These men received very light punishment, even for the Blackfeet. Another hunter under like circumstances had his bow and arrows broken, his saddle broken, his whip and rope cut into small bits, and his clothing torn.
The camp police sometimes punished people who disturbed the peace of the camp. Meriwether Lewis witnessed camp discipline in an Arikara village on the Missouri in 1804:
While on shore today we witnessed a quarrel between two squaws, which appeared to be growing every moment more boisterous, when a man came forward, at whose approach everyone seemed terrified and ran. He took the squaws and without any ceremony whipped them severely. On inquiring into the nature of such summary justice we learnt that this man was an officer well known to this and many other tribes. His duty is to keep the peace, and the whole interior police of the village is confided to two or three of these officers, who are named by the chief and remain in power for some days… his power is supreme, and in the suppression of any riot or disturbance no resistance to him is suffered… their distinguishing mark is a collection of two or three raven skins fixed to the girdle behind the back in such a way that the tails stick out horizontally from the body. On his head, too, is a raven skin split into two parts and tied so as to let the beak project from the forehead.
Among the Sioux and several other tribes, police duties devolved on one of the young men's societies, numbering perhaps thirty. Among the Crows, each spring the chief would appoint one of the societies to act as police until the tribe separated into small bands in the fall, emphasizing that they were needed only when several bands camped together. The Mandans, living in large permanent villages, needed their police the whole year.
Among the smaller, poorer tribes punishment was usually more severe and the destruction of property belonging to the culprit greater, although the poor tribe could ill afford such an economic loss. Evidently these Indians did not consider it sufficient punishment to confiscate the property and give it to poorer families, especially to widows with children, but instead indulged in what to us is a shocking waste.
In the seventeenth century, when Indians began to ride horses, mounted hunters could drive buffalo from a cliff. Sometimes much of the meat spoiled before the Indians could process it. (Painting by A. J. Miller, The Walters Art Gallery)
Hunters take the hump rib from a slaughtered buffalo. Ingenious Indians could use buffalo parts to supply almost all their needs, but much offal was left behind when a large kill made meat plentiful. (Painting by A. J. Miller, The Walters Art Gallery)
11. Explorers and Mountain Men
In 1803 Thomas Jefferson at one stroke of the pen took title to 30 million buffalo and all their grazing land, with a few million elk, deer, and antelope thrown in for good measure. Thus overnight the United States went from possessing a few hundred scattered buffalo in the remote corners of the Ohio drainage to ownership of four-fifths of the world's herds. It was the largest single purchase of livestock in history.
President Jefferson's main objective in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase was to acquire the port of New Orleans and with it free passage down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico for American goods, especially farm products, from the Ohio Valley. He gladly took the Great Plains with the buffalo herds as part of the bargain when Napoleon offered them at a bargain rate.
For many years Jefferson had been interested in the great unexplored region stretching to the Pacific coast. Even while the land was still in the possession of Spain he had made several attempts to interest private individuals to cross the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. As soon as the treaty had been signed and the land firmly under the American flag, the President wasted no time in sending out two parties of explorers.
The lesser-known exploration was headed by Zebulon K. Pike, who was sent up the Mississippi to find its source. Pike finished this assignment so quickly that he was sent out again, across the plains to the Rockies in Colorado. The more famous exploration, commanded by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, was ordered to go up the Missouri River to its head, then cross the Rocky Mountains and find a way to the Pacific coast. All their route beyond the crest of the Rockies would be outside the United States in a region claimed by Spain, Great Britain, France, and Russia at various times.
In 1803 the United States had within its borders more farmland than even the rapidly growing population could settle in forty years, so there was little interest among the pioneer farmers for any movement across the Mississippi into the wild country infested with wild Indians and vast herds of buffalo. But the adventurous ones, the traders and trappers, flocked in to explore and exploit the new land. Lewis and Clark, returning from the Oregon coast in the fall of 1806, met boatloads of eager men some 1,500 miles up the Missouri from St. Louis, all of them pressing on to the wild country, with a special interest in furs. When they found that the Missouri region provided a rather scant supply of the standard furs, many of them turned their attention to buffalo robes and such by-products as fat and dried and smoked meats.
Until the coming of the railroads, the only good approach to the buffalo country was through St. Louis and on up the Missouri. In this newly acquired country, the great river was the main highway for travelers and all the products of the region on their way to market. Travelers and traders from the east came down the Ohio or up the Mississippi to St. Louis, where they had to regroup and change boats. This route up the Big Muddy offered the only practicable passage from the banks of the Mississippi through the forest belt to the Great Plains between the Falls of St. Anthony, at the head of navigation on the north, and the Red River in Louisiana. Any substantial shipments of trade goods to the western Indian tribes, and the return bales of buffalo robes, had to be carried on the Missouri.
The fur traders scanned Lewis and Clark's detailed reports of available furs and hides from the Indian tribes along the Missouri. All the tribes visited by the explorers from St. Louis to the Mandan villages were seminomadic, raising crops of corn and beans along the streams and hunting buffalo in season. For many years the French had traded for furs along the river, chiefly beaver, raccoon, and wolf, but these were of poorer quality than those found in the northern woods. They had also brought in tanned buffalo robes in small numbers.
Lewis and Clark found large herds of buffalo all along their route from the mouth of the Platte to the headwaters of the Missouri, although at times the herds might be several miles back from the river's edge. Buffalo meat was the staple for the party during this stage of the journey, supplemented with deer and antelope. The journals contain their hunting experiences with the buffalo, this one in December 1804 near the Mandan villages in Dakota:
The Big White Grand Chief of the first village came and informed us that a large drove of buffalow was near and his people was waiting for us to join them in the chase. Capt. Lewis took 15 men & went out and joined the Indians, who were at the time he got up, killing the buffalow on horseback with arrows which they done with great dexterity. His party killed ten buffalow, five of which we got to the fort by the assistance of a horse in addition to what the men packed on their backs. One cow was killed on the ice after drawing her out of a vacancy in the ice in which she had fallen, and butchered her at the fort. Those we did not get in was taken by the Indians under a custom which is established amongst them i.e. any person seeing a buffalow lying without an arrow sticking in him, or some peculiar mark takes possession, many times a hunter who kills many buffalow in a chase only gets part of one.