204 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
arrow, or drives his lance to their hearts. This being the season for gather- 
ing the robes, it is also a period of great slaughter. The skins being stripped 
off, the carcasses are generally left to the wolves, the Indians laying in dur- 
ing the fall a supply of dried meat for the winter. Catlin has also given an 
illustration of Indians disguised in wolfskins creeping upon a herd that is 
unsuspectingly grazing on the level prairie, where they are shot down before 
they are aware of their danger by their disguised enemies.* 
Lewis and Clarke describe a very novel method of destroying the buffa- 
loes formerly practised by the Minnetarees of the Upper Missouri. This 
mode of hunting was to select one of the most active and fleet young men, 
who, disguised with a buffalo-skin fastened about his body, with the horns 
and ears so secured as to deceive the buffalo, placed himself at a convenient 
distance between the herd of buffalo and some of the river precipices, which 
sometimes extend for miles. His companions in the mean time get in the 
rear and along the flanks of the herd, and, showing themselves at a given sig- 
nal, advance upon the herd. The herd thus alarmed runs from the hunters 
toward the disguised Indian, whom they follow at full speed toward the river. 
The Indian who thus acts as a decoy, when the precipice is reached, suddenly 
secures himself in some crevice of the cliff which he had previously selected, 
leaving the herd on the brink. It is then impossible for the foremost of the 
herd to retreat or to turn aside, being pressed on by those behind, who see 
no danger except from the pursuing Indians. They are thus tumbled head- 
long over the cliff, strewing the shore with their déad bodies. The Indians 
then select as much meat as they wish, the rest being abandoned to the 
wolves. A little above the mouth of the Judith River, on the Missouri, 
Lewis and Clarke passed a precipice, about one hundred and twenty feet n 
height, at the base of which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hun- 
dred carcasses of buffaloes, although many had already been carried away 
by the water.t 
Lewis and Clarke also describe the Indian method of hunting the buffalo 
on the ice, as witnessed by them March 29, 1805, at their wintering-post on 
the Missouri River, about thirty miles above the present site of Fort Abraham 
Lincoln, Dakota Territory. Every spring, say these authors, as the river is 
breaking up, the plains are set on fire by the Indians. The buffaloes are 
thus tempted to cross the river in search of the fresh green grass that springs 
* North American Indians, Vol. ihop: 249 - 257, 
t Lewis and Clarke’s Expedition, Vol. I, p. 235. 
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