Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: North American Indians of the plains / by Clark Wissler. Source: Wellcome Collection.
![assume that the method of impounding buffalo origi¬ nated with them. However that may be, some form of it was practised by the Blackfoot, Gros Ventre, Hidatsa, Mandan, Teton-Dakota, Arapaho, Cheyenne, and perhaps others. We have some early accounts of another method used in the prairies of Illinois and Iowa. Thus, in Perrot (121) we read:-— “When the village has a large number of young men able to bear arms they divide these into three bodies: one takes its route to the right, another that to the left, and half of the third party is divided between the two former ones. One of these latter parties goes away [from its main column] a league or thereabout to the right, and the other remains on the left, both parties forming, each on its own side, a long file; then they set out, in single file, and continue their march until they judge that their line of men is sufficiently long for them to advance into the depths [of the forest]. As they begin their march at midnight, one of the parties waits until dawn, while the others pursue their way; and after they have marched a league or more another party waits again for daylight; the rest march [until] after another half-league has been covered, and likewise wait. When the day has at last begun, this third party which had separated to the right and the left with the two others pushes its way farther; and as soon as the rising sun has dried off the dew on the ground, the parties on the right and the left, being in sight of each other, come together in [one] file, and close up the end of the circuit which they intend to surround. “They commence at once by setting fire to the dried herbage which is abundant in those prairies; those who occupy the flanks do the same; and at that moment the entire village breaks camp, with all the old men and young boys — who divide themselves equally on both sides, move away to a distance, and keep the hunting parties in sight so that they can act with the latter, so that the fires can be lighted on all four sides at once and gradually communicate the flames from one to another. That produces the same effect to the sight as four ranks of palisades, in which the buffaloes are enclosed. When the savages see that the animals are trying to get outside of it, in order to escape the fires which surround them on all sides (and this is the one thing in the world which they most fear), they run at them and compel them to reenter the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31353526_0030.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
