Once the people were in position they advanced very slowly until the old cow who was the leader noticed them and became restless. With no scent to warn it, the short-sighted buffalo usually did not notice anything wrong until the hunters were within about thirty yards. When the old cow started toward the center of the herd, away from the people she had sighted, the people on the opposite side would advance quickly, alarming the cows on their side and starting them toward the center before the herd could begin any general movement in one direction.
If the action was timed accurately, the buffalo would become confused and huddle for a few moments in a compact group. At this point all the hunters threw their darts, wounding as many animals as possible before one of the herd dashed through the enclosing ring, followed by all the rest. A successful surround of this kind might net ten or more buffalo, enough to keep the hunting band busy for several hours with the butchering.
If the hunters were lucky, the fleeing buffalo would run away without disturbing the main herd, a quarter of a mile away. Then the hunters could hope to stage another surround in the same locality in a day or so, when they had the first kill taken care of.
A few thousand years after the atlatl came to the plains, new migrants from Asia brought in the bow and arrow, but the hunting patterns changed very little on account of this new weapon. Only when horses came to the plains in the seventeenth century was the hunting pattern significantly altered.
When meat was scarce every edible scrap was salvaged, and a hungry man would eat any particle he could chew and swallow, including all of the organs, intestines, and odd bits. When a large kill was made and there was more meat than could be used, he took only the choicest morsels, which on a buffalo in good condition always included the two strips of back fat. The tongue, even on the old bulls, was always saved.
In handling a buffalo carcass, the first step was to remove the hide if it was to be saved. The fresh hide from a large bull might weigh 150 pounds, and from a large cow, 100 pounds. These were too heavy to be handled in one piece, so they were taken from the animal in two pieces, being first split down the belly, then down the back, from neck to tail. The buffalo was placed in a prone position, with his legs spread out, for this operation. Then practically every morsel worth saving could be gleaned without having to move the heavy and awkward skeleton.
The two halves of the skin, spread flesh side up, received the chunks of meat as they were removed from the carcass. A large cow in good condition would produce about 500 pounds of meat, and a very large bull, 900 pounds. This included the back fat, tongue, and heart. The liver, kidneys, lungs, paunch, small intestines, and sweetbreads were all saved, but were not classed as meat, for they could not be preserved by drying but had to be eaten within a short time. When meat was scarce the lungs and any blood in the body cavity were also saved. Frequently the skull was opened and the brains taken for food. When a large kill was made and there was much more offal than could be used, most of it was left untouched in the body cavity, for the handling of just the meat took all the time and energy of the butchering crew.
The hides of younger animals were usually removed in one piece. In the mid-sixteenth century, Castañeda observed that the hunters in Texas slit the hide down the back, rather than down the belly as was done in later times. When the belly slit is used, the hump of the animal makes it difficult to keep the carcass belly up, so the head is twisted back against the shoulder as a prop. Some white hunters in the nineteenth century even severed the head so it could be used to greater advantage as a prop. The hides of these smaller animals were usually reserved for clothing.
The Plains Indians devised many ingenious ways to use the various parts of the buffalo for nearly every daily necessity. One list secured from the Blackfeet in the late nineteenth century contained nearly a hundred different uses, and a more thorough survey might have extended the list by another score.
Buffalo hides tanned with the hair on were used as wraps and blankets, and are usually called robes to distinguish them from the hides tanned into leather without the hair or those dehaired but left untanned. Robe-tanned hides were used to make outer garments for winter on the northern plains, a practice common among the Blackfeet. Soft-tanned hides, usually smoked over a fire of smoldering damp rotten wood to make them dry soft and pliable after a wetting, were made into dresses for the women and girls, leggings, shirts, and breechclouts for the men, and moccasins for everyone. Worn-out lodge coverings, well smoked and heavy with grease, were also cut up for clothing, especially moccasins.
Summer skins from the bulls were often left untanned after the hair had been removed. When the skins dried, they became the hard, tough rawhide of a dozen uses, such as moccasin soles, belts, all sorts of lashings, and indestructible, waterproof containers for supplies.
Buffalo horns were shaped into spoons, cups, and ladles. The long shaggy hair from the head was braided into rope. The short soft hair was used for stuffing game balls. The tail with the tuft of hair left on the end became a fly whisk, or the skin from the tail could be made into a knife sheath with the hair tassel for a decoration.
Buffalo bones were used for making long awls and hide scrapers. Rawhide could be braided into rope, which was drawn back and forth through the eye socket of a skull to remove the hair and soften the rope. Rib bones made sled runners, pieces of bone were shaped into small counters for gambling gamesand these uses do not exhaust the list by any means.
In the historic period many new uses for buffalo products were found; for example, almost all the horse gear used on the plains was made from buffalo hides or hair, and early travelers wrote down Indian recipes for many savory buffalo dishes and methods of preserving the meat for future use.
4. The Buffalo's Life Cycle and Distribution
A shipwrecked spanish explorer in southern Texas in 153035 later returned to Spain and told this story:
Cattle [buffalo] come as far as this. I have seen them three times, and eaten their meat. I think they are about the size of those in Spain. They have small horns like those of Morocco, and hair long and flocky, like that of the Merino. Some are lighter brown, others black. To my judgment, the flesh is finer and sweeter than that of this country. The Indians made blankets of those that are not full grown, and of the larger they make shoes and bucklers. They come as far as the coast and in a direction from the north, and range over a district of more than 400 leagues. In the whole extent of the plain over which they roam, the people, who live bordering upon it, descend and kill them for food; and thus a great many skins are scattered throughout the country.
So wrote Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca after five years as a castaway among the Texas Indians. He is the first European of record to make an eyewitness report of the American buffalo. The description given in Antonio de Solis' history of the conquest of Mexico, and attributed to one of Cortes' men, was apparently inserted about a century after the event. It did not appear in any of the original accounts.
Pedro de Castañda, traveling with Francisco Coronado on the Texas plains in 1541, had a much closer acquaintance with the buffalo: