Buffalo Hunting on the Plains

The Indians of the pioneer High Plains took to riding horses as easily as a bird to flight, as they say.  Their equestrian skills for buffalo hunting were superb - a game they found thrilling and perilous.

Killing buffalo demanded great skill in both horsemanship and marksmanship.  An Indian could send off eight arrows in the time it took to reload a gun.  An injured buffalo was dangerous, so a hunter had to hit the right spot or risk dying himself.

With mobility and speed on horseback, all agricultural pursuits disappeared.  They became totally nomadic and spent most of the year in pursuit of the herds.  Entire families went on the chase, carrying all their belongings on travois (a type of sled on poles to pull).

In times of plenty, only the choice meat was taken, but when the times were scarce, the buffalo became a supermarket on the hoof.  Hides for tepee coverings, clothes, drums, robes, moccasins, quivers, medicine bags, shields, saddles, stirrups, dolls, and gun cases.  Even the stomach was used as a water container, its contents as skin ointments.

Next time...The Code of the Warrior


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Today in Pioneer History:  On April 28, 1897,  the Chickasaw and Choctaw, two of the Five Civilized Tribes, become the first to agree to abolish tribal government and communal ownership of land. The other tribes soon followed, finally throwing open all of Indian Territory to white settlement.

The Hollywood Indian

The Indians of the High Plains were the stuff movies were made of - novels were written about...the American Legend.  Fearless, feathered warriors mounted on swift ponies, warring and raiding for bounty and glory.  They stretched from today's Canada to the American Southwest, from the Missouri River to the Rockies.  They weren't native to the area however...

Proud Cheyenne had farmed along the upper Missouri.  Ojibwa, Cree, and Blackfoot had been hunters of the eastern woodlands.  The Sioux and Crow had been agriculturalists on the prairies.  The Shoshone and Comanche had hunted and foraged the barren land beyond the Rockies.

By the 1700s they had all arrived  on the Plains, either pushed from the East or choosing to abandon the former way of living for the way of life with the horse.  They quickly evolved into a hunting-raiding-warring society.

They came to share similar values, worship similar spirits with similar rites, obey similar codes of conduct.  The Great Plains Indians developed a common language quickly and adapted well to a completely new way of life.

Next time...more of the life of the Great Plains Indians
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On April 25, 1831, the play The Lion of the West opens in New York City. It was the first of many plays, books, and movies celebrating Davy Crockett.

Plains Indian Rituals and Visons

While some of the rituals of the Plains Indians were celebrations somewhat reserved in our traditions such as the Mandan Indians' celebration of the harvest with the corn dance - symbolic cornstalks, ears of corn and food bowls - most of the rituals of these tribes was quite brutal to us.

Torture played a major role in many rituals of the Plains Indians.  The vision quest, common to all Plains tribes was particularly important.  It was through a regiment of self denial and torture that a young man made contact with his personal protector from the spirit world by calling him forth in a vision.

The spirit usually appeared in the form of an animal or a bird - the buffalo, elk, bear and eagle were common, but even mice and mosquitoes might appear.  Such conjuring was vital to the brave's success when he hunted buffalo, the primary staple of all Plains Indians.

Before the arrival of the horse in the 17th century, Plains Indians lived on corn and a few buffalo which they could kill on foot.  Warriors (and sometimes squaws) would stampede the buffalo, driving them over the cliffs.  Other times, covered in wolf skins, they would sneak up on the herds with bow and arrow range, and with luck kill a few before the herd stampeded off. 

Next time...The Movie Star Indians
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On April 21, 1895, Woodville Latham and his sons, Otway and Gray, demonstrate their “Panopticon,” the first movie projector developed in the United States.

Rituals of the Great Plains Indians

The Plains Indians were a different world from that of the forest tribes back East.  Iowa, Omaha, Arikara, Mandan, Otto and Hidatsa tribes were semi-sedentary people who led a fairly settled life, growing corn, weaving and making pottery.  In the summer they took their horses for expeditions to track down buffalo.  They traded with nomadic tribes from further west.

These Plains Indians admired physical courage, reflected in their ceremonies.  For example, in the
sun dance of the Hidatsa, warriors reenacted their victorious battles.  In the Mandan tribe, the most sacred religious ritual was the Okipa, dramatization of the creation of the Earth and history of the tribe.  The ritual was performed to modify the spirits to ensure the welfare of the Mandan tribe, and it was a test of courage and endurance for young braves.

To begin the Okipa was fasting and ceremony dances. 
The initiates crawled to the medicine man who used a knife to pass through and under the skin on each arm above and below the knee.  Through these  wounds the medicine man passed splints, then a cord of raw hide was lowered down through the top of the wigwam and fastened to the splints on the breasts or shoulders.  The person then hung, raised and suspended, from the top of the lodge.  They quietly endured the pain until the pain rendered them unconscious.

All I can say is Ouch!....

Next time...More Ritual and Visions
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On this Day in Pioneer History: On April 18, 1906, the San Francisco earthquake and resulting fire started.  The first of two vicious tremors shook San Francisco at 5:13 a.m., and a second followed not long after. The quake was powerful enough to be recorded thousands of miles away in Cape Town, South Africa, and its effect on San Francisco was cataclysmic. Thousands of structures collapsed as a result of the quake itself. However, the greatest devastation resulted from the fires that followed the quake. The initial tremors destroyed the city’s water mains, leaving overwhelmed firefighters with no means of combating the growing inferno. The blaze burned for four days and engulfed the vast majority of the city.

Living Like a Mountain Man

Handicapped by winter's deep snows, the mountain man had to trap in the spring thaw to midsummer, when beavers molted and again in the fall until the water were frozen. 

He camped in sheltered groves close to the animals haunts and moves his home almost weekly to new beaver's areas. 

His family's tepee is a cover of buffalo hides stitched with sinews and wrapped around a conical frame of poles, slightly titled for more headroom in the back.  The cover is pegged down and closed with lodge pins except for an entrance hole with a door flap.

With smoke flaps for ventilation, the tepee was cool in the summer and facing away from the gales, wind-proofed in the winter.  In November the fire is moved inside and buffalo robes and blankets keep the trapper and his wife warm and cozy in the lodge until spring when it was time to move on again.

While camping under the stars is great for a day or two...living this way for my entire life would be quite tedious!

Next time...The Great Plains Indians

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This Day in Pioneer History: "On April 14, 1775, The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American society dedicated to the cause of abolition, is founded in Philadelphia. The society changes its name to the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1784.

The Life of a Trapper Wife

Indian wives were common among mountain men, not only to help him in the rigorous life, but also because very few white women wanted mountain man's lifestyle.  Indian wives could cost as much as 2 horses, 6 pounds of beads, or if the chief's daughter, $2000 worth of furs. 

The match was prestigious for the squaw.  She rose high in the tribe's esteem, receiving gifts of jewelry, bangles, cloth, ribbon, and equally important - modern utensils.  In exchange, she made her man's clothes and tepee, cooked, gathered firewood and cheered during months of rugged isolation her husband's morale.

Her dress was fine doeskin with half sleeves decorated with tassels, a fringe of bells and a wide belt of ornamental beads in geometric design.  An elk skin shawl was painted with symbolic patterns.  Beaded moccasins and knee length leggings covered her feet and legs.  In her "chest box" she carried her hair pomade, a porcupine hairbrush, sewing sinew, needles, quills, feathers, fleece, elk teeth and beads of Italian glass. 

Her duties includes pounding cherries - pits and all for pernmican, a stew made from buffalo hump and fats which she cooked in her Indian pot.  An Indian "pot" was a buffalo stomach held up pouch-like on four poles, filled with water, boiled with hot stones in it for three days before used, eaten and replaced with another.

The squaw's specialty was buffalo. Roasted on fireside skewer or stewed with sage, prairie turnips, wild peas and onions.  In strips, she smoked it for jerky.  Dried, pulverized, mixed with melted fat and ground berries for cakes.  Stuffed, boiled marrow, along with meats and herbs into the intestines made sausage.  With bones, milkweed buds, rose hips, prickly pear cactus,  it made soup.  The tongue was especially favored.

For variety she cooked beaver tail, venison, rabbit, quail, plums, nuts and sweet thistle which tasted like honey. Quite a talent with nothing more than and open campfire and eating what nature provided!

Next time...Mountain Man's Home
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Today in Pioneer History:  On April 11, French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand makes an offer to sell all of Louisiana Territory to the United States in one of the great surprises in diplomatic history .

Joseph Reddeford Walker

With his good looks and plumed hat and 6' stature, Joe Walker was the romantic stereotype of the mountain man.  His escapades with ladies were legendary - so was his knowledge of the West.

Walker operated as trapper and trader out of Independence, Missouri for 12 years, was sheriff of Jackson County until a promise of waters rich in beaver, wine and women lured him on an expedition to California in 1833.  Walker understood the ways of the Indian, was kind and affable to men, and loved to explore unknown regions.

From Salt Lake down the Humboldt River, over the Sierras near Yosemite and reaching the Pacific Coast, Walker covered most of the West.  In 1833 he discovered Walker Pass in the San Joaquin Valley.  Walker Pass provided an easy wagon train trail around the south end of Sierra Nevada. In 1869 the transcontinental railroad would follow the Humboldt River route.

After Joe married an Indian chief's daughter who was lost (along with is children) to cholera, his career would span 47 years as a trapper, trader and guide.  He advised wagon trains to California, bought and sold cattle and led gold prospecting parties to California and Colorado. 

His lists of "firsts" equals and surpasses Jedediah Smith's in the discovery of the West.

When his eyesight began failing, he retired to his ranch in California where he died at the age of 78.  For more in depth on Joseph Walker - search this blog...we have followed him from his birth through his life. 

Next time...Trapper Wives
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Today in Pioneer History: On April 7, 1805 after a long winter, the Lewis and Clark expedition departs its camp among the Mandan Indians and resumes its journey West along the Missouri River.

Jedediah Strong Smith

With a butcher's knife in his belt and a Bible in his bedroll, 23 year old Jed Smith entered the Rocky Mountain trade in 1822.  He was a devout Yankee, a son of a New Hampshire Methodist family who like to sing Methodist hymns on the trail.  Jed was clean shaven and the gentleman of the wilderness.

By age 25, he had survived an Arikara massacre, being mauled by a grizzly bear (and went back on
the trail within 10 days), and led an expedition to the Wind River.  He traveled through the South Pass, opening the mountains to later settlers traveling to Oregon and California.

At age 26, Smith held the single season record for beaver pelts with 688.  In the next year he partnered with two other mountain men, Jackson and Sublette.  They were to explore the Snake River to the north, while Smith would go south to find the fabled Buenaventura River which was said to flow westward through mountains to the coast.

Jedediah wandered through the wilderness for three years, never found "Buenaventura River" but left a legacy of "firsts" unmatched by any other except Joseph Walker...

* first white man overland from Rockies to California
* first white man to cross the Great Salt Lake Desert
* first white man to cross the Sierra Nevada from west to east
* first white man overland from Southern California to the Pacific Northwest

Smith returned to St. Louis in 1830.  City life was not for him and in 1831 he saddled up for Santa Fe - and rode to his death at 32 by an ambush by Comanche Indians.  His gutted body was eaten by prairie wolves, and where his bones were left no one ever found along the Santa Fe Trail. 

Jedediah along with the next mountain man stood in history as responsible for opening the west to America...

Next time...Joseph Reddeford Walker
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On this Day in Pioneer History:  On April 4, 1843, William Jackson is born in Keeseville, New York. His powerful photographs of Yellowstone helped make it the first national park. Jackson received no formal training in photography. As a young man, he began experimenting with simple cameras, and he gradually mastered the arcane skills needed to capture images on chemically prepared glass plates. In 1866, Jackson joined a wagon train and traveled west to California, lugging along his heavy camera equipment. The awesome size and ruggedness of the western landscape sparked his imagination, and he began to focus his efforts on what would later be termed “nature photography.”