any sympathy even from his best friends.” Much was at stake. The food supply of the tribe for the next six months would be determined in the moments about to unfold.
Ten miles from camp, the lead riders, Grinnell among them, carefully crested a high bluff. “I see on the prairie four or five miles away clusters of dark spots that I know must be the buffalo.” Close now, the hunters change course, using the line of bluffs to conceal their advance.
Finally only a single ridgeline separated the mass of hunters from the mass of their prey. “The place,” remembered Grinnell, “could not have been more favorable for a surround had it been chosen for the purpose.” The terrain before them consisted of an open plain, two miles wide, surrounded by high bluffs. “At least a thousand buffalo were lying down in the midst of this amphitheater.”30
In a classic surround, Indians encircled the herd before the great charge. In this hunt, though, they would employ a variant of the strategy. All 800 hunters would ride into the herd from the same side. The objective was for the fastest riders to pass all the way through the herd, then turn back to face it. If successful, the herd too would turn—into the charging bulk of the hunters.
Behind the ridgeline, the hunters assembled in a long, crescent-shaped formation. Then over the hill they rode. “[W]hen we are within half a mile of the ruminating herd a few of them rise to their feet, and soon all spring up and stare at us for a few seconds; then down go their heads and in a dense mass they rush off toward the bluffs.” The leader of the Pawnee Police gave a cry, “Loó-ah!”
“Like an arrow from a bow each horse darted forward,” remembered Grinnell. “Now all restraint was removed, and each man might do his best.” Grinnell, who had only one horse, soon fell behind the Indians on fresh mounts. Great clouds of dust quickly filled the air, along with flying pebbles and clods kicked up by fleeing hooves. As he galloped forward, Grinnell could just make out the fastest riders, disappearing into the herd. Soon he could no longer see the ground, relying completely on his horse to navigate the field, aware that falling could mean death. Halfway across the valley, Grinnell realized that some buffalo were now coming back—directly at him. The herd had been turned.31
“I soon found myself in the midst of a throng of buffalo, horses and Indians.” Grinnell began shooting, “and to some purpose.”32 Two-thousand-pound animals tumbled and skidded to the earth around him. Shooting from a galloping horse required a skilled mount, steady hands, and even steadier nerve. Riders attempted to come alongside a coursing buffalo, then aimed behind the shoulder. It was difficult and dangerous. Overzealous gunners sometimes shot each other. George Armstrong Custer, likely hunting buffalo with a pistol, once misfired during a chase and blew out the brains of his horse.
A George Catlin image of a traditional Indian buffalo hunt.
Courtesy of the Amom Car ter Museum.
Indians usually hunted buffalo with bow and arrow. The bow was far superior in a mounted chase to a single-shot muzzle-loader, and as for repeating rifles, few Indians owned them. A skilled Indian archer could not only place his shot accurately but could do so with remarkable force: Arrows sometimes protruded out the opposite side of the buffalo and occasionally passed all the way through. A Sioux warrior named Two-Lance was once observed to shoot an arrow completely through the enormous body of a running bull. Grinnell watched the Pawnee fire “arrow after arrow in quick succession, ere long bring down the huge beasts and then turn and ride off after another.”33
Grinnell noted how the well-trained Pawnee horses could bring their riders alongside a buffalo with no guidance whatsoever, “yet watch constantly for any indication of an intention to charge and wheel off.”34 On the return trip of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Sergeant Nathaniel Hale Pryor found it difficult to herd well-trained Indian ponies, because at every sighting of buffalo the ponies would dash off in pursuit, “surround[ing] the buffalo herd with almost as much skill as their riders could have done.” In frustration, Sergeant Pryor finally resorted to sending one rider ahead of the main party to drive away all buffalo before the arrival of their horses.35
Grinnell’s own mount, as he learned the hard way, was untrained in the hunting of buffalo. One of Grinnell’s shots was off its mark, striking a cow without bringing her down. The cow spun around to make a “quick and savage charge.” Grinnell’s pony reacted slowly, and “his deliberation in the matter of dodging caused me an anxious second or two.” The horse just missed being gored by a swipe of the cow’s horn.36
Having filled his quota of adventure for the day, Grinnell retired to a high knoll from which he could watch the rest of the hunt and its aftermath. The plain was dotted with downed animals, each soon attended by two or three men. The women would eventually catch up to the hunt and take over the grunt work of processing the hides and the meat.
PLAINS INDIANS WERE BORN ON A BUFFALO ROBE AND WRAPPED IN A buffalo robe when they died. In between, the buffalo was the foundation of both their economy and their culture. Before the arrival of whites, buffalo provided for virtually every need.37
The Indians’ use of nearly every part of the buffalo they killed is well known. Certain nutrient-rich organs were cut from the still-warm animals and consumed raw, including the liver and the kidney. For days after a successful hunt, the entire tribe gorged on fresh meat at celebratory feasts. Delicacies included hump meat, tongue, nose, hot marrow from the roasted bones, calf brain cooked in the skull, soup made from blood, and boudins—intestines filled with diced tenderloin and then boiled. During the frenzied post-hunt feasting, men might eat ten or even fifteen pounds of meat. Meat not consumed in the immediate aftermath of the hunt was dried or smoked into jerky, some of which was pounded into pemmican, a nutritious mixture of meat, fat, and berries. Both jerked meat and pemmican could be stored for months. So too the buffalo’s thick back fat, which was stripped off and smoked.
Having provided the food, the buffalo also provided the fuel for cooking. As generations of white hunters and settlers would also learn, fires on the treeless plains were built with buffalo chips (dried dung).
Before the arrival on the plains of canvass as a popular trade item, Indian teepees were sewn from the hides of buffalo cows. It took around twenty for a single teepee. Cows’ hides were thinner and therefore both lighter and easier to work. Hides could also be used to make clothing (though the even softer hides of deer were also popular). The thick hides of bulls were used to make rawhide, battle shields, even “bullboats”—rawhide stretched over willow branches in the shape of a giant bowl. Rawhide pulled over a wooden frame was also used to make saddles, sometimes padded with buffalo hair.
Dozens of other objects came from the buffalo. Spine sinews became thread pulled by needles made from sharp fragments of bone. Tendons were used to make bowstrings. A dried tongue worked as a comb. Hair was braided into rope. The paunch held water, even during cooking. Bones became mallets, digging tools, awls. Horns became waterproof powder horns or spoons. And the Indians used the tail, as its previous owner did, to swat flies.
THAT NIGHT AT THE CAMP, GRINNELL AND HIS COMPANIONS JOINED the Pawnees’ feasting and celebration of the successful hunt. For his part, Grinnell could now say that he, like his wilderness heroes, had felled the mighty bison. Yet his mood was pensive. “And so the evening wears away, passed by our little party in the curious contemplation of a phase of life that is becoming more and more rare as the years roll by.”38
The following year, the Pawnee returned to Kansas for their semiannual hunt. They were attacked by the Sioux. One hundred and fifty-six Pawnee were killed, including a large number of women and children. The Pawnee would never hunt buffalo again.39
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