Chapter II: Buffalo-Running

Buffalo were plenty and here Palliser had his first run. His views on buffalo-hunting--that extinct sport--are quite worth quoting:

“Buffalo-hunting is a noble sport, the animal being swift enough to give a good horse enough to do to close with him; wheeling round with such quickness as to baffle both horse and rider for several turns before there is any certainty of bringing him down. Added to which, there is the danger of being charged by one old bull while in pursuit of another; this, however, they will not often do, unless when blown by the awkwardness of a bad hunter, in chasing them too far, when they turn and get desperate.

“The first object in approaching a herd of buffalo should be, to get as near as possible before charging them; then, rush in with your horse at full speed, single out one animal, and detach him from the herd, which you will soon do, and after a turn or two be able to get a broadside shot, when you should endeavour to strike him behind the fore-shoulder. While reloading, slacken your horse’s speed to a hand gallop. The general method of loading is to empty the charge from the horn slung round your neck into the palm of your hand, whence you can more easily pour it down the barrel; you then take a bullet wet out of your mouth, and throw it down upon the powder; by which means you avoid the necessity of using the ramrod, a most inconvenient process when riding fast on horseback. I found it from experience better to dispense with both powderhorn, ramrod, and copper caps altogether, and use a light self-priming flint gun, carrying the powder loose in the skirt pockets of my shooting-coat, and thereby having no further delay than to thrust my hand in for it and empty it down the barrel of my gun; accuracy in quantity at such close quarters being of small importance. Taking the bullet from the mouth is both the quickest and safest method of loading; quicker than fumbling for it in your pocket, and safer, because its being wet causes it to stick for a moment without rolling forward on depressing the muzzle to take aim; and my brother sportsmen are doubtless aware of the danger of leaving an empty space in the barrel between the powder and the ball. I would not, however, recommend any one to depend too much upon the detention of the wet bullet, but to fire immediately on lowering the muzzle. I ought here to mention, that in running buffalo, you never bring the gun to your shoulder in firing, but present it across the pummel of the saddle, calculating the angle with your eye and steadying yourself momentarily by standing in the stirrups as you take aim. This is difficult to do at first, and requires considerable practice; but the facility once acquired, the ease and unerring steadiness with which you can shoot is most satisfactory, and any one accustomed to this method condemns ever afterward the lifting of a gun to the shoulder whilst riding at speed, as the most awkward and unscientific bungling.

“We drew up our horses, and proceeded to skin and cut up the animals, and were soon joined by the drays despatched from the fort for the purpose of taking home the meat. What we had killed that day was very good and tolerably fat. I have before adverted to the excellence of bison beef, and the superiority of its fat over that of the domestic ox; but before leaving the subject, I will state two instances in which I myself saw this superiority fully established.

“Old Mr. Kipp, at Christmas, thinking to give all the employés and voyageurs of the Fur Company at Fort Union a great treat, had for some time previously been fattening up a very nice small-boned heifer cow, which was killed in due time, in prime condition. All who had been reckoning on the treat this would afford them, sat down in high expectation of the ensuing feast; but after eating a little while in silence, gradually dropped off one by one to the bison meat, which was also on the table, and were finally unanimous in condemning the beef, which they said was good enough, but nothing remarkable, and the fat sickening. A plate-full of it was also given, as ordinary buffalo beef, to an Indian woman in another room at the fort, on the same occasion: she pronounced it good food, but, said she, ‘it is both coarse and insipid’; and the fat, if she were to eat much of it, would make her sick.

“I mention these circumstances, having been one of the very few who have seen the comparative merits of the two meats tested by Europeans, Americans, and Indians at the same time, and heard the unanimous verdict in favour of the wild bison.”

It is worth noting that Indians who are old enough to have known buffalo all declare that the flesh of domestic cattle tastes badly and has an evil smell. This, to be sure, may mean no more than that the flesh and fat have an unusual taste and smell, which is disagreeable, because unusual. Probably, however, no one who has habitually eaten buffalo meat but will acknowledge that it is far more tender and delicate than the flesh of domestic cattle.

During the winter hunting was continuous. Indians constantly came to the post to trade or to beg. An interesting visitor was old Bill Williams, a famous trapper of that day, who had long been believed dead. He was one of a party attacked by Blackfeet, when all except Williams had been killed.

This winter Palliser witnessed a fight between the Sioux and the Assiniboines which seems to have resulted in a draw, though one Sioux was killed. These Sioux, by the way, were very troublesome and had shot many of the milch cows, and, more serious than all, a fine thoroughbred bull which belonged at the post.

“The loss of this handsome, noble animal was universally regretted in the fort, for besides his great value as their only means of continuing the breed of domestic cattle in that remote region, he proved most useful in drawing home many a heavy load of meat, and much of the wood for the fuel in the fort; as a tribute to his memory, I must here record a single combat of his with a bison, which, according to the description of his keeper, ‘Black Joseph,’ must have been truly Homeric.

“About three months previous to my arrival at Fort Union, and in the height of the buffalo breeding season, when their bulls are sometimes very fierce, Joe was taking the Fort Union bull, with a cart, into a point on the river above the fort, in order to draw home a load of wood, which had been previously cut and piled ready for transportation the day before, when a very large old bison bull stood right in the cart track, pawing up the earth, and roaring, ready to dispute the passage with him. On a nearer approach, instead of flying at the sight of the man that accompanied the cart, the bison made a headlong charge. Joe had barely time to remove his bull’s head-stall and escape up a tree, being utterly unable to assist his four-footed friend, whom he left to his own resources. Bison and bull, now in mortal combat, met midway with a shock that made the earth tremble. Our previously docile gentle animal suddenly became transformed into a furious beast, springing from side to side, whirling round as the buffalo attempted to take him in flank, alternately upsetting and righting the cart again, which he banged from side to side, and whirled about as if it had been a band-box. Joe, safe out of harm’s way, looked down from the tree at his champion’s proceedings, at first deploring the apparent disadvantage he laboured under, from being harnessed to a cart; but when the fight had lasted long and furious, and it was evident that both combatants had determined that one or other of them must fall, his eyes were opened to the value of the protection afforded by the harness, and especially by the thick strong shafts of the cart against the short horns of the bison, who, although he bore him over and over again down on his haunches, could not wound him severely. On the other hand, the long sharp horns of the brave Fort Union bull began to tell on the furrowed sides of his antagonist, until the final charge brought the bison, with a furious bound, dead under our hero’s feet, whose long fine-drawn horn was deep driven into his adversary’s heart. With a cheer that made the woods ring again, down clambered Joe, and while triumphantly caressing, also carefully examined his chivalrous companion, who, although bruised, blown, and covered with foam, had escaped uninjured.

“It required all Joe’s nigger eloquence to persuade the bull to leave the slain antagonist, over whom he long stood watching, evidently expecting him to get up again to renew the combat, Joe all the time coaxing him forward with, ‘Him dear good bull, him go home now, and do no more work to-day,’ which prospect, black Joe, in common with all his sable brethren, considered as the acme of sublunary felicity.”

During this winter the people at Fort Union were attacked by an epidemic which laid up many of them. Those who were not incapacitated by illness were, therefore, obliged to hunt the harder to supply the post with food, for in that country and at that time food meant meat almost exclusively. Buffalo-running in winter is often hard work, and when to the winter weather are added the difficulties of deep snow, the work becomes not only hard but dangerous. Some incidents of a winter run are given in Palliser’s account of his killing some meat four or five miles from the post. He “had a splendid run, flooring a cow and wounding a bull, which I left for the present, and then stretching away at full speed, I pursued after another uncommonly fine fat cow. She gave me an awful chase, turning and doubling incessantly. My little horse was sorely at a disadvantage in the snow and began to show symptoms of distress; but I could not manage to get a broadside shot. At last making one more push, I got pretty close behind her and raising myself in my stirrups fired down upon her.... She dropped at the report, the bullet breaking her spine. My little horse, unable to stop himself, rolled right over her, making a complete somersault, and sending me, gun and all, flying clean over both of them into a snowdrift. I leaped up, ran back to my horse, which I caught without much difficulty, and was glad to find no more hurt than myself. My gun was filled with snow, of course, but otherwise uninjured.”

The friendly relations between the domestic cattle and the buffalo caused Palliser much surprise, for he was unaware that cattle and buffalo associate intimately and sometimes interbreed.

Cases have been recorded where buffalo in their stampede have carried off considerable numbers of cattle, which became as wild as the buffalo with which they associated. Another point new to Palliser, and perhaps not well understood by naturalists at present, is the fact that buffalo do not, as a rule, use their hoofs to remove the snow from the ground, but push the snow aside with the nose. Palliser says: “I was still more astonished, on attentively observing this friendly intercourse, to see our little calves apparently preferring the companionship of the bison, particularly that of the most colossal bulls, to that of their own species. I took an opportunity one morning of investigating the reason of this more closely, and availing myself of some broken ground, beyond which I saw three of our poor little half-starved calves in company with two gigantic bulls, I crept up very carefully, and lay under the brow of a hill, not fifty yards from the nearest in order to observe them, and was not long in discovering that the bison has the power of removing the snow with his admirably-shaped shovel-nose so as to obtain the grass underneath it. His little companions, unable to remove the frozen obstacle for themselves, were thankfully and fearlessly feeding in his wake; the little heads of two of them visible every now and then, contesting an exposed morsel under his very beard. It was an interesting sight, and I crept softly away again, so as not to disturb them.

“Although the bison scrapes the snow with his nose, I do not think he does so with his hoofs. I have frequently seen the snow, where buffalo have been feeding, stained with slight signs of blood, and after having shot them, found the noses of both cow and bull sore from the constant shovelling.”

Buffalo-hunting was not without its excitement. On a certain day, for example, with an Indian, he killed three bulls, one of which was shot four times, and though seeming very weak did not fall, so that Palliser determined to finish him.

“Walking up therefore to within thirty paces of him, till I could actually see his eyes rolling, I fired for the fourth time directly at the region of the heart, as I thought, but to my utter amazement up went his tail and down went his head, and with a speed that I thought him little capable of, he was upon me in a twinkling. I ran hard for it but he rapidly overhauled me, and my situation was becoming anything but pleasant. Thinking he might, like our own bulls, shut the eyes in making a charge, I swerved suddenly to one side to escape the shock, but, to my horror, I failed in dodging him, for he bolted round quicker than I did, and affording me barely time to protect my stomach with the stock of my rifle, and to turn myself sideways as I sustained the charge, in the hopes of getting between his horns, he came plump upon me with a shock like an earthquake. My rifle-stock was shivered to pieces by one horn, my clothes torn by the other; I flew into mid-air, scattering my prairie-hens and rabbits, which had hitherto hung dangling by leathern thongs from my belt, in all directions, till landing at last, I fell unhurt in the snow, and almost over me--fortunately not quite--rolled my infuriated antagonist, and subsided in a snowdrift. I was luckily not the least injured, the force of the blow having been perfectly deadened by the enormous mass of fur, wool, and hair, that clothed his shaggy head-piece.”

It was here that Palliser saw his first elk, which he describes with great detail, and whose whistle in the breeding season he declares to be the most beautiful sound in all the animal creation; it is like the sound of an enormous soft flute, uttered in a most coaxing tone.

In his hunting in the buffalo range, where, of course, wolves were most abundant, Palliser, as might be supposed, saw many wolves. He speaks with enthusiasm of the splendid white skins which he secured and brought into the post. In several cases he observes that wolves will eagerly devour the carcasses of their own kind. He notes also that they sometimes sleep so soundly that a man may walk up quite close to them. This is something that happened occasionally to all hunters. A hunting companion on one occasion walked to within a few feet of a sleeping deer, and commented in low tones to his companion on the soundness of its slumbers.

During this winter at Fort Union Palliser purchased a mongrel hauling, or travois, dog, sired by a white wolf. The animal was particularly shy of white men, and the old woman who sold it was obliged to catch the dog twice and deliver it a second time. Palliser wanted the dog to haul his travois on a journey he was about to make with two voyageurs. His companions had a pair of mules harnessed to a sleigh. He notes that the mules, of course, must be fed on cottonwood bark, since the grass was now deeply covered with snow. Palliser’s dog--Ishmah by name--like his master, had to depend for food on the rifle. Shortly after starting, Palliser and his two companions separated, he and the dog to go up the river to Fort Mackenzie alone. He travelled chiefly on the ice, using due care to avoid the air-holes which are so frequent and so dangerous, and never leaving the river for any great distance. In the valley, shelter from the terrible storms of the high prairie may always be found. Here the two companions, who by this time had come thoroughly to understand each other, found the journey comfortable and very pleasant.

Ishmah’s friendly relation with the wolves was sometimes very annoying, for often he ran off and played with the young wolves, chasing and being chased by them in turn. One afternoon, however, Ishmah followed a wolf off on the prairie, dragging behind him the travois loaded with everything that Palliser then possessed. He followed, shouting, but the dog had disappeared, and darkness soon obliged the owner to turn back toward the river. He was a long way from timber and all about him was a vast barren waste of snow. The situation was anything but agreeable. “I was about one hundred miles from any known habitation, and nearly one hundred and fifty from my destination, destitute of robe and blankets, with but very little powder in my horn, and only two bullets in my pouch. In short, I was in a pretty considerable sort of a ‘fix,’ and had nothing for it but to make tracks again with all speed for the timber. Fortunately, I found my way back to the river without much difficulty. It was a beautiful moonlight night, which enabled me to collect some fallen wood, and having lighted a fire, I seated myself beside it, and began to consider the probabilities of my ever reaching a trading-post alive, in the event of Ishmah not returning, and how I should economise my ammunition and increase my rate of travelling so as to effect this object. My prospects were dismal enough, nor did I feel cheered as the cold north breeze froze the perspiration which had run down my forehead and face, and formed icicles in my beard and whiskers, that jingled like bells as I shook my head in dismissing from my mind one project after another. At last resigning myself to my fate I took out my pipe, determined to console myself with a smoke, when, alas! on feeling for tobacco I found that was gone too. This was the climax of my misfortune! I looked to the north star and calculated by the position of the Plough that it must have been about ten o’clock, the time at which in England we have our knees under the mahogany, surrounded by friends, discussing a bottle of the best, and awaiting the summons to tea in the drawing-room. I tried to see a faint similarity to the steam of the tea-urn in the smoke from the snow-covered wood on my dreary fire, and endeavoured to trace the forms of sweet familiar faces in the embers, till I almost heard the rustling of fresh white crepe dresses round me, when, hark! I did hear a rustle--it approaches nearer, nearer, and I recognize the scraping of Ishmah’s travail on the snow; another moment and the panting rascal was by my side! I never felt so relieved, and laughed out loud from sheer joy, as I noticed the consciousness he showed by his various cringing movements of having behaved very badly. I was too well pleased, however, at his reappearance to beat him, particularly when I found nothing of his harness and load either missing or injured in the slightest degree. Even the portion of meat which I had secured from the last deer I shot was untouched; so that I had nothing to do but unpack the travail, make my bed, and cook our supper.”

Palliser was greatly interested in the Indians that he saw, and tried to understand something of their ways of thought. He quotes a woman whom he called to look through a telescope as saying: “The white man know of this--here she moved her hand as if writing--what happens very far off, and with this--touching the telescope--they see what is a long way off; now have they invented anything by which they can hear what is saying a long way off?” This seems a more or less reasonable inquiry for the telephone of modern times.

It was at White River Post that Palliser met an Indian who later became one of his best friends and of whom he had much to say. They hunted together and on their first hunt killed a fine wolf which made them several meals. Palliser was unwilling to eat this food until he saw the relish with which his companion was consuming it; but having made the first step and learning how toothsome it was, he hesitated no longer.

Hunting was constantly kept up during the winter, for life depended on it. The weather was, as usual, uncertain. Palliser, whose stock of copper caps had run low, now went from the White River Post to Larpenteur’s Post on Knife River with a party which McKenzie was sending to Fort Union. He wished also to visit Mr. Chardon, who was in command at the Minitaree Fort. The party set out on a fine sunny morning, and the heat was so great that one of them--Frederick--who was stout, walked in his shirt-sleeves puffing and blowing like a grampus.

At the Grand Detour--the Big Bend--they attempted to make the cut-off, which is only fourteen miles across, instead of following the river-bank for about forty miles. Palliser tried to persuade his companions to go the long way, showing them what a bad position they would be in if caught in a snow-storm on the prairie. However, the Indians believed that spring had come, and they started and finally camped on a little stream in the bed of which the snow was deeply drifted.

“Night was then coming on, and it began to rain slightly; but we brightened up the fire again, little knowing what was in store for us. Shortly after dark the wind veered round to the north-east, accompanied by snow, and at last it blew so hard as to oblige us to put out the lire, especially on account of the gunpowder. Owing to our exposed situation, the wind mercilessly drove sparks, and even lighted brands, whirling amongst us, turn which way we would, as the eddies of wind drove furiously down the gullies against our little encampment from all points of the compass. Old Peekay and his wife collected every blanket and skin they could muster. I seized my buffalo-robe and blankets, called Ishmah to me, round whom I put my arms, and hugging him close to my breast, shivered through the night.

“Never shall I forget the horrible hours of suspense I passed, expecting every instant the feeling of sleep to overpower me, knowing the fatal consequences and fearing an inability to resist it. I found my faithful dog an invaluable friend, and really believe he was the means of saving my life; for I seemed to feel the caloric, as it issued from him, preserve my body from turning into stone. Day at last dawned, and the wind abated. We contrived to move to a less-exposed situation, where we lighted a roaring fire, and warmed ourselves, then renewed our journey, reaching the opposite extremity of the Grand Detour by nightfall.

“Our supper that night was a very scanty one of dried buffalo-meat, the last of the provision with which Martin had supplied us. As for the unfortunate dogs that accompanied the Indian Peekay and his squaw, they, poor wretches had not eaten a morsel for weeks; and so awful an array of starved spectres never were seen.”

Fortunately, the next day a bull was killed, and, wonderfully enough, by an old Indian who that morning had made a special prayer for food. The Indian was old and infirm and had not fired a gun or killed game for many years, but certainly in this case his prayer was answered.

Palliser found Mr. Chardon very ill with a violent attack of rheumatism, but extremely glad to receive his guest. To this post a little later came Boucharville, one of the most celebrated hunters and trappers of the region. He was a French Canadian of the best type, but had recently suffered great misfortunes, having lost his horses through the severity of the winter, had his traps stolen by Indians, barely escaped capture by a war-party, and finally broken the sight of his rifle.

This man Palliser engaged to make a trip back to Fort Union and thence on horseback up the Yellowstone River, intending at the close of the trip to make bull-hide boats and transport their skins and other effects back to Fort Union by water. For this trip two additional men were hired, a stout Canadian named Pérey and a half-breed named Paquenode. Palliser and Boucharville were to do the hunting; the other two were to keep the camp, mind the horses, and cook. In the meantime it was early in April and the wild-fowl were beginning to arrive from the South. Palliser was keen to shoot some but had no shot. He tried to manufacture it and finally did so by beating out lead quite flat, cutting it into little bars, and again cutting these into little cubes an eighth of an inch each way. These were put in a small metal boiler in the kitchen of the Fort with some smooth stones and ashes and the boiler was revolved until the sharp corners were worn off the cubes and they approached the spherical. With this imperfect ammunition, good execution was done, for of course the birds were extremely abundant.