sheep in those
old times shared with all the other animals of the prairie that tameness
to which I have often adverted in writing on this subject, and which now
seems so remarkable.

The Bannocks and Sheep Eaters depended for their food very largely on
sheep. In fact, the Sheep Eaters are reported to have killed little
else, whence their name. Both these tribes hunted more or less in
disguise, and wore on the head and shoulders the skin and horns of a
mountain sheep's head, the skin often being drawn about the body, and
the position assumed a stooping one, so as to simulate the animal with a
considerable closeness. The legs, which were uncovered, were commonly
rubbed with white or gray clay, and certain precautions were used to
kill the human odor.

A Cheyenne Indian told me of an interesting happening witnessed by his
grandfather very many years ago. A war party had set out to take horses
from the Shoshone. One morning just at sunrise the fifteen or sixteen
men were traveling along on foot in single file through a deep canon of
the mountains, when one of them spied on a ledge far above them the head
and shoulders of a great mountain sheep which seemed to be looking over
the valley. He pointed it out to his fellows, and as they walked along
they watched it. Presently it drew back, and a little later appeared
again further along the ledges, and stood there on the verge. As the
Indians watched, they suddenly saw shoot out from another ledge above
the sheep a mountain lion, which alighted on the sheep's neck, and both
animals fell whirling over the cliff and struck the slide rock
below. The fall was a long one, and the Cheyennes, feeling sure that the
sheep had been killed, either by the fall or by the lion, rushed forward
to secure the meat. When they reached the spot the lion was hobbling off
with a broken leg, and one of them shot it with his arrow, and when they
made ready to skin the sheep, they saw to their astonishment that it was
not a sheep, but a man wearing the skin and horns of a sheep. He had
been hunting, and his bow and arrows were wrapped in the skin close to
his breast. The fall had killed him. From the fashion of his hair and
his moccasins they knew that he was a Bannock.

A reference to the hunting methods of the Sheep Eaters reminds one very
naturally of that pursued by the Blackfeet, when sheep were needed, for
their skins or for their flesh. These animals were abundant about the
many buttes which r