He lay down where he was and was instantly asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
THE FIGHT FOR THE HERD
Chatanskah's village was a group of buffalo-hide teepees on the bank of a creek flowing into the Missouri, constituting with several similar communities the Wahpeton Council Fire. This was one of the seven divisions, or sub-tribes, of the Dakota, who held the north bank of the Missouri as far as the foothills of the Sky Mountains, and whose political organization, in some ways, reminded me of the great Iroquois Confederacy, an opinion which Tawannears also entertained.
There was about these sons of the open savannahs the same sturdy self-reliance and classic dignity which marked the People of the Long House, dwelling beneath the shadow of the primeval forest which covered most of the Wilderness country east of the Mississippi. They were all big men, lithely-muscled, handsome, with clean-cut, intelligent features, fearless warriors, clever hunters, splendid orators. Like the Iroquois, too, they had conceived the advantages of union, and were consequently feared by all the neighboring tribes.
We had dwelt with them upwards of a week, resting from the fatigue of our recent adventures, when a party of young men came in with news of the approach of a gigantic herd of buffalo from the north. The end of Summer was at hand, and the herds ranging north were beginning to turn back for the southward migration to the Spanish countries, an event of the utmost importance for the Dakota, for whom the buffalo furnished the staples of existence.
They fed largely upon its flesh. They clad themselves in its fur. They wove rope from its hair. Its dung they used for fuel in a country nearly destitute of wood. From its sinews they devised bow-strings. Its horns were employed for weapons or to strengthen their bows or for containers.
For them the buffalo represented the difference between hunger and repletion, between cold and warmth, between nakedness and protection—as it did for all the surrounding tribes, for hundreds of thousands of wild, free-roving people, inhabiting a country equal to the area of western Europe. And the buffalo was most valuable in the late Summer or Fall, after it had fattened for months upon the juicy grasses of the boundless savannahs, and its fur was grown long and silky in preparation for the Winter.
There was a flurry of preparation amongst the teepees, and as every man counted, we volunteered to accompany the hunting party, which Chatanskah mustered within the hour. The second day we came upon isolated bunches of buffalo, but the chief would not permit his warriors to attack them, claiming, with reason, that if the animals continued in their present direction they would pass close by the village, and might be attended to by the home-stayers. The third day we saw several large herds of many thousands each, but the young men who had brought the news of the migration claimed that the main herd was yet ahead of us.
We proved this true the next morning when the prairies showed black under the migratory hordes. North and west they filled the landscape. Eastward they stretched for a bare half-mile, and Chatanskah hastened to lead his hunters across the front of the serried columns, so as to be able to attack the herd in flank and maintain a constant forward pressure. No man would have cared to attempt to stop in front of that animal mass. Their hoofs shook the ground, and a slight haze of dust rose over them.