Farnham's Travels in the Great Western Prairies, etc., May 21-October 16, 1839, part 1. Farnham Thomas Jefferson

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СКАЧАТЬ take with them, on these hunting excursions, all the horses and mules belonging to the tribe, which can be spared from the labour of their fields upon the Konzas River, go south till they meet the buffalo, build their distant wigwams, and commence their labour. This is divided in the following manner between the males, females, and children: – The men kill the game. The women dress and dry the meat, and tan the hides. The instruments used in killing vary with the rank and wealth of each individual. The high chief has a lance, with a handle six feet and blade three feet in length. This in hand, mounted upon a fleet horse, he rides boldly to the side of the flying buffalo, and thrusts it again and again through the liver or heart of one, and then another of the affrighted herd till his horse is no longer able to keep near them. He is thus able to kill five or six, more or less, at a single hit. Some of the inferior chiefs also have these lances; but they must all be shorter than that of his Royal Darkness. The common Indians use muskets and pistols. Rifles are an abomination to them. The twisting motion of the ball as it enters, the sharp crack when discharged, and the direful singing of the lead as it cuts the air, are considered symptoms of witchcraft that are unsafe for the Red Man to meddle with. They call them medicines – inscrutable and irresistible sources of evil. The poorer classes still use the bow and arrow. Nor is this, in the well-trained hand of the Indian, a less effective weapon than those already mentioned. Astride a good horse, beside a bellowing band of wild beef, leaning forward upon the neck, and drawing his limbs close to the sides of his horse, the naked hunter uses his national weapon with astonishing dexterity and success. Not unfrequently, when hitting no bones, does he throw his arrows quite through the buffalo. Twenty or thirty thus variously armed, advance upon a herd. The chief leads the chase, and by the time they come alongside the band, the different speed of the horses has brought them into a single file or line. Thus they run until every individual has a buffalo at his side. Then the whole line fire guns, throw arrows or drive lances, as often and as long as the speed of the horses will allow; and seldom do they fail in encounters of this kind, to lay upon the dusty plain numbers of these noble animals.

      A cloud of squaws who had been hovering in the neighbourhood, now hurry up, astride of pack-animals, strip off hides, cut off the best flesh, load their pack saddles, mount themselves on the top, and move slowly away to the camp. The lords of creation have finished their day's labour. The ladies cure the meat in the manner described above, stretch the hides upon the ground, and with a blunt wooden adze hew them into leather. The younger shoots of the tribe during the day are engaged in watering and guarding the horses and mules that have been used in the hunt – changing their stakes from one spot to another of fresh grass, and crouching along the heights around the camp to notice the approach of foes, and sound the alarm. Thus the Konzas, Kausaus, or Caws, lay in their annual stores. Unless driven from their game by the Pawnees, or some other tribe at enmity with them, they load every animal with meat and hides about the first of August, and commence the march back to their fields, fathers, and wigwams, on the Konzas River.

      This return-march must present a most interesting scene in savage life – seven hundred or eight hundred horses or mules loaded with the spoils of the chase, and the children of the tribe holding on to the pack with might and main, naked as eels, and shining with buffalo grease, their fathers and mothers loafing on foot behind, with their guns poised on the left arm, or their bows and arrows swung at their back ready for action, and turning their heads rapidly and anxiously for lurking enemies – the attack, the screams of women and children, each man seizing an animal for a breastwork, and surrounding thus their wives and children, the firing, the dying, the conquest, the whoop of victory and rejoicings of one party, and the dogged, sullen submission of the other – all this and more has occurred a thousand times upon these plains, and is still occurring. But if victory declare for the Caws, or they march to their home without molestation, how many warm affections spring up in their untamed bosoms, as they see again their parents and children, and the ripened harvest, the woods, the streams, and bubbling springs, among which the gleeful days of childhood were spent! And when greetings are over, and welcomes are said, embraces exchanged, and their homes seen and smiled upon; in fine, when all the holy feelings of remembrance, and their present good fortune, find vent in the wild night-dance, who, that wears a white skin and ponders upon the better lot of civilized men, will not believe that the Indian too, returned from the hunt and from war, has not as much happiness, if not in kind the same, and as many sentiments that do honour to our nature, as are wrapped in the stays and tights of a fantastic, mawkish civilization – that flattering, pluming, gormandizing, unthinking, gilded life, which is beginning to measure mental and moral worth by the amount of wealth possessed, and the adornment of a slip or pew in church.

      We travelled eight miles and encamped. A band of buffalo cows were near us. In other words, we were determined upon a hunt – a determination the consequences of which, as will hereafter appear were highly disastrous. Our tent having been pitched, and baggage piled up, the fleetest horses selected, and the best marksmen best mounted, we trotted slowly along a circling depression of the plain, that wound around near the herd on the leeward side. When we emerged in sight of them, we put the horses into a slow gallop till within three hundred yards of our game; and then for the nimblest heel! Each was at his utmost speed. We all gained upon the herd. But two of the horses were by the side of the lubbers before the rest were within rifle-reach; and the rifles and pistols of their riders discharged into the sleek, well-larded body of a noble bull. The wounded animal did not drop; the balls had entered neither liver nor heart; and away he ran for his life. But his unwieldy form moved slower and slower, as the dripping blood oozed from the bullet-holes in his loins. He ran towards our tent; and we followed him in that direction, till within a fourth of a mile of it, when our heroes of the rifle laid him wallowing in his blood, a mountain of flesh weighing at least three thousand pounds. We butchered him in the following manner: Having turned him upon his brisket, split the skin above the spine, and pared it off as far down the sides as his position would allow, we cut off the flesh that lay outside the ribs as far back as the loins. This the hunters call "the fleece." We next took the ribs that rise perpendicularly from the spine between the shoulders, and support what is termed the "hump." Then we laid our heavy wood-axes upon the enormous side-ribs, opened a cavity, and took out the tender-loins, tallow, &c., – all this a load for two mules to carry into camp.

      It was prepared for packing as follows: the fleece was cut across the grain into slices an eighth of an inch in thickness, and spread upon a scaffolding of poles, and dried and smoked over a slow fire. While we were engaged in this process, information came that three of Mr. Bent's mules had escaped. The probability was that they had gone to the guardianship of our neighbours, the Caws. This was a misfortune to our honourable intention of restoring them to their lawful owners. Search was immediately ordered in the Indian camp and elsewhere for them. It was fruitless. The men returned with no very favourable account of their reception by the Caws, and were of opinion that farther search would be in vain. Being disposed to try my influence with the principal chief, I gave orders to raise the camp and follow the Santa Féans, without reference to my return, and mounting my horse, in company with three men, sought his lodge. The wigwams were deserted, save by a few old women and squalid children, who were wallowing in dirt and grease, and regaling themselves upon the roasted intestines of the buffalo. I inquired for the chiefs, for the mules, whether they themselves were human or bestial; for, on this point, there was room for doubt: to all which inquiries, they gave an appropriate grunt. But no chief or other person could be found, on whom any responsibility could be thrown in regard to the lost mules. And after climbing the heights to view the plains, and riding from band to band of His Darkness's quadrupeds for three hours in vain, we returned to our camp sufficiently vexed for all purposes of comfort.

      Yet this was only the beginning of the misfortunes of the day. During my absence, one of those petty bickerings, so common among men released from the restraints of society and law, had arisen between two of the most quarrelsome of the company, terminating in the accidental wounding of one of them. It occurred, as I learned in the following manner: a dispute arose between the parties as to their relative moral honesty in some matter, thing, or act in the past. And as this was a question of great perplexity in their own minds, and doubt in those of others, words ran high and abusive, till some of the men, more regardful of their duty than these warriors, began preparations to strike the tent. The redoubtable СКАЧАТЬ