The following passage from Mr. Alexander Ross’s graphic description of a great hunt,[54] in which about four hundred hunters made an onslaught upon a herd, affords a good illustration of the dangers in running buffalo:
“On this occasion the surface was rocky and full of badger-holes. Twenty-three horses and riders were at one moment all sprawling on the ground; one horse, gored by a bull, was killed on the spot; two more were disabled by the fall; one rider broke his shoulder-blade; another burst his gun and lost three of his fingers by the accident; and a third was struck on the knee by an exhausted ball. These accidents will not be thought overnumerous, considering the result, for in the evening no less than thirteen hundred and seventy-five tongues were brought into camp.”
It really seems as if the horses of the plains entered willfully and knowingly into the war on the doomed herds. But for the willingness and even genuine eagerness with which the “buffalo horses” of both white men and Indians entered into the chase, hunting on horseback would have been attended with almost insurmountable difficulties, and the results would have been much less fatal to the species. According to all accounts the horses of the Indians and half-breeds were far better trained than those of their white rivals, no doubt owing to the fact that the use of the bow, which required the free use of both hands, was only possible when the horse took the right coarse of his own free will or else could be guided by the pressure of the knees. If we may believe the historians of that period, and there is not the slightest reason to doubt them, the “buffalo horses” of the Indians displayed almost as much intelligence and eagerness in the chase as did their human riders. Indeed, in “running buffalo” with only the bow and arrow, nothing but the willing co-operation of the horse could have possibly made this mode of hunting either satisfactory or successful.
In Lewis and Clarke’s Travels, volume II, page 387, appears the following record:
“He [Sergeant Pryor] had found it almost impossible with two men to drive on the remaining horses, for as soon as they discovered a herd of buffaloes the loose horses immediately set off in pursuit of them, and surrounded the buffalo herd with almost as much skill as their riders could have done. At last he was obliged to send one horseman forward and drive all the buffaloes from the route.”
The Hon. H. H. Sibley, who once accompanied the Red River half-breeds on their annual hunt, relates the following[55]:
“One of the hunters fell from his saddle, and was unable to overtake his horse, which continued the chase as if he of himself could accomplish great things, so much do these animals become imbued with a passion for this sport! On another occasion a half-breed left his favorite steed at the camp, to enable him to recruit his strength, enjoining upon his wife the necessity of properly securing the animal, which was not done. Not relishing the idea of being left behind, he started after us and soon was alongside, and thus he continued to keep pace with the hunters in their pursuit of the buffalo, seeming to await with impatience the fall of some of them to the earth. The chase ended, he came neighing to his master, whom he soon singled out, although the men were dispersed here and there for a distance of miles.”
Col. R. I. Dodge, in his Plains of the Great West, page 129, describes a meeting with two Mexican buffalo-hunters whose horses were so fleet and so well trained that whenever a herd of buffalo came in sight, instead of shooting their game wherever they came up with it, the one having the best horse would dash into the herd, cut out a fat two-year old, and, with the help of his partner, then actually drive it to their camp before shooting it down. “They had a fine lot of meat and a goodly pile of skins, and they said that every buffalo had been driven into camp and killed as the one I saw. ‘It saves a heap of trouble packing the meat to camp,’ said one of them, naively.”
Probably never before in the history of the world, until civilized man came in contact with the buffalo, did whole armies of men march out in true military style, with officers, flags, chaplains, and rules of war, and make war on wild animals. No wonder the buffalo has been exterminated. So long as they existed north of the Missouri in any considerable number, the half-breeds and Indians of the Manitoba Red River settlement used to gather each year in a great army, and go with carts to the buffalo range. On these great hunts, which took place every year from about the 15th of June to the 1st of September, vast numbers of buffalo were killed, and the supply was finally exhausted. As if Heaven had decreed the extirpation of the species, the half-breed hunters, like their white robe-hunting rivals farther south, always killed cows in preference to bulls so long as a choice was possible, the very course best calculated to exterminate any species in the shortest possible time.
The army of half-breeds and Indians which annually went forth from the Red River settlement to make war on the buffalo was often far larger than the army with which Cortez subdued a great empire. As early as 1846 it had become so great, that it was necessary to divide it into two divisions, one of which, the White Horse Plain division, was accustomed to go west by the Assinniboine River to the “rapids crossing-place,” and from there in a southwesterly direction. The Red River division went south to Pembina, and did the most of their hunting in Dakota. The two divisions sometimes met (says Professor Hind), but not intentionally. In 1849 a Mr. Flett took a census of the White Horse Plain division, in Dakota Territory, and found that it contained 603 carts, 700 half-breeds, 200 Indians, 600 horses, 200 oxen, 400 dogs, and 1 cat.
In his “Red River Settlement” Mr. Alexander Ross gives the following census of the number of carts assembled in camp for the buffalo hunt at five different-periods:
Number of carts assembled for the first trip.
In 1820 540 In 1825 680 In 1830 820 In 1835 970 In 1840 1,210
The expedition which was accompanied by Rev. Mr. Belcourt, a Catholic priest, whose account is set forth in the Hon. Mr. Sibley’s paper on the buffalo,[56] was a comparatively small one, which started from Pembina, and very generously took pains not to spoil the prospects of the great Red River division, which was expected to take the field at the same time. This, therefore, was a small party, like others which had already reached the range; but it contained 213 carts, 55 hunters and their families, making 60 lodges in all. This party killed 1,776 cows (bulls not counted, many of which were killed, though “not even a tongue was taken”), which yielded 228 bags of pemmican, 1,213 bales of dried meat, 166 sacks of tallow, and 556 bladders full of marrow. But this was very moderate slaughter, being about 33 buffalo to each family. Even as late as 1872, when buffalo were getting scarce, Mr. Grant[57] met a half-breed family on the Qu’Appelle, consisting of man, wife, and seven children, whose six carts were laden with the meat and robes yielded by sixty buffaloes; that number representing this one hunter’s share of the spoils of the hunt.