American Big-Game Hunting 
hair and dressed, constituted his summer 
sheet or blanket. The dressed hide was used 
for moccasins, leggings, shirts, and women’s 
dresses. Dressed cow-skins formed the 
lodges, the warmest and most comfortable 
portable shelters ever devised. Braided 
strands of rawhide furnished them with 
ropes and lines, and these were made also 
from the twisted hair. The green hide was 
sometimes used as a kettle, in which to boil 
meat, or, stretched over a frame of boughs, 
gave them coracles, or boats, for crossing 
rivers. The tough, thick hide of the bull’s 
neck, allowed to shrink smooth, made a 
shield which would turn a lance-thrust, an 
arrow, or even the ball from an old-fashioned 
smooth-bore gun. From the rawhide, the 
hair having been shaved off, were made par- 
fleches—envelop-like cases which served for 
trunks or boxes—useful to contain small 
articles. The cannon-bones and ribs were 
used to make implements for dressing hides; 
the shoulder-blades lashed to sticks made 
hoes and axes, and the ribs runners for 
small sledges drawn by dogs. The hoofs 
were boiled to make a glue for fastening the 
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