My mother gave me a fishhook and a line made out of hair from a horse’s tail. With this tackle I caught my first fish, and some of them were very large ones, too. The other boys became more friendly, and we had jolly times together; but mother kept pretty close watch over me, for fear I would kick them, and get into more trouble. After I began to play with the papooses, I picked up the Shoshone language much faster.
Nothing else of importance happened until we reached Big Hole Basin. There I saw the first buffalo I had seen since crossing the plains. Seven head of them appeared one morning on a hill about a mile away. Ten Indians started after them. One, having a wide, blade-like spear-head attached to a long shaft, would ride up to a buffalo and cut the hamstrings of both legs, then the others would rush up and kill the wounded animal.
Meat drying before the tepee of a Crow Indian.
About fifteen squaws followed the hunters to skin the buffaloes and get the meat. Mother and I went with them. The squaws would rip the animals down the back from head to tail, then rip them down the belly and take off the top half of the hide and cut away all the meat on that side from the bones. They would tie ropes to the feet of the carcass and turn it over with their ponies, to strip off the skin and flesh from the other side in the same way.
The meat was then carried to camp to be sliced in thin strips and hung up to dry. When it was about half dry, the squaws would take a piece at a time and pound it between two stones till it was very tender. It was then hung up again to dry thoroughly. The dried meat was put into a sack and kept for use in the winter and during the general gatherings of the tribe. The older it got the better it was. This is the way the Indians cured all of their buffalo meat. Washakie had about five hundred pounds of such meat for his own family when we reached Deer Lodge Valley, now in Montana, the place of our great encampment.
J. E. Stimson
Snake River (Piupa), in the land of the Shoshones.
It was about the last of August before all of the tribe had assembled. What a sight it was to see so many Indians together! The tepees were strung up and down the stream as far as I could see, and the whole country round about was covered with horses and dogs. As nearly as I could find out, about six thousand Indians had gathered. When I asked the chief how many there were, he said that he could not count them. And to think that I was the only white person within hundreds of miles, perhaps! It gave me rather a queer feeling.