Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West. Michael Punke
more trespassing, and Indians fought other Indians more frequently as they defended their traditional territory. The advent of the horse also increased the dependence of Indians on the buffalo. With the ability to follow the herd and the vast food supply it represented, there was little incentive to farm—or even to hunt other types of game. Some tribes, such as the Cheyenne and the Crow, abandoned farming when they came into possession of the horse. Increased dependence on the buffalo, of course, increased the risk of starvation if the buffalo should become scarce.27
PAWNEE CHIEF PETA-LA-SHAR MADE GOOD ON HIS PROMISE TO GRINNELL. The day after arriving at the Pawnee camp, the young stockbroker would hunt buffalo in a classic surround. Just as significant, he would witness the rituals of the traditional Pawnee hunt.
The entire 4,000-member tribe embarked in an early morning mist, having broken camp and loaded their horses in a matter of minutes. Grinnell described the grand procession, led by “eight men, each carrying a long pole wrapped round with red and blue cloth and fantastically ornamented with feathers, which fluttered in the breeze as they were borne along.” These were “buffalo sticks,” treated with reverence by the tribe because “the success of the hunt was supposed to depend largely upon the respect shown to them.” Behind the buffalo sticks rode thirty or forty of the tribe’s most important men, “mounted on superb ponies.” Grinnell was given the honor of riding in this lead group, much of the time next to Chief Peta-la-shar. Finally came the great mass of women, children, and men of lower station.28
Grinnell was surprised to see many men on foot, sometimes leading multiple ponies. Lute North explained that they were saving their horses “so that they might be fresh when they needed them to run buffalo.”
The Pawnee had stopped at a new campsite when Grinnell noticed “a sudden bustle among the Indians.” On a horizon marked by distant bluffs, a horseman appeared, riding hard toward the camp. When he arrived, the rider reported quickly to the chiefs. A large herd had been spotted, only ten miles away.
Wild excitement now filled the camp. Women began immediately to break down teepees for transportation closer to the kill site. Men, meanwhile, stripped themselves and their ponies of all superfluous weight. Grinnell quickly prepared his own horse and weapons, mounting up to regard the stunning human vista of which he was privileged to be a part:
The scene that we now beheld was such as might have been witnessed here a hundred years ago. It is one that can never be seen again. Here were eight hundred warriors, stark naked, and mounted on naked animals. A strip of rawhide, or a lariat, knotted about the lower jaw, was all their horses’ furniture. Among all these men there was not a gun nor a pistol, nor any indication that they had ever met with the white men … Their bows and arrows they held in their hands. Armed with these ancestral weapons, they had become once more the simple children of the plains, about to slay the wild cattle that Ti-rá wa had given them for food. Here was barbarism pure and simple. Here was nature.29
Grinnell and 800 hunters now thundered across the Kansas plains. Some of the Pawnee rode one horse while leading another, saving their best mount for the chase. The less prosperous rode double, pulling two mounts along behind. Grinnell marveled at the skill of the bareback riders, so perfectly attuned to their horses, he remembered, that the plains appeared to be “peopled with Centaurs.”
Despite the excitement of the hunters, tight discipline governed their advance. At regular intervals in the front of the procession rode the “Pawnee Police,” whose authority during the hunt was absolute. They set the pace, ensuring that no one dashed ahead and scared the herd. A hunter who disregarded their command might be “knocked off his horse with a club and beaten into submission without receiving any sympathy even from his best friends.” Much was at stake. The food supply of the tribe for the next six months would be determined in the moments about to unfold.
Ten miles from camp, the lead riders, Grinnell among them, carefully crested a high bluff. “I see on the prairie four or five miles away clusters of dark spots that I know must be the buffalo.” Close now, the hunters change course, using the line of bluffs to conceal their advance.
Finally only a single ridgeline separated the mass of hunters from the mass of their prey. “The place,” remembered Grinnell, “could not have been more favorable for a surround had it been chosen for the purpose.” The terrain before them consisted of an open plain, two miles wide, surrounded by high bluffs. “At least a thousand buffalo were lying down in the midst of this amphitheater.”30
In a classic surround, Indians encircled the herd before the great charge. In this hunt, though, they would employ a variant of the strategy. All 800 hunters would ride into the herd from the same side. The objective was for the fastest riders to pass all the way through the herd, then turn back to face it. If successful, the herd too would turn—into the charging bulk of the hunters.
Behind the ridgeline, the hunters assembled in a long, crescent-shaped formation. Then over the hill they rode. “[W]hen we are within half a mile of the ruminating herd a few of them rise to their feet, and soon all spring up and stare at us for a few seconds; then down go their heads and in a dense mass they rush off toward the bluffs.” The leader of the Pawnee Police gave a cry, “Loó-ah!”
“Like an arrow from a bow each horse darted forward,” remembered Grinnell. “Now all restraint was removed, and each man might do his best.” Grinnell, who had only one horse, soon fell behind the Indians on fresh mounts. Great clouds of dust quickly filled the air, along with flying pebbles and clods kicked up by fleeing hooves. As he galloped forward, Grinnell could just make out the fastest riders, disappearing into the herd. Soon he could no longer see the ground, relying completely on his horse to navigate the field, aware that falling could mean death. Halfway across the valley, Grinnell realized that some buffalo were now coming back—directly at him. The herd had been turned.31
“I soon found myself in the midst of a throng of buffalo, horses and Indians.” Grinnell began shooting, “and to some purpose.”32 Two-thousand-pound animals tumbled and skidded to the earth around him. Shooting from a galloping horse required a skilled mount, steady hands, and even steadier nerve. Riders attempted to come alongside a coursing buffalo, then aimed behind the shoulder. It was difficult and dangerous. Overzealous gunners sometimes shot each other. George Armstrong Custer, likely hunting buffalo with a pistol, once misfired during a chase and blew out the brains of his horse.
A George Catlin image of a traditional Indian buffalo hunt.
Courtesy of the Amom Car ter Museum.
Indians usually hunted buffalo with bow and arrow. The bow was far superior in a mounted chase to a single-shot muzzle-loader, and as for repeating rifles, few Indians owned them. A skilled Indian archer could not only place his shot accurately but could do so with remarkable force: Arrows sometimes protruded out the opposite side of the buffalo and occasionally passed all the way through. A Sioux warrior named Two-Lance was once observed to shoot an arrow completely through the enormous body of a running bull. Grinnell watched the Pawnee fire “arrow after arrow in quick succession, ere long bring down the huge beasts and then turn and ride off after another.”33
Grinnell noted how the well-trained Pawnee horses could bring their riders alongside a buffalo with no guidance whatsoever, “yet watch constantly for any indication of an intention to charge and wheel off.”34 On the return trip of the Lewis and Clark expedition, Sergeant Nathaniel Hale Pryor found it difficult to herd well-trained Indian ponies, because at every sighting of buffalo the ponies would dash off in pursuit, “surround[ing] the buffalo herd with almost as much skill as their riders could have done.” In frustration, Sergeant Pryor finally resorted to sending one rider ahead of the main party to drive away all buffalo before the arrival of their horses.35
Grinnell’s own mount, as he learned the hard way, was untrained in the hunting of buffalo. One of Grinnell’s shots was off its mark, striking a cow without bringing her down. The cow spun around to make a “quick and savage charge.” Grinnell’s pony reacted slowly, and “his deliberation