North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler.

  • Clark Wissler
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    That the use of the horse made a great change in cul¬ ture is quite probable. It must have stimulated roving and the pursuit of the buffalo and discouraged tendencies toward fixed abodes and agriculture. Buffalo Hunting. All Plains tribes seem to have practised cooperative hunting in an organized military¬ like manner. This usually took the form of a surround in which a large body of Indians on swift horses and under the direction of skilled leaders rode round and round a herd bunching them up and shooting down the animals one by one. Stirring accounts of such hunts have been left us by such eye-witnesses as Catlin, James, and Grinnell. All tribes seem to have used this method in summer and it was almost the only one followed by the southern plains tribes. In winter, however, when the northern half of the plains was often covered with snow, this method was not practised. Alexander Henry, Maximilian, and others, have described a favorite winter method of impounding, or driving the herd into an enclosure. Early accounts indicate that the Plains-Cree and Assiniboine were the most adept in driving into these enclosures and may perhaps have introduced the method among the Plains tribes. The Plains-Cree are but a small outlying part of a very widely distributed group of Cree, the culture of whose main body seems quite uniform. Now, even the Cree east of Hudson Bay, Canada, use a similar method for deer, and since there Is every reason to believe that the Plains-Cree are but a colony of the larger body to the east, it seems fair to