In Buffalo Days 



passed through the guiding arms and es- 

 caped. Usually they went on straight to the 

 angle and jumped over the cliff into the in- 

 closure below. In winter, when snow was 

 on the ground, their straight course was 

 made additionally certain by placing on, or 

 just above, the snow a line of buffalo-chips 

 leading from the angle of the V, midway be- 

 tween its arms, out on to the prairie. These 

 dark objects, only twenty or thirty feet apart, 

 were easily seen against the white snow, and 

 the buffalo always followed them, no doubt 

 thinkinof this a trail where another herd had 

 passed. 



By the Siksikau tribe of the Blackfoot 

 nation and the Plains Crees, the piskun was 

 built in a somewhat different way, but the 

 methods employed were similar. With these 

 people, who inhabited a flat country, the 

 inclosure v/as built of logs and near a tim- 

 bered stream. Its circular wall was complete; 

 that is, there was no opening or gateway in 

 it, but at one point this wall, elsewhere eight 

 feet high, w^as cut away so that its height was 

 only four feet. From this point a bridge or 

 causeway of logs, covered with dirt, sloped 

 187 



