Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical SketchDenig, Edwin Thompson
History
Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Edited with Notes and Biographical Sketch
Denig, Edwin Thompson
Assiniboine Indians; Indians of North America -- Missouri River Valley
As soon as he rises the herd runs off and he commences skinning. Some
hunters mimic the bleating of a calf and thus decoy the buffalo to
them, but this is a rare talent, and only practiced by a few good
performers; in hilly places or where there are gullies and bushes to
hide the hunter, neither buffalo nor antelope are difficult to kill,
but on the barren and level plain it requires great exertion, time and
patience.
Another method by which great numbers of both buffalo and antelope
are slain is, when the snow has drifted in the gullies, forming banks
10 to 15 feet deep. The animals are pursued on foot, with raquettes
and snowshoes. The hunter goes over the snow, but the animals become
embedded and are killed with ease. In the summer if several animals
are killed, the meat is placed in a pile covered with the hides, and
a portion of the hunter’s clothing left on it, the scent of which
prevents the wolves from coming to it. Occasionally the bladder of the
animal is inflated, small pebbles put in, which being tied to a stick
and stirred by the wind, will keep off the wolves and foxes.
But in the winter the usual way is to bury the meat in the snow,
which effectually prevents the wolves from eating it, as they have no
power of smell through a foot of snow. Meat can be left in this way
in perfect security for a month or more, but they usually return with
their dogs and take it away the next day. If the hunter goes out on
horseback he leaves his horse near the buffalo, and after having killed
in the manner stated, packs him home with the meat and hide, but in the
deep snow horses can not travel, the dogs do not sink much in the snow
and the men and women go over it on snowshoes.
Antelope are hunted in the same way as the preceding, also sometimes
decoyed by tying some portion of clothing to a pole, the man lying
down and raising and lowering the pole at intervals, or by kicking up
his heels, one after the other. They have great curiosity to see the
strange object, and after making many circles will come near enough
to get a shot, though as soon, as they make out the man they are off.
A wolf skin is decidedly the best disguise when hunting any of the
animals on foot.
It may as well be recorded here that all young hunters sacrifice the
first game they kill by cutting it up and giving it to the crows,
magpies and wolves, saying to each, “I give you this that I may always
be able to kill and feed the wolves, that I may be successful in war.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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