4 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BULL. 77 
bones they make bodkins: of their sinews and haire, threed: of their 
hornes, maws, and bladders, vessels: of their dung, fire: and of their 
calves-skinnes, budgets, wherein they drawe and keepe water. To bee 
short, they make so many things of them as they neede of, or as many 
as suffice them in the use of this life.” (Gomara, (1), p. 382.) A 
crude engraving of a buffalo made at that time is reproduced in fig- 
ure 1. 
The preceding account describes the customs of the people then 
living in the southern part of the region treated in the present. 
sketch, either a Caddoan or a neighboring tribe or group, and it 
suggests another reference to the great importance of the buffalo, 
but applying to the 
tribes of the north more 
than three centuries 
later. 
“The animals inhabit- 
ing the Dakota country, 
and hunted more or less 
by them for clothing, 
food, or for the pur- 
poses of barter, are buf- 
falo, elk, black-and 
white-tailed deer, big- 
horn, antelope, wolves 
of several kinds, red and 
gray foxes, a few beaver 
and otter, grizzly bear, badger, skunk, porcupine, rabbits, muskrats, 
and a few panthers in the mountainous parts. Of all those just men- 
tioned the buffalo is most numerous and most necessary to their 
support. Every part of this animal is eaten by the Indian except 
the horns, hoofs, and hair, even the skin being made to sustain life 
in times of great scarcity. The skin is used to make their lodges 
and clothes, the sinews for bowstrings, the horns to contain powder, 
and the bones are wrought into various domestic implements, or 
pounded up and boiled to extract the fatty matter. In the proper 
season, from the beginning of October until the Ist of March, the 
skins are dressed with the hair remaining on them, and are either 
worn by themselves or exchanged with the traders.” (Hayden, (1), 
p. 371.) 
In the early days the tribes who occupied a region frequented by 
or in the vicinity of the range of the buffalo could and undoubtedly 
did kill sufficient numbers to satisfy their various wants and require- 
ments, but hunting was made more easy in later times when horses 
were possessed by the Indian. Then it became possible for the bands 
Fic. 1.—The buffalo of Gomara, 1554. 
