[First Across the Continent by Noah Brooks]@TWC D-Link book
First Across the Continent

CHAPTER IX -- In the Solitudes of the Upper Missouri
14/25

These buffaloes had been chased down the precipice in a way very common on the Missouri, 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 being fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffalo.

Thus dressed, he fixes himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffalo 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 toward the buffaloes.

These instantly take the 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.


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