The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of AmericaButler, William Francis, Sir
History
The Great Lone Land: A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America
Butler, William Francis, Sir
Northwest, Canadian -- Description and travel
The Indians who then occupied these regions killed only what
was required for the supply of the camps-a mere speck in the dense herds
that roamed up to the very doors of the wigwams; but when the trader
pushed his adventurous way into the fur regions of the North, the herds
of the Saskatchewan plains began to experience a change in their
surroundings. The meat, pounded down` and mixed with fat into "pemmican,"
was found to supply a most excellent food for transport service, and
accordingly vast numbers of buffalo were destroyed to supply the demand
of the fur traders. In the border-land between the wooded country and the
plains, the Crees, not satisfied with the ordinary methods of destroying
the buffalo, devised a plan by which great multitudes could be easily
annihilated. This method of hunting, consists in the erection of strong
wooden enclosures called pounds, into which the buffalo are guided by the
supposed magic power of a medicine-man. Sometimes for two days the
medicine-man will live with the herd, which he half guides and half
drives into the enclosures; sometimes he is on the right, sometimes on
the left, and sometimes, again, in rear of the herd, but never to
windward of them. At last they approach the pound, which is usually
concealed in a thicket of wood. For many miles from the entrance to this
pound two gradually diverging lines of tree-stumps and heaps of snow lead
out into the plains. Within these lines the buffalo are led by the
medicine-man, and as the lines narrow towards the entrance, the herd,
finding itself hemmed in on both sides, becomes more and more alarmed,
until at length the great beasts plunge on into the pound itself, across
the mouth of which ropes are quickly thrown and barriers raised. Then
commences the slaughter. From the wooded fence around arrows and bullets
are poured into the dense plunging mass of buffalo careering wildly round
the ring. Always going in one direction, with the sun, the poor beasts
race on until not a living thing is left; then, when there is nothing
more to kill, the cutting-up commences, and pemmican-making goes on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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