poor affrighted creatures that had occasionally dashed through the ranks of their enemy and sought safety in flight upon the prairie (and in some instances had undoubtedly gained it), I saw them stand awhile, looking back, when they turned, and, as if bent on their own destruction, retraced their steps, and mingled themselves and their deaths with those of the dying throng.  Others had fled to a distance on the prairies, and for want of company, of friends or of foes, had stood and gazed on till the battle-scene was over, seemingly taking pains to stay and hold their lives in readiness for their destroyers until the general destruction was over, when they fell easy victims to their weapons, making the slaughter complete.”

It is to be noticed that every animal of this entire herd of several hundred was slain on the spot, and there is no room to doubt that at least half (possibly much more) of the meat thus taken was allowed to become a loss.  People who are so utterly senseless as to wantonly destroy their own source of food, as the Indians have done, certainly deserve to starve.

This “surround” method of wholesale slaughter was also practiced by the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Sioux, Pawnees, Ornabas, and probably many other tribes.

[Illustration:  THE SURROUND.  From a painting in the National Museum by George Catlin.]

5. Decoying and Driving.—­Another method of slaughtering by wholesale is thus described by Lewis and Clarke, I, 235.  The locality indicated was the Missouri River, in Montana, just above the mouth of Judith River: 

“On the north we passed a precipice about 120 feet high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred carcasses of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the lower part of the hill, must have carried off many of the dead.  These buffaloes had been chased down a precipice in a way very common on the Missouri, and by which vast herds are destroyed in a moment.  The mode of hunting is to select one of the most active and fleet young men, who is disguised by a buffalo skin round his body; the skin of the head with the ears and horns fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffaloes.  Thus dressed, he fixes himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffaloes and any of the river precipices, which sometimes extend for some miles.

“His companions in the mean time get in the rear and side of the herd, and at a given signal show themselves, and advance towards the buffaloes.  They instantly take alarm, and, finding the hunters beside them, they run toward the disguised Indian or decoy, who leads them on at full speed toward the river, when, suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff which he had previously fixed on, the herd is left on the brink of the precipice; it is then in vain for the foremost to retreat or even to stop; they are pressed on by the hindmost rank, who, seeing no danger but from the hunters, goad on those