Very interesting link Metchosin

Having read through it my post of 10 Apr 06 - 01:37 PM wasn't too far out was it

"Buffalo ambush:
- Got to find the Buffalo first, takes time and people
- Wind/weather has got to be in your favour, luck of the draw
- You have to know the ground well enough to know when you can start your stampede, takes time and people.
- Slaughtering an animal as large as a Buffalo takes time, you've got to be careful with the guts/intestines etc or you ruin the meat, especially if there is no plentiful supply of water close at hand. So again this takes time and it takes people.
- Preserving is not done overnight, their main means of preserving meat was to dry it, that takes a lot of time, you've also got to be in the right sort of country.
- How did they carry it? First the freshly butchered meat (wet and heavy) Then the dried meat, not only how did they carry it but how did they keep it dry?

1000 Buffalo at a time, you say Metchosin? I'd say that that particular band of hunter/gatherers would be far too busy to:
- Dodge three large Army Columns specifically out looking for them.
- The Buffalo would not appreciate their presence either, so that would keep them on the move, making your job harder.
- Actively engage and defeat in two separate engagements two of those Columns (Custers and Crooks) whilst skinning and preserving Buffalo, and presumably tanning hides to wrap all that dried meat up in to stop it spoiling should it get wet."

A few other things came out of the link posted by yourself that would make this exercise even more labour intensive and more time consuming:

- The amount of 'kit' needed to perform this operation. This all had to be lugged about and set up.
- The amount of water required. Limits location and the water too has to be carried.
- Fuel for fires. Not much wood about, so it had to be dried dung, scrub and grass, all of which had to be collected on a continuous basis while all this was going on. Not much chance of keeping your location secret.
- Other ingredients, dried berries, marrow, if they were making/living on Pemmican, the marrow they'd get from the long bones, the berries they would have to gather and dry.

Pemmican:
What was it? There were just two essential ingredients: meat and fat. The meat, from buffalo, deer, or whatever other animals were available, was cut into thin strips, dried, and pounded into a paste. An equal amount of hot liquid fat or marrow was poured over it, and the mixture cooled and pressed into cakes. For flavor, cherries or berries were pounded and mixed in.

A pound of pemmican was said to be as nutritious as four pounds of fresh meat, and of course it kept much longer. Stored in rawhide bags, it would last for years. It is mentioned in English as early as 1791.

One question though, this all took place at the time of year when they were preparing to gather the ingredients and make provisions to see them through the coming winter. Would it therefore be correct to assume that having survived the previous winter by mid-summer provisions would not over-abundant? And that as their reason for gathering was for the summer Buffalo Hunt, would they not quite possibly have lightened the load with regard to dried foodstuffs as there would be more than sufficient fresh meat available?

By the bye, Little Hawk, the three days, if you read my post referred to much larger formations (50 to 80 thousand men) than the numbers we are talking about here, the principle still holds good though.

As you did mention it, I have eaten Pemmican, Beef Jerky and it's even better tasting African counterpart Biltong. I also would appear to have a far better appreciation of the work and effort required to prepare it than you. I have also 'field cleaned' animals, quartered them for transport and lugged them out to a point where they can be picked up.

Driving animals over cliffs to kill them in large numbers has been done the world over. It is an extremely wasteful method of hunting and in most other parts of the world the indigenous tribes developed better, more efficient means of trapping and killing the animals they needed to survive. Which led to capturing and rearing of certain species, which in effect became the first 'domestic' animals. The normal practice for your Plains Indians would be to isolate one 'herd group' of about 50 to 60 animals and drive them over the cliff. June would mean that the Buffalo would have just about developed their summer coats and be in the middle of the rut. The North American Bison normally really start putting weight on to see them through the coming winter from July to September.

Interestingly enough you referred to the introduction of the horse. Originally North America supported two types of horse dating back to the early ice age, both became extinct either due to climate change (not Bush's fault), or by over hunting (not Cheney's fault), or a combination of both. So the horses that the Plains Indians were galloping around on were the descendents of the ones brought over by European settlers. A village of at least 10,000 you say Metchosin - how many horses? Any idea how much grazing is required? The area over which those horses would have to be spread? Any idea how poorly a horse performs when fed solely on grass? Fed entirely on grass a horse has to spend most of it's time just eating to survive.

Until introduced to the 'white man' Metchosin the native American was a damn sight closer to our stone age ancestors than you appear to realise.

Custer and the 7th Cavalry were not defeated at the Little Big Horn because they were outnumbered by thousands (LH), they were not defeated because their enemy was better armed (LH). They were defeated primarily because Custer was a complete and utter prat and a very poor commander (A common trait in cavalry officers, best advice to most cavalrymen in combat used to be, "Leave the thinking to your horse lad - It's got a bigger head"). The men of the 7th Cavalry were ill-disciplined, poorly trained and badly led.

Over 7.5 million buffalo were killed from 1872 to 1874, that makes at least 6,843 per day throughout that period. Apparently the most dangerous season for wild bison is the spring, with the melting of lake and river ice. The buffalo habit of bunching tightly together, safe enough on hard winter ice, often proves fatal in spring conditions, and enormous numbers died when great herds were common. On one day in 1795, a fur trader counted 7 360 drowned individuals in a tributary of the Red River, west of Winnipeg. In recent decades large numbers have drowned in the Peace-Athabasca Delta region of Wood Buffalo National Park.