The Last of the Buffalo 



they were so exhausted that they could 

 not run away, and were easily killed. 



These primitive modes of slaughter 

 have been described by earlier writers, and 

 frequently quoted in recent years ; yet in 

 all that has been written I fail to find a 

 single account which gives at all a true 

 notion of the methods employed, or the 

 means by which the buffalo were brought 

 into the enclosures. Eye-witnesses have 

 been careless observers, and have taken 

 many things for granted. My under- 

 standing of this matter is derived from 

 men who from childhood have been fa- 

 miliar with these things ; and from them, 

 during years of close association, I have 

 again and again heard the story of these 

 old hunting methods. 



The trap of the Backfeet was called 

 the piskun. It was an enclosure, one side 

 of which was formed by the vertical wall 

 of a cut bank, the others being built of 

 rocks, logs, poles, and brush six or eight 

 feet high. It was not necessary that these 

 walls should be very strong ; but they had 

 to be tight, so that the buffalo could not 

 see through them. From a point on the 

 cut bank above this enclosure, in two di- 

 verging lines stretching far out into the 

 prairie, piles of rock were heaped up at 



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