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 
thinking this a trail where another herd had 
passed. 
By the Sz£szkau 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 was 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, was cut away so that its height was 
only four feet. From this point a bridge or 
causeway of logs, covered with dirt, sloped 
187 
