XV 
AMERICAN BUFFALO 
77 
winter, when the hides were in prime condition, and 
the temperature was so low that the flesh could be 
prepared as pemmican. 
The Indians, who were instinctively adepts at the 
pursuit of these splendid creatures, hunted them on 
horseback, until they managed to drive a vast herd 
into some favourable ground, where they could be 
surrounded by the tribe. The massacre then 
commenced, with arrow and lance, until none 
remained. 
In the deep snow of winter, when the heavy bisons 
could scarcely plough their way through the unstable 
mass, and they struggled breast-deep along the 
drifts in search of some bare spot where the keen 
wind had exposed the scanty pasturage, the active 
Indians, shuffling in their snow-shoes upon the 
surface, could easily overtake and kill the tired 
buffaloes. This was a war of extermination, and 
the advent of the white man, with his usual talent 
for destruction, has nearly completed that which 
the wild Indian had begun. 
I had heard much of this and other stories of 
the “buffalo.” It was therefore a pleasurable sur¬ 
prise to find upon our arrival in the Big Horn 
range in 1881 that, although the plains had been 
deserted, there were many of these animals upon 
the mountains. 
We had been toiling for some hours up the 
mountain face, at the base of which the Powder 
river flows, and upon arrival at the summit, our 
guide was obliged to confess that “he had never 
