The Bison 157 



The killing of buffalo, as described, was in no 

 sense sport ; instead, it was work of the hardest 

 kind. The swift ride over the dry plains through 

 the clouds of dust, the killing of the buffalo, and 

 finally the cutting up of the animals was physical 

 labor far harder than most of that performed by 

 civilized man. Usually, the buffalo were killed 

 far from water, and the severe work that the man 

 had been doing and the summer heat made him 

 very thirsty. It is not strange, then, that he 

 slaked his thirst by devouring the liver, sprinkled 

 with gall, or by eating raw the gelatinous nose of 

 the buffalo. 



The description of a butchering, given by Au- 

 dubon in his " Missouri River Journal," is very 

 graphic, and is worth quoting here : — 



" The moment that the buffalo is dead, three 

 or four hunters, their faces and hands often cov- 

 ered with gunpowder, and with pipes lighted, 

 place the animal on its belly, and, by drawing out 

 each fore and hind leg, fix the body so that it 

 cannot fall again ; an incision is made near the 

 root of the tail, immediately above the root in 

 fact, and the skin cut to the neck, and taken off 

 in the roughest manner imaginable, downward 

 and on both sides at the same time. The knives 



