Page:The Extermination of the American Bison.djvu/151

Rh millions of pounds of fat and juicy buffalo meat they wasted a few years ago. Verily, the buffalo is in a great measure avenged already.

The following extract from Mr. Catlins "North American Indians," I, page 199-200, serves well to illustrate not only a very common and very deadly Indian method of wholesale slaughter — the "surround" — but also to show the senseless destructiveness of Indians even when in a state of semi-starvation, which was brought upon them by similar acts of improvidence and wastefulness.

"The Minatarees, as well as the Mandans, had suffered for some months past for want of meat, and had indulged in the most alarming fears that the herds of buffalo were emigrating so far off from them that there was great danger of their actual starvation, when it was suddenly announced through the village one morning at an early hour that a herd of buffaloes was in sight. A hundred or more young men mounted their horses, with weapons in hand, and steered their course to the prairies.***

"The plan of attack, which in this country is familiary called a surround, was explicitly agreed upon, and the hunters, who were all mounted on their 'buffalo horses' and armed with bows and arrows or long lances, divided into two columns, taking opposite directions, and drew themselves gradually around the herd at a mile or more distance from them, thus forming a circle of horsemen at equal distances apart, who gradually closed in upon them with a moderate pace at a signal given. The unsuspecting herd at length 'got the wind' of the approaching enemy and lied in a mass in the greatest confusion. To the point where they were aiming to cross the line the horsemen were seen, at full speed, gathering and forming in a column, brandishing their weapons, and yelling in the most frightful manner, by which they turned the black and rushing mass, which moved off in an opposite direction, where they were again met and foiled in a similar manner, and wheeled back in utter confusion; by which time the horsemen had closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line around them, whilst the poor affrighted animals were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other, when the work of death commenced. 1 had rode up in the rear and occupied an elevated position at a few rods' distance, from which I could (like the general of a battlefield) survey from my horse's back the nature and the progress of the grand mêlée, but (unlike him) without the power of issuing a command or in any way directing its issue.

"In this grand turmoil [see illustration] a cloud of dust was soon raised, which in parts obscured the throng where the hunters were galloping their horses around and driving the whizzing arrows or their long lances to the hearts of these noble animals: which in many instances, becoming infuriated with deadly wounds in I heir sides, erected their shaggy manes over their bloodshot eyes and furiously plunged forward at the skies of their assailants' horses, sometimes goring them to death at a lunge and