Native American Foods: Technology and Food Sources: The Plains

Indians hunted buffalo with additional schemes. The technique called the “surround” required mounted hunters to cut out a section of the herd by riding around it noisily in narrowing circles. The selected animals were pressed together and rendered inactive and then were killed efficiently and in large numbers, sometimes as many as three hundred at one time. Buffalo killed by these hunts provided fresh and dried meat (jerky), fat, hides, and tool materials to be shared among the participants. In a variation of the surround technique, fire was used to consolidate groups of animals. Small encircling fires were set a distance from a section of the herd. The fires burned steadily toward the center of the ring and compressed the group of animals. This method worked well for smaller numbers of hunters. Sometimes a fire ring was set with a small opening, through which the buffalo, attempting to escape, were ambushed. In a second hunting system, called “impounding,” animals were stampeded into a previously built enclosure. “Buffalo jumps” also involved stampeding or crowding animals over cliffs to hunters waiting below.