Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/197

Rh quantities of summer berries, and to renew the juices in them by mixing them in cooking with flesh food.

So far from agreeing with the general judgment about the wastefulness and improvidence of the Indians, there are intelligent persons who have lived among them, observant of their ways, who have given strong statements of quite other qualities of theirs, especially in some of the Western tribes. Indeed, their economy and thrift have in some matters been set in censorious contrast with the recklessness of the whites. For example, in some recent years there is evidence that at least a million buffaloes on the Western plains have annually been slaughtered by whites and Indians in the way of trade, merely for their hides and tongues, — the carcasses being wantonly left to poison the air for many miles, and to fatten wolves and coyotes. Before this greed of traffic came in, the economical natives made a good use of every part of a single buffalo, killing only such as they could thus improve. The flesh, either fresh or dried, was for food. The skins were dressed with all of the white man's skill, though by different processes, as were those of other animals, either to remove or to preserve the hair. They were well oiled and dried and made pliant. These skins were variously employed for blankets, lodge-covers, and beds, for temporary boats, for saddles, lassos, and thongs. The horns were wrought into ladles and spoons; the brains furnished a material which had a virtue in the process of tanning; the bones were converted into saddle-trees, war-clubs, and scrapers; the marrow into choice fat; the sinews into bow-strings and thread; the feet and hoofs into glue; the hair was twisted for ropes and halters. So that the Indians left nothing of the carcass — as do the whites — to feed the ravenous and unprofitable packs of prowlers. Nor did the Indians generally kill the buffalo at a season when his flesh was not in keeping for food, or his hide for dressing.

There were also preferred delicacies of the wilderness