Notes on Memories of a Bear Hunter 



their day's work by skinning and butchering their 

 animals, was extraordinary. Covered with dust and 

 sweat, black from the flying gunpowder, bloody up 

 to the elbows, their faces streaked and smeared with 

 blood and grease as they brushed the long hair out 

 of their faces, they presented an extraordinary spec- 

 tacle of ferocity, which their unfailing good nature 

 and merry laughter and jest wholly belied. 



After the meat and hides had been brought into 

 camp, they were attended to by the women after the 

 ordinary Indian fashion. The meat was cut into thin 

 flakes and dried in the heat of the sun, or if the 

 weather forbade this, hung up on scaffolds inside the 

 lodges. The fat was saved and dried, the bones 

 pounded up and boiled, and the fat skimmed off and 

 placed in bladders. 



The halfbreed of the middle of the last century was 

 an excellent hunter, a splendid plainsman and able to 

 support himself and his family on the prairie under 

 the most adverse conditions, but he was a slow and 

 reluctant husbandman. Coming of two races, one of 

 which, though capable of long continued and most 

 arduous effort and endurance of hardship, had never 

 been accustomed to steady and continuous labor, he 

 was willing to work until he dropped at occupations 

 which he enjoyed, but not at all disposed to tasks he 

 regarded as irksome. 



It was between 1850 and 1870 that the Red River 

 halfbreeds attained their greatest fame as buffalo 

 hunters, but when in 1883 the buffalo disappeared, 

 these hunters found their occupation gone, and knew 

 not to what to turn to gain a livelihood. No doubt 



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