Probably none of the Aboriginal peoples of Canada has captured the popular imagination more than the nineteenth-century armed equestrian nomads of the prairies and bordering woodlands. These Native peoples, and their southern neighbours in what is now the United States, were a formidable military force in their short-lived heyday, and for many they symbolize the Canadian Native of historic times. But the lives of the Plains people were distinctively different from those of Aboriginal people elsewhere. Furthermore, the horse and the gun, which became an essential part of nineteenth-century Plains culture, were obtained from Europeans. Even today, it is hard to tell whether these two European elements fundamentally transformed Plains people’s lives or simply intensified their older traditions.
Long before they had obtained horses and firearms, the Plains people were remarkable hunters and had devised various efficient means to pursue buffalo—to the near exclusion, indeed, of the other large game abundant in the region. The task of the hunters was made relatively easy by the fact that the buffalo gathered at the same winter and summer ranges every year and moved back and forth between them along well-established pathways. If the pattern changed, it was usually the result of a readily identifiable cause, such as an autumn fire that destroyed the forage for the ensuing winter, or unusually mild winter weather which encouraged the herds to remain out in the open prairies. In most instances, the Indians had forewarning and could take counter-measures to ward off food shortages.
A Buffalo Rift, an 1867 watercolour by Alfred Jacob Miller, shows the cliff-driving technique of slaughtering buffalo which was commonly used in the summer. Before the Indians obtained horses, they often used fire to help drive the herd forward.
The hunters had different strategies for taking large numbers of the summer and winter herds. In summer, the most effective was the cliff drive. This involved a large party of Native people, usually including women and older children, working together to stampede a herd over a drop-off; the height did not have to be great, just enough to cripple the animals in the plunge. The drovers fanned out in a V-shaped formation around the kill site. For protection, they often stood behind natural or man-made shelters of brush or stone. The most skilled hunters came up behind the herd and set it in motion towards the cliff, while those on the flanks created enough noise to keep the animals moving forward. The prairie grass was often set alight to drive the buffalo to their deaths, which is one reason fires were commonplace. Fire drives were efficient, but the hunters were unable to control the number of animals slain, and waste was the result.
Precontact cliff drive sites, known as buffalo jumps, are found widely scattered over the prairies. The reliability of these sites is graphically pointed out by archaeological evidence suggesting they were used repeatedly over thousands of years.
The individual who supervised the construction of the buffalo pound and distributed the returns was known as the poundmaker. Note that the use of horses to drive the animals into the pound was not traditional. A Buffalo Pound: engraving (1823) after a drawing by Lieutenant George Back (1796-1878).
The Gull Lake site in Saskatchewan, for example, is 4.5 metres (15 feet) deep in buffalo bones.
Plains hunters also used the “surround” technique, described in 1691 by Henry Kelsey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, one of the first Europeans to visit the prairies: “when they see a great parcel of them together they surround them w[ith] men... they gather themselves into a smaller compass keeping y beasts still in the middle and so shooting ym till they break out at some place or other and get away.” This technique was probably used most often when bands were en route to or from their summer camps; cliff drives were generally employed when the Native people were in their large summer camps.
In winter the hunters took advantage of the fact that the herds sought shelter. In those places known to be frequented by their quarry, they built fenced enclosures known as pounds. During a winter visit to the Assiniboine of Saskatchewan in 1776, the fur trader A. Henry observed a pound in use. His account is tinged with admiration because, like surround hunting, this strategy required both skill and bravery. The hunters risked being trampled if the herd was startled.
Arrived at the island [of trees], the women pitched a few tents, while the chief led his hunters to its southern end, where there was a pound, or enclosure. The fence was about four feet high, and formed of strong stakes of birch-wood, wattled with smaller branches of the same. The day was spent making repairs... by evening all was ready for the hunt.
At day-light, several of the more expert hunters were sent to decoy the animals into the pound. They were dressed in ox-skins, with hair and horns. Their faces were covered, and their gestures so closely resembled those of the animals themselves, that had I not been in the
Secret, I should have been as much deceived as the oxen____The part, played by the decoyers,
Was that of approaching them within hearing and then bellowing like themselves____This was
Reiterated till the leaders of the herd followed the decoyers in the jaws of the pound, which, though wide asunder toward the plain, terminated, like a funnel, in a small gateway....
No matter what the method, once the hunt was concluded the elder who had supervised it apportioned the kill. The women did the skinning, butchering, and meat preparation. In the summer, they put away a considerable quantity for later consumption: meat was dried and pounded to a powder; grease was rendered and placed in a buffalo-hide or rawhide container (or parfleche) to cool; powdered meat and heated grease were combined to make pemmican. Frequently, Saskatoon berries were added to flavour this highly concentrated, nutritious mixture.
Other game was pursued too, particularly red deer. These large deer (up to 500 kilograms/1,100 pounds) lived in the wooded margins of the grasslands, and the men hunted them during the winter whenever the buffalo failed to appear, using their skins to make clothing. Plains nations, including some of the Assiniboine, Blood, Cree, and Anishinabe (Ojibwa), who were recent immigrants from the woodlands, relished moose flesh. Prairie wolf, or coyote, and beaver were hunted for their skins and pelts to make winter clothing, as well as for food, and, in season, the waterfowl were always welcome. Besides hunting large and small game, some Plains people fished in the early spring and autumn. The Assiniboine and Cree, for example, took large quantities of sturgeon during the spring runs by building weirs at key locations along such major rivers as the Red and the Assiniboine. In contrast, older Plains tribes such as the Blackfoot had no taste for fish. In fact, their dislike was so pronounced that Matthew Cocking of the Hudson’s Bay Company was told by the Blackfoot of southern Alberta that they would not accompany him to York Factory at Hudson Bay because they would have to travel by canoe and eat fish along the way.
Although the diet of the Plains people was very high in protein and fat, they did
Eat vegetables and fruit, particularly the wild prairie turnip and a variety of berries, the most important of which was the Saskatoon berry. Both were harvested in large quantities and dried for later use. Assiniboine and Cree living in southern Manitoba also obtained wild rice through trade; the lands east of the Red River marked the north-western limit of the wild-rice-growing area so they turned to the Mandan villagers, who lived in the upper Missouri River valley, for dried corn. The Mandan too were hunters, but they built a trade empire based on their surplus corn production.
But the buffalo remained the basis of wealth for the Plains people. As Henry remarked of the Assiniboine:
The wild ox alone supplies them with every thing which they are accustomed to want. The hide of this animal, when dressed, furnishes soft clothing for the women; and, dressed with the hair on, it clothes the men. The flesh feeds them; the sinews afford them bow-strings;
And even the paunch... provides them with that important utensil, the kettle____This being
Hung in the smoke of a fire, was filled with snow; and, as the snow melted, more was added,
Till the paunch was full of water, and stopped with a plug and string____The amazing
Numbers of these animals prevent all fear of want____
Although the women of all the Plains tribes were skilled at dressing and painting buffalo hides, their more sedentary Mandan neighbours to the south excelled in the arts
And were renowned for their feathercraft and hair work. The Assiniboine and Plains Cree prized the products of the Mandan craftswomen, as well as the handicrafts that the Mandan obtained from tribes living to the west and south-west. So—along with the dried corn—painted
A painted buffalo robe. Prominent men often reminded the world of their heroic deeds by having pictures painted on their lodge coverings.
Hides, buffalo robes, and feathered wear flowed northward from Mandan villages along well-established trading routes into the Canadian prairies. In return, the Plains Assiniboine and Cree carried unpainted hides, robes, and dried provisions southward to the Mandan. Very likely furs too were important in the southward-bound traffic, given that the Mandan lived outside the prime fur area.
Although the Assiniboine and Cree, relative newcomers to the prairies and park-lands, used bark canoes, the bands which had settled the grasslands earlier and hunted buffalo did not build these craft. Instead, they used the so-called bull boat, an oval craft with a covering of buffalo hide stretched over a frame of small wooden poles. Bull boats were not intended for long-distance journeys; they were made for people who travelled primarily on foot and needed boats only for crossing rivers. On these pedestrian journeys. Plains travellers relied heavily upon dogs as beasts of burden. Linked to a travois, a single dog could carry 35 kilograms (75 pounds) of cargo, the equivalent of a buffalo-hide lodge cover.
Plains society was based on the family, but polygamy was practised, and men of high status usually had several wives, ordinarily sisters. Winter villages on the plains were approximately the same size as the summer camps of woodland bands, about one hundred to four hundred people, and they were pitched in the shelter of islands of trees. Today it is hard for us to imagine what it would be like to experience a winter storm while camping, with both man and buffalo desperate for shelter. Henry has left us a vivid account. While en route to the winter village of Chief Great Road, situated in central Saskatchewan, Henry and his Indian companions were hit by a blizzard as they stopped for the night:
The storm continued all the night, and part of the next day. Clouds of snow, raised by the wind, fell on the encampment, and almost buried it. I had no resource but in my buffalo-robe.
In the morning, we were alarmed by the approach of a herd of oxen, who came from the open ground to shelter themselves in the wood. Their numbers were so great, that we dreaded lest they should fairly trample down the camp; nor could it have happened otherwise, but for the dogs, almost as numerous as they, who were able to keep them in check. The Indians killed several, when close upon their tents; but, neither the fire of the Indians, nor the noise of the dogs, could soon drive them away. What ever were the terrors which filled the wood, they had no other escape from the terrors of the storm.
Big Snake, Chief of the Blackfoot Indians, Recounting his War Exploits to Five Subordinate Chiefs. This oil painting by Canada’s famous artist-explorer, Paul Kane (1810-71), was done in the 1850s.
Once Henry reached the safety of Great Road’s village, he found his host to be both generous and hospitable. The trader was treated to a succession of the feasts and entertainments that were a normal part of winter village life. Clearly, he thoroughly enjoyed his visit with Great Road’s people: ... the chief came to our tent, bringing with him about twenty men, and as many
Women____They now brought musical instruments, and, soon after their arrival, began to
Play. The instruments consisted principally in a sort of tambourine, and a gourd filled with stones, which several persons accompanied by shaking two bones together; and others
With bunches of deer hooves, fastened to the end of a stick____Another instrument was
One that was no more than a piece of wood, of three feet, with notches cut on its edge.
The performer drew a stick backward and forward, along the notches, keeping time. The
Indian Camp, Blackfoot Reserve, near Calgary, Northwest Territories, 1889. Lodge poles could also be used to make a travois; the uncovered poles shown in this photograph are several different sets of travois leaning against each other. This panorama is from two negatives by William Notman (1826-91).
Women sung; and the sweetness of their voices exceeded whatever I had heard before.
The entertainment lasted upward of an hour; and when it was finished a dance commenced. The men formed themselves into a row on one side, and the women on the other; and each moved sidewise, first up, and then down the room. The sound of bells and other jingling materials, attached to the women’s dresses, enabled them to keep time. The songs and dances were continued alternately, till near midnight, when aU our visitors departed.
Village affairs in the winter were the responsibility of a chief and a council of elders, generally those considered to be the best suited to lead. As with the Iroquoians, council decisions were usually reached by consensus and implemented by persuasion, although sometimes force was used. During the summer the situation was somewhat different, because camps were often as large as the biggest Huron villages, numbering in excess of a thousand people. Clearly, social control and village security were needed then, particularly since mass buffalo hunts had to be carefully planned and tightly regulated to be successful; and also because a defensive posture had to be maintained constantly, summer being a time of widespread inter-tribal conflict. So
Blood Indian Sun Dance photographed by R. N. Wilson. The self-torture of boys of fifteen and sixteen by inserting ropes through their pectoral muscles was only a small part of the ceremony. The Sundance was banned by the federal government in the 1890s, but continued in secret.
The tribal council, consisting of the elders of the winter bands, would call upon one of the men’s military or police societies to enforce their rulings if necessary.
For both men and women, societies formed an important part of the Plains social life and helped to knit large groups together. Among the men, who were very statusconscious and competed strongly for social position, military or police societies were finely ranked in order of ascending status. Eligible men bought their membership, and only those who had the greatest wealth and highest personal status were able to gain entrance to the top-ranked society. Before the arrival of Europeans, one of the most important displays of wealth was the tipi lodge, made from ten to twelve buffalo hides; the best lodges were highly decorated. In the quest for wealth and status, it is clear that men were very dependent on their wives, who did most of the craft work. Although hunters killed bison in great numbers with relative ease, and therefore supplies of the most commonly used raw materials were readily available, making these materials into domestic articles was another matter. A hunter needed a wife, preferably more than one, and daughters for this work. Not surprisingly, the improved hunting that resulted from the acquisition of horses and guns was one factor that encouraged an increase in the number of polygamous marriages and the number of wives a man could have.
Today we would characterize Plains society as extremely “macho.” Individual status was based to a large extent on the military prowess and boldness exhibited in daring raids. The introduction of the horse by the Spanish in the eighteenth century signalled a sharp increase in tribal raiding because forays were organized to capture the prize animals of others; given the range provided by the horse, and the acquisition of firearms beginning in the late seventeenth century, male mortality increased significantly. And fewer males were another reason for polygamous marriages.
The most important event in the religious life of the Plains people was the annual Sun Dance ceremony, which is also known as the Thirst Dance because participants avoid drinking. The people of the plains regarded the sun as the major manifestation of the Great Spirit. The ceremony generally took place in July or August, following a buffalo hunt which was specially undertaken to obtain the food needed for the elaborate feasts. The ceremony lasted three days, during which time the celebrants danced and the shamans displayed their conjuring skills. Great quantities of meat, particularly buffalo bosses (humps) and tongues, were consumed. Like the Iroquoian Feast of the Dead, the Plains peoples’ Sun Dance was a great festival of renewal that brought families and related winter bands together at the height of summer.
World History
