478 EEPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887 



suramate dexterity as shooting with any kind of a gun, especially a rifle, 

 from the back of a running horse. Let him who doubts this statement 

 try it for himself and he will doubt no more. It was in the chase of the 

 buffalo on horseback, armed with a rifle, that " Buffalo Bill" acquired the 

 marvelous dexterity with the rifle which he has since exhibited in the 

 presence of the people of two continents. I regret that circumstances 

 have prevented my obtaining the exact figures of the great kill of buffa- 

 loes that Mr. Cody once made in a single run, in which he broke all pre- 

 vious records in that line, and fairly earned his title. In 1867 he en- 

 tered into a contract with the Kansas Pacific Bailway, then in course 

 of construction through western Kansas, at a monthly salary of $500, 

 to deliver all the buffalo meat that would be required by the army of 

 laborers engaged in building the road. In eighteen months he killed 

 4,280 buffaloes. 



3. Impounding or Killing in Pens. — At first thought it seems hard to 

 believe that it was ever possible for Indians to build pens and drive 

 wild buffaloes into them, as cowboys now corral their cattle, yet such 

 wholesale catches were of common occurrence among the Plains Crees 

 of the south Saskatchewan country, and the same general plan was 

 pursued, with slight modifications, by the Indians of the Assinniboine, 

 Blackfeet, and Gros Ventres, and other tribes of the Northwest. Like 

 the keddah elephant-catching operations in India, this plan was feasi- 

 ble only in a partially wooded country, and where buffalo were so nu- 

 merous that their presence could be counted upon to a certainty. The 

 "pound" was simply a circular pen, having a single entrance; but 

 being unable to construct a gate of heavy timbers, such as is made to 

 drop and close the entrance to an elephant pen, the Indians very 

 shrewdly got over the difficulty by making the opening at the edge of 

 a perpendicular bank 10 or 12 feet high, easy enough for a buffalo 

 to jump down, but impossible for him to scale afterward. It is hardly 

 probable that Indians who were expert enough to attack and kill buf- 

 falo on foot would have been tempted to undertake the labor that build- 

 ing a pound always involved, had it not been for the wild excitement 

 attending captures made in this way, and which were shared to the 

 fullest possible extent by warriors, women, and children alike. 



The best description of this method which has come under our notice 

 is that of Professor Hind, who witnessed its practice by the Plains 

 Orees, on the headwaters of the Qu'Appelle Eiver, in 1858. He de- 

 scribes the pound he saw as a fence, constructed of the trunks of trees 

 laced together with green withes, and braced on the outside by props, 

 inclosing a circular space about 120 feet in diameter. It was placed in 

 a pretty dell between sand-hills, and leading from it in two diverging 

 rows (like the guiding wings of an elephant pen) were the two rows of 

 bushes which the Indians designate " dead men," which serve to guide 

 the buffalo into the pound. The " dead men " extended a distance of 4 

 miles into the prairie. They were placed about 50 feet apart, and the 



