ore there was likely to be a stampede. Decoy work was too
slow for the trapper who was buffalo-hunting. So was tracking on
snow-shoes, the way the Indians hunted north of the Yellowstone. A
wounded buffalo at close range was quite as vicious as a wounded grisly;
and it did not pay the trapper to risk his life getting a pelt for which
the trader would give him only four or five dollars' worth of goods.

The Indians hunted buffalo by driving them over a precipice where
hunters were stationed on each side below, or by luring the herd into a
pound or pit by means of an Indian decoy masking under a buffalo-hide.
But the precipice and pit destroyed too many hides; and if the pound
were a sort of _cheval-de-frise_ or corral converging at the inner end,
it required more hunters than were ever together except at the incoming
of the spring brigades.

When there were many hunters and countless buffalo, the white blood of
the plains' trapper preferred a fair fight in an open field--not the
indiscriminate carnage of the Indian hunt; so that the greatest
buffalo-runs took place after the opening of spring. The greatest of
these were on the Upper Missouri. This was the Mandan country, where
hunters of the Mackinaw from Michilimackinac, of the Missouri from St.
Louis, of the Nor' Westers from Montreal, of the Hudson Bay from Fort
Douglas (Winnipeg), used to congregate before the War of 1812, which
barred out Canadian traders.

At a later date the famous, loud-screeching Red River ox-carts were used
to transport supplies to the scene of the hunt; but at the opening of
the last century all hunters, whites, Indians, and squaws, rode to field
on cayuse ponies or broncos, with no more supplies than could be stowed
away in a saddle-pack, and no other escort than the old-fashioned
muskets over each white man's shoulder or attached to his holster.

The Indians were armed with bow and arrow only. The course usually led
north and westward, for the reason that at this season the herds were on
their great migrations north, and the course of the rivers headed them
westward. From the first day out the hunter best fitted for the
captainship was recognised as leader, and such discipline maintained as
prevented unruly spirits stampeding the buffalo before the cavalcade had
closed near enough for the wild rush.

At night the hunters slept under open sky with horses picketed to
saddles, saddles as pillows, and musket in hand. When the course led
thr