After the killing a lively time ensued. The [pg 048] dead animals were skinned, cut up, and carried on ponies into camp. There the skins were pegged out to dry, the meat was cut up into strips or sheets for drying, or made up into pemmican. Every one was busy and happy in the prospect of plenty of food.
Sometimes, however, no herds could be found. Day after day passed without success. The camp was well-nigh discouraged. Then a buffalo dance was held. In this the hunters dressed themselves in the skins and horns of buffalo, and danced to the accompaniment of special music and songs.
In dancing, they imitated the movements of the buffalo, believing that thus they could compel the animals to appear. Hour after hour, even day after day, passed in such dancing until some scout hurrying in reported a herd in sight. Then the dance would abruptly cease, its object being gained.
Of course many ingenious devices were employed in hunting. Antelope were stalked; fur-bearing animals were trapped or snared. Sometimes all the animals in a considerable area were driven into a central space where they were killed, or from which they were driven between lines of stones or brush, to some point where they would fall over a cliff and be killed in the fall. Such drives used to be common in the Pueblo district. To-day deer are rarer there; so are the mountain lion and the bear. Hunts there are more likely [pg 049] nowadays to be for rabbits than for larger game. These are caught in nets, but are more frequently killed by rabbit sticks, which may be knot-ended clubs or flat, curved throwing sticks, a little like the boomerangs of Australia.
Group of Weapons. (From Originals in Peabody Museum, Cambridge.)
The great weapon for hunting was the bow and arrow. Indian bows ranged from frail, weak things, hardly suitable for a child, to the “strong bow” of the Sioux and Crows, which would send an arrow completely through a buffalo; the most powerful Colt's revolver—so Clark says—will not send a ball through the same animal. The Crows sometimes made beautiful bows of elk horn; such cost much labor and were highly valued. Three months' time was spent in making a single one. Arrows required much care in their making. In some tribes each man made all his arrows of precisely one length, [pg 050] different from all others. This was an aid in recognizing them. Many carried with them a measure, the exact length of their arrows so as to settle disputes. This was necessary to determine who had killed a given animal: the carcass belonged to the man whose arrow was found in it.
Among some eastern tribes, and particularly in the south, where fine canes grow near streams, the blow-gun is used. This consists of a piece of cane perhaps eight or ten feet long, which is carefully pierced from end to end and then smoothed inside. Arrows are made from slender shafts of rather heavy and hard wood. They are perhaps a foot and a half long and hardly more than a quarter or an eighth of an inch thick. They are cut square at one end and pointed at the other; around the shaft, toward the blunt end, a wrapping of thistle-down is firmly secured with thread. This surrounds perhaps three or four inches of the arrow's length, and has a diameter such as to neatly fit the bore of the blow-gun. The arrow is inserted in the tube, and a sudden puff of breath sends it speeding on its way. An animal the size of a rabbit or woodchuck may be killed with this weapon at an astonishing distance.
Among inland tribes, fishing was usually a matter of secondary importance. Fish pieced out the food supply rather than formed its bulk. But along some seacoasts fish is a very important food. The tribes of the Northwest Coast live [pg 051] almost entirely upon fish. The salmon is particularly important among them. These tribes have devised many kinds of lines, hooks, nets, fish-baskets, traps, and wiers. Everywhere the commonest mode of securing fish is and was by spearing.
