were rescued, they usually did not live long. The Comanche enjoyed torturing prisoners. After a day of torture, when they wanted to get some sleep, they would cut the prisonersâ tongues out. The Comanche thought the roadrunner was a good-luck charm, and hung its skin in their tipis. They also made fans of the tail feathers of the scissor-tail flycatcher, which they wore at the shoulder like epaulets. After the Army sent troops after them in the winter of 1874, and the Comanche lost many women and children, they surrendered their horses and guns and moved to reservations.
Indians ate young, fat dogs (killed, singed, scraped of hair, gutted, beheaded, boiled, served unaccompaniedâa delicacy), ants (scooped from anthills in the cool of the morning, washed, crushed to paste, made into soup), grasshoppers (taken in drives, then dried, boiled, or roasted), beaver tails (cut into small slices, boiled with prairie turnips until very tenderâanother delicacy), wild peas (robbed from the caches of field mice, boiled with fat meat), choke-cherries (stones and all, with a noise âfully as loud as horses eating corn,â according to one observer), rose pods (pounded, mixed with bone grease), buffalo berries, wild plums, turtle eggs, serviceberries, wild artichokes, morning-glory roots, cottonwood bark, wild onions, june-berries. They would eat a wild turkey only when they were near starvation. They did not eat many trout, although the soldiers who fought them caught and ate thousands. Indians thought eating pork was disgusting; some believed that the federal inspection stamp was in fact a tattoo, and the meat was white man.
Of course, Indians mainly ate buffalo. There were maybe seventy million buffalo on the plains before white men came. Before the horse, Indians hunted buffalo by chasing them over blind cliffs (called buffalo jumps), up box canyons, or into steep-sided sand dunes where the animalsâ cloven hoofs would flounder. Horses made hunting buffalo much easier. An Indian who chased a buffalo and killed it with a lance or an arrow might, if he was hungry, cut it open on the spot and eat the warm liver seasoned with bile from the gallbladder. The women followed to do the butchering, and could slice the meat as thin as paper. When it was hung on racks, the plains wind and sun dried it, and then it would last for months. The Comanche liked to kill young buffalo calves and eat the curdled, partially digested milk from the stomach. The Assiniboin made a dish of buffalo blood boiled with brains, rosebuds, and hide scrapings. The Arikara retrieved from the Missouri drowned buffalo so putrefied they could be eaten with a spoon. With stone mallets, Indians cracked buffalo bones to get at the marrow. There were cuts of buffalo just as there are of beef; the Hidatsa had names for twenty-seven different cuts. The Sioux boiled buffalo meat with heated rocks in a buffalo paunch, then ate the paunch, too. Roasted fat hump ribs, boiled tongue, and coffee was a meal Indians dreamed about. Buffalo meat did not make you feel full. Some Indians could eat fifteen pounds of buffalo meat at a sitting.
Among the Indians, no part of the buffalo was ever wastedâexcept sometimes, when a tribe might kill a herd of fourteen hundred and cut out the tongues to take to the traders for whiskey, or when a war party on enemy hunting grounds would shoot animals and leave them on the ground to rot. White people were likely to kill buffalo for pleasure. Noblemen from the British Isles took long safari-like hunting expeditions on the plains and killed thousands. Early travellers on the Oregon Trail hunted when they got a chance, and the buffalo split into two herds, the northern and the southern, to avoid them. Nobody in history, however, consumed buffalo the way the railroads did. Between 1867 and 1880, the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, the Northern Pacific, and the Santa Fe all reached the Great Plains. The remaining
Indians ate young, fat dogs (killed, singed, scraped of hair, gutted, beheaded, boiled, served unaccompaniedâa delicacy), ants (scooped from anthills in the cool of the morning, washed, crushed to paste, made into soup), grasshoppers (taken in drives, then dried, boiled, or roasted), beaver tails (cut into small slices, boiled with prairie turnips until very tenderâanother delicacy), wild peas (robbed from the caches of field mice, boiled with fat meat), choke-cherries (stones and all, with a noise âfully as loud as horses eating corn,â according to one observer), rose pods (pounded, mixed with bone grease), buffalo berries, wild plums, turtle eggs, serviceberries, wild artichokes, morning-glory roots, cottonwood bark, wild onions, june-berries. They would eat a wild turkey only when they were near starvation. They did not eat many trout, although the soldiers who fought them caught and ate thousands. Indians thought eating pork was disgusting; some believed that the federal inspection stamp was in fact a tattoo, and the meat was white man.
Of course, Indians mainly ate buffalo. There were maybe seventy million buffalo on the plains before white men came. Before the horse, Indians hunted buffalo by chasing them over blind cliffs (called buffalo jumps), up box canyons, or into steep-sided sand dunes where the animalsâ cloven hoofs would flounder. Horses made hunting buffalo much easier. An Indian who chased a buffalo and killed it with a lance or an arrow might, if he was hungry, cut it open on the spot and eat the warm liver seasoned with bile from the gallbladder. The women followed to do the butchering, and could slice the meat as thin as paper. When it was hung on racks, the plains wind and sun dried it, and then it would last for months. The Comanche liked to kill young buffalo calves and eat the curdled, partially digested milk from the stomach. The Assiniboin made a dish of buffalo blood boiled with brains, rosebuds, and hide scrapings. The Arikara retrieved from the Missouri drowned buffalo so putrefied they could be eaten with a spoon. With stone mallets, Indians cracked buffalo bones to get at the marrow. There were cuts of buffalo just as there are of beef; the Hidatsa had names for twenty-seven different cuts. The Sioux boiled buffalo meat with heated rocks in a buffalo paunch, then ate the paunch, too. Roasted fat hump ribs, boiled tongue, and coffee was a meal Indians dreamed about. Buffalo meat did not make you feel full. Some Indians could eat fifteen pounds of buffalo meat at a sitting.
Among the Indians, no part of the buffalo was ever wastedâexcept sometimes, when a tribe might kill a herd of fourteen hundred and cut out the tongues to take to the traders for whiskey, or when a war party on enemy hunting grounds would shoot animals and leave them on the ground to rot. White people were likely to kill buffalo for pleasure. Noblemen from the British Isles took long safari-like hunting expeditions on the plains and killed thousands. Early travellers on the Oregon Trail hunted when they got a chance, and the buffalo split into two herds, the northern and the southern, to avoid them. Nobody in history, however, consumed buffalo the way the railroads did. Between 1867 and 1880, the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, the Northern Pacific, and the Santa Fe all reached the Great Plains. The remaining
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