THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 441) 



each other, not unlike an immense gridiron, and is supported by wooden 

 uprights (trepieds). In a few days the meat is thoroughly desiccated, 

 when it is bent into proper lengths and tied into bundles of CO or 70 

 pounds weight. This is called dried meat (viande seche). To make the 

 hide into parchment (so called) it is stretched ou a frame, and then 

 scraped on the inside with a piece of sharpened bone and on the out- 

 side with a small but sharp-curved iron, proper to remove the hair. 

 This is considered, likewise, the appropriate labor of women. The men 

 break the bones, which are boiled in water to extract the marrow to be 

 used for frying and other culinary purposes. The oil is theu poured 

 into the bladder of the animal, which contains, when filled, about 12 

 pounds, being the yield of the marrow-bones of two buffaloes." 



In the Northwest Territories dried meat, which formerly sold at 2d. 

 per pound, was worth in 1878 lOd. per pound. 



Although I have myself prepared quite a quantity of jerked buffalo 

 meat, I never learned to like it. Owing to the absence of salt in its 

 curing, the dried meat when pounded and made into a stew has a " far 

 away" taste which continually reminds one of hoofs and horns. For 

 all that, and despite its resemblance in flavor to Liebig's Extract of 

 Beef, it is quite good, and better to the taste than ordinary pemmican. 



The Indians formerly cured great quautities of buffalo meat in this 

 way — in summer, of course, for use in winter — but the advent of that 

 popular institution called ^Government beef" long ago rendered it un- 

 necessary for the noble rod man to exert his squaw in that once 

 honorable field of labor. 



During the existence of the buffalo herds a few thrifty and enter- 

 prising white men made a business of killing buffaloes in summer and 

 drying the meat in bulk, in the same manner which to-day produces 

 our popular "dried beef." Mr. Allen states that "a single hunter at 

 Hays City shipped annually for some years several huudred barrels 

 thus prepared, which the consumers probably bought for ordinary beef." 



Uses of bison's hair. — Numerous attempts have been made to utilize 

 the woolly hair of the bison in the manufacture of textile fabrics. As 

 early as 1729 Gol. William Byrd records the fact that garments were 

 made of this material, as follows : 



" The Hair growing upon his Head and Neck is long and Shagged, 

 and so Soft that it will spin into Thread not unlike Mohair, and might 

 be wove into a sort of Camlet. Some People have Stockings knit of it, 

 that would have served an Israelite during his forty Years march thro' 

 the Wilderness." * 



In 1637 Thomas Morton published, in his "New English Canaan," 

 p. 98,t the following reference to the Indians who live on the south- 

 ern shore of Lake Erocoise, supposed to be Lake Ontario : 



"These Beasts [buffaloes, undoubtedly] are of the bignesse of a 



*Westover MSS., I, p. 172. 



t Quoted by Professor Allen, "American Bisons/' p. 10; 



H. Mis, 600, pt, 2 291 



