Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
9 
Copyright, 1899, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, f4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 1899. 
( VOL. LIII.— No. 27. 
I No. 346 Broadway, New York 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
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pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not bt re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
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particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
CONGRESS AND GAME EGGS. 
Now that Congress has fairly got down to work, an 
effort should be made to repeal the foolish clause which 
Senator Lodge caused to be incorporated into the t;iriff 
bill forbidding the importation of the eggs of foreign 
game birds. The Massachusetts Senator has explained 
that he was led to urge the adoption of this prohibition by 
the representations made to him by those misguided in- 
dividuals who affected to believe that the American supply 
of wild ducks was in peril of extermination at the hands 
of the Indians in the Northwest, who were gathering the 
eggs for shipment into the United States for conversion 
into albumen. There was never "a sillier story in the 
whole range of shooting and commerce; we demonstrated 
its absurdity at the time. Yet Senator Lodge and a num- 
ber of his colleagues were deceived by the canards into the 
well-meant but unfortunate support of the prohibitory 
regulation. They appear to have accepted the "duck egg 
fake," and to have taken it on no better authority than 
the unsupported assertions of people who did not know 
what they were talking about. It is a curious instance 
of the quick travel of a lie, and o£ the easy credulity 
which accepts as truth statements which a very slight 
consideration would show to be fanciful and untrue. 
If only duck eggs were concerned, the operation of ihe 
law would be absolutely without any effect, good or bad ; 
but it happens that the statute acts to the detriment of 
our game interests by preventing the importation of par- 
tridge eggs from Europe for stocking purposes. Many 
owners of game preserves would stock their covers 
with the partridge if the3^ could obtain the birds. The 
only practicable way to get the birds here is by importa- 
tion of the eggs. But consignments of partridge eggs 
have been interrupted and held up at the New York 
Custom House as being contrary to the statute. It is a 
foolish law. If Senator Lodge is desirous of serving 
the interests of sportsmen and doing something to pro- 
mote the game supply of this country, he may well undo 
the injury he has unwittingly done. 
The movement by Massachusetts sportsmen to unite in 
an association of effort to secure reform in game protec- 
tion affords much promise. There can be no question 
that in recognizing the marketing of game as one of the 
essential factors of the situation the promoters of the 
new agitation have- taken a sensible view of the problem. 
The Boston open game market is wrong in principle, and 
being wrong it acts injuriously, not only upon the in- 
terests of all other States from which it draws its sup- 
plies of illicit game, but upon the interests of the Com- 
monwealth as well. The game dealers of Boston are 
credited with being powerful in the committee rooms on 
Beacon Hill, but the united sportsmen of Massachusetts 
should find a wav to overcome these influences. 
At the annual dinner of the Boone and Crockett Club, 
which takes place Jan. 20, the usual custom with regard 
to speakers will be followed. It will be remembered that 
two years ago after the dinner Mr. A. P. Low, of the 
Canadian Geological Survey, gave the club a most interest- 
ing talk on the little known Peninsula of Labrador. Last 
year Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn told them about the 
great game which inhabited the Rocky Mountain region 
in Jurassic time. This year the chib will have the 
privilege of hearing from Mr. E. A. Mcllhenny, of 
Avery's Island, La. Mr. Mcllhenny is well known as an 
enthusiastic ornithologist, and it will he remembered 
that in the pursuit of his studies he has spent some time in 
the far North — among the birds, the beasts and the people 
of the arctic regions. It is about this far-away land that 
he is to talk to the Boone and Crockett Club, and the re- 
lation of his experiences will be illustrated bv stereopticon 
'^lide';. The occasion will unque^tionaWy he one of great 
interest. 
THE PRIMITIVE BUFFALO HUNTER. 
A LONG time ago, in the early, early days of the West, 
before the explosion of a gun had disturbed the quiet of 
the prairies or its smoke had polluted their pure, sweet 
air, there were people in that land, and those people had 
to be fed. Then there were no horses, on which to chase 
the game, nor had white strangers, with long hair hanging 
down from their faces, brought into the country the heavy, 
soft stone* which afterward made the people's arrow 
points. At that time the knives, the spear heads and the 
tips of the arrows were all made of hard flint stone. 
Far back, in still earlier days, the people had neither 
bows nor arrows, and the traditions tell us of a time when 
they set snares in the trails, by which the animals travel- 
ing along them were captured and held. Then, when the 
man found a captured animal he beat it to death with the 
great stone-headed club which was' his only weapon. But 
even in our times, though in early days, the Indians in that 
country had methods of securing game in which the bow 
and arrow played but a minor part, being used only to 
kill the game after it had been captured. 
The most common method employed in capturing 
buffalo and antelope was to decoy them into a lane much 
wider at one end than at the other, and to drive them 
down this into a pit or a pen, built under a cliff or cut 
bank, where the converging boundaries of the line came 
together. When they jumped into such a pit or such a 
pen, they could not escape, and were killed at leisure. 
Traps of this description are so simple that they were 
probably common to many primitive races. We' see the 
same principle at work when wild fowl are netted by the 
wholesale in the marshes of Europe, as well as in the 
devices often used along our seaboard for capturing 
various sorts of salt water fishes. In the case of the 
animals, advantage was, taken of the well-known fact that 
these beasts, when they saw on the prairie any unusual 
object, would often approach it to see what it was. 
The man whose duty it was to lead the buffalo into the 
trap felt that on his shoulders rested a great responsi- 
bility. Whether the people should starve or should be 
fed depended on his success. He therefore prepared him- 
self for his duty by fasting and prayer, and at the ap- 
pointed time set out on foot over the prairie toward the 
buffalo herd whose destruction it was intended to com- 
pass. He was followed by most of the men and boys of 
the camp, who distributed themselves behind the heaps of 
stones or piles of bushes which marked the two diverging 
fence lines. Meantime, he who was to call the buffalo ap- 
proached the herd, keeping himself partly concealed, so 
that the animals could not clearly make out what this 
moving object was. 
When he had come as near as he thought best, he made 
strange motions and queer noises to call their attention, 
and as the buffalo began to look at him he moved further 
and further away from them. The young animals were 
the first to raise^their heads and stare long and intently 
at this mJ^sterious creature, which was not a buffalo nor 
an antelope nor a wolf nor zny one of the common 
dwellers of the prairie. After the young buffalo had 
looked for a long time, they walked forward to get a 
better view, and the older ones began to look also, and 
to follow the younger, and soon the whole herd was in 
motion, at first walking- a few steps and then stopping and 
looking, and then walking forward again. Before long 
the younger buffalo, instead of merely walking, would trot 
a little wav and then stop again, and as they trotted the 
A'-oung bulls and heifers would perhaps begin to play, one 
galloping after another, and thus communicating a feeling 
of unrest to the whole herd. Tt was not very long now 
before the whole herd was galloping after the buffalo 
caller, who all the time had been drawing away from 
them in the direction of the opening of the chute which 
led to the pen. At the same time, he constantly kept him- 
self so far exDOsed to their sight that the interest taken 
in him by the buffalo did not f!ag. 
So soon as the herd was gallooing after him. the huffaTo 
caller ran as hard a'? he could straight for the entranq 
of the chute, and then down between the wings toward 
the pen. and the buffalo followed hard after him. After 
they were well within the wing.s, however, the people, who 
were concealed there began to plav their oart. As the^ 
herd passed them they rose to their feet, yelled and swimg 
their robes in the air, and as this was done at each place 
* Iron, 
of concealment, people were constantly near to the herd, 
and it grew more and more frightened. By this time the 
buffalo had forgotten all about the man who was calling 
them. Instead of an attraction in front which was draw- 
ing them on, there was now a danger behind, from which 
they were fleeing. As the wings of the chute drew neairer 
and nearer together, the buffalo caller, perhaps almost ex- 
hausted by his long run, darted behind one of the rock 
piles and lay hidden there, while the buffalo with thunder- 
ing hoofs and before a great cloud of dust, dashed past 
toward the jumping-off place, beneath which lay their 
doom. 
Usually the buffalo followed a straight course down the 
middle of the chute, and often all of them jumped over 
into the pen. Many were killed, crippled and wounded 
by the fall, while many others escaped unhurt. If the 
band was a very large one, its crowding and jostling as 
it ran round the pen sometimes pushed down the wall, and 
all the animals escaped. For this reason the effort was 
usually made not to bring a large band of buffalo be- 
tween the wings of the chute. 
The Indian camp was usually placed somewhere close to 
the pen, and in the morning after the buffalo caller and the 
men had started out to try to bring the herd, the women 
and children and boys made their way close to the pen and 
lay concealed there. For a long time they waited, while 
nothing happened. Then suddenly from the upper prairie 
faint soimds began to reach them ; distant yells, shrieks 
and whistles, constantly growing nearer, then the rumbling 
sound of the running herd, then — almost at once — the 
black masses, sliding, rolling, tumbling down into the 
pen close to them. Now the women and children rushed 
to the walls of the pen and clambered up on them, show- 
ing their heads and parts of their bodies over the wall. 
All were greatly excited, and called and yelled and made 
the sound of alarm, Hoo, hoOj or shouted out i ni uh 
(buffalo) . The frightened animals crowded away from the 
walls, and with heads down, tails up and tongues lolling 
from their mouths, rushed round and round the pen as 
•cifcus horses gallop round the ring. The pen was filled 
with dead and wounded, injured by the fall or run over by 
others, or hooked by the horns of their fellows. 
Soon the men came hurrying down the bluff, and they 
too mounted the walls, and with their arrows shot and. 
killed those animals that from one cause or another had 
not already fallen. When all were down, the women 
entered the pen, and destroyed the wounded and crippled 
by smashing in their skulls with great stone hammers. 
And now for days there was a time of hard work. All 
these animals had to be skinned and cut up and the meat 
carried to the camp and there distributed and dried. The 
hides must be taken to the camp, fleshed and tanned into 
robes, or lodge skins. The pen must be cleaned out and 
the offal, heads and bones reriioved to a distance. Every 
one was busy. But though the work was hard, food was 
plenty ; for the time the danger of starvation had passed, 
and all were happy. 
Always about the pen, when it was in use, there were 
great numbers of wolves, coyotes, badgers and kit foxes, 
and these helped to clean up the debris of the butchering 
left in the pen. Sometimes the young men and boys fixed 
snares of sinew over the holes through which these ani- 
mals crept to get at the meat, and captured numbers of 
them. 
In those primitive times, antelope were caught in almost 
the same way, except that instead of a pen at the point 
where the wings of the chute came together, a pit was dug. 
into which the animals were driven. Then the men 
descended among them with clubs and killed them. Some- 
times, it is said, an antelope would be so paralysed 
with fear that it would not try to avoid the man with 
the club, who might kill it with his knife. 
In connection with all these methods of taking food by 
wholesale, elaborate religious ceremonies were performed 
and generous sacrifices made. These simple people seemed 
to feel that they could have no success without the help of 
a higher power, and with all their hearts they prayed to 
him to aid them, to -give them life., to let them, their 
wives and children eat and live and have strong bodic 
When they were successful, the choicest parts of the 
fattest buffalo or antelope were offered to this higher 
■>ower and to his servants, and with these presents of 
.ood were given other r— -— '^'^ of t-he most valuable po.s- 
se.';sifn5 that they hai. 
How great must have iiSKI tSe abundance of tHe ani-' 
