the horse culture of the Spanish spread throughout the entire Great Plains area in about 120 years.
Although in most tribes the horses were first used as pack animals, the Indians soon discovered that a fast, well-trained horse was of inestimable value in hunting buffalo and keeping the camp supplied with fresh meat for most of the year. As the supplies of meat and robes flowed in, the men had more leisure time but the work of the women increased greatly, until a married woman needed an old mother, a widowed aunt or two, and perhaps even two or three co-wives to help her with the work.
With horses to carry goods and people from place to place, the bands gained greatly in mobility and new patterns of conduct became necessary. It took just two or three days for a camp to become a mess and for the horses to eat all the grass for a mile or two in every direction. Then the tipis and camp gear, the bales of dried meat, and the piles of buffalo robes were loaded onto the pack string and the whole village moved to a fresh, clean spot with new grass for the herds. Usually a large band broke up into several small groups, each with its own camp a mile or so apart from the others, for the better handling of the horses.
The adjustment of an Indian tribe to nomadic living among the buffalo herds is well illustrated by the Comanches, who came out of their canyons and valleys in the Colorado foothills and took over a large part of the western plains from central Kansas south into Texas, and sent raiding parties deep into Mexico. The Blackfeet moved down from a small area in central Alberta until they held the land as far south as the Sun River in central Montana. The Sioux moved west from the Minnesota lake country, partly drawn to the buffalo plains, partly pushed by the better-armed Crees and Chippewas. In time the Sioux claimed all the Dakotas as their hunting grounds and encroached westward into the Crow country in Montana and Wyoming.