FOOTNOTES:
[12] Told by Hawk.
12. WHY THE BUFFALO NO LONGER EAT PEOPLE.[13]
A young man went into a village in the night, and he heard the people talking. He could understand their talking, and by peeping into their tipi, he found out that they were Buffalo people. They were talking about killing the people. So the young man investigated. He climbed up on a high arbor that was in front of the tipi, and there he took hold of a human head. He felt around over the place and he found human meat. He climbed down from this place, and went to one of the large tipis, and here the people said, “We will soon do what we are to do. We will get these people out of the ground, and we will kill them.” Now the young man hid.
By the side of the hole where the people were to come out there was a cut in the side of a steep bank, so that, as the people were coming out of the hole, the bulls circled around them and drove the people up into the cut, where they hooked them and killed them. The young man saw the people, men, women, and children running to the cut, and as they went they were singing and crying. The people were coming out from the ground.
The young man felt sorry for the people, so that he went up among the hills. A strange man met him, and told him all about what was going on. He said: “These Buffalo have just started to eating people. I do not like it. Take this bow and these arrows, go to your home, select many young men and tell them to make bows and arrows. Lead them to this place, and kill and scatter the Buffalo so that they will not kill or eat any longer.”
The man took the bow and arrows, and the strange man stopped talking. The man found out that the strange man who was talking to him was the bow and arrows themselves. The young man then went to the village. He called many young men together and told them to make bows and arrows.
When the people had many bows and arrows the man led them to the place where the people came out from the ground. There the Buffalo were just trying to make the circle again around the hole, when these men attacked the Buffalo and commenced to kill them. Some of the Buffalo ran on to where the human meat was, and cried: “Get some of the meat and place it under your arm so that we can eat it whenever they let us alone.” But the people kept on killing, till they had scattered the Buffalo out. So they became buffalo and never ate the people any more.
The young man saved the people, and these people came out from the ground and made their home close to the village; but finally the last people who came out from the ground went south, away around by the mountains. Later they came back to Dakota, and joined their brothers again, where they have been ever since.