Buffoonery

“ The women cut their hair, and stand before her. Marriage Song. Boys and girls are singing. Much money are they spending. To the girl her father is giving five buffaloes. The husband tells his wife that she must curl her hair. If her hair is curled, all the people will rejoice. The buffalo is slain, and now we must all dance. Why are not more people here? More should come. My buffalo is big, very big. Go quickly and catch it. The Todas are all there. ”

“ And when the cowherds roared with laughter he took no notice, but trotted on, looking as dignified as possible. “After all,” he reasoned to himself, “when one keeps a buffalo one has to look after its grazing. A beast must get a good bellyful of grass if it is to give any milk, and I have plenty of time at my disposal.” So all day long he trotted about after the buffalo, making believe; but by evening he was dead tired, and felt truly thankful when the great big beast, having eaten enough, lay down under a tree to chew the cud. ”

“ The clumsy buffalo, or water-ox, is everywhere, plowing the fields, wallowing in mud, or browsing the stubble patch after the gleaners, always with a patient, statuesque, nude little brown boy on his blue-gray back, the fine, polished skins of these small herders glowing in the sun as if they were inanimate bronze figurines. ”

“ If she wanted water, she had only to cross the patch of maize behind the hut and seek out the place where the buffalo lay hidden, and put down her pail beside him. Then she would sit at her ease while he went to the lake and brought the bucket back brimming over. If she wanted wood, he would break the branches off the trees and lay them at her feet. And the villagers watched her return laden, and said to each other:
‘Surely the girls of her country are stronger than our girls, for none of them could cut so quickly or carry so much!’ But then, nobody knew that she had a buffalo for a servant. ”

“ Little Gassim or Achmed, in the single unchanged and unwashed garment that covers their little brown bodies, dance and roll and sing and drive the loathly black buffaloes to the water and eat scraps of sugar-cane, and are as happy as the day is long. ”

“ Then when they would go out on the hunt they would find plenty of buffalo, and the messenger sent back to the village from the hunt would return to the camp and say, ‘We have plenty of corn.’ If they saw a great many buffalo hairs they would get many buffalo; if but few they would get some buffalo.
“The next day after these ceremonies every one would begin to clear up their patches and get ready to plant corn. The leading woman who prepared the dance is respected and highly thought of. ”

“ At the approach of the season of green corn, a feast of the first ears are sacrificed with great solemnity, followed by feasting and dancing: so at the ripening of different kinds of fruit. The first and best piece that is cut from a buffalo is always Deo Dante.
“Over the medicine lodge, and also over the lodges of the most distinguished chiefs, are hung on high poles large quantities of fine cloth, white buffalo robes, or other most costly articles which can be procured, there to decay, an offering to the Great Spirit. ”

“ Others sacrifice a buffalo. They tie it to a wooden post in a sacred grove, dance wildly round it with brandished knives, then, falling on the living animal, hack it to shreds and tatters in a few minutes, fighting and struggling with each other for every particle of flesh. ”

“ In the instance of the buffalo dance of the Tesuque [19] Indians, contrary to what might be expected or would popularly be conceived, there is not riotry of color, but the costumes are toned rather in the sombre hues of the animal in question, and after the tone of the dark flanks of the mountains crested and avalanched with snows, looking more like buffaloes buried knee deep in white drifts than anything else one may think of. ”

“ The buffaloes, which had been calmly ruminating among the herbage, heaved up their huge forms, gazed for a moment with astonishment at the tempest that came scouring down the meadow, then turned and took to heavy-rolling flight. They were soon overtaken; the mixed throng were pressed together by the sides of the valley, and away they went, pell-mell, hurry-scurry, wild buffalo, wild horse, wild huntsman, with clang and clatter, and whoop and halloo, that made the forests ring. ”

“ They came like the pestilence that walks in darkness, unexpected and unseen. They had marched along the buffalo traces or stolen through the forests without having given to any one any notice of their intention. ”

“ A short distance before we reached the lake we caught sight of two buffaloes that were having a good time wallowing in a large puddle of mud and water. That is one of the buffalo's amusements: nothing delights him more than a wallow in the mud; and the more he can cause the stuff to adhere to his skin the better he seems to be satisfied. ”

“ A man, painted black to represent the devil, entered the village from the prairie, chased and frightened the women, and acted the part of a buffalo bull in the buffalo dance, the object of which was to ensure a plentiful supply of buffaloes during the ensuing year. ”

“ The men come on foot and on horseback, with their bows and arrows: the arrows are adorned with green leaves at the wooden points; and, when the eight buffaloes have approached, dancing, the first man, and been repulsed by him, they are shot at from all sides, fall, roll on the ground, and then lie still as if dead. The first man then invites the inhabitants to take the flesh of the buffaloes. The latter, whose robes have already fallen off, rise, and retire into the medicine lodge. ”

“ Then what joy in the camp when a scout comes in one day with the news that a herd of buffaloes are grazing not many miles off. In a moment a hundred young 'braves' have thrown aside their shields and every other heavy thing they have about them, especially any part of their dress that might be a hindrance in running—for no one knows how a buffalo hunt may end. ”

“ You will see the buffalo going along with great apparent carelessness, always holding his head near the ground, snapping up here and there a mouthful of grass, and yet never losing the furrow by which he is to walk. ”

“ Even the sharp weaver birds detect no enemy—much less their allies the buffaloes. A few white egrets, apparently as fearless of the great quadrupeds as the buffalo birds, add beauty to the scene. Some of these charming herons, too, are perched upon the buffalo, their snowy plumes contrasting sharply with the sombre hides of their gigantic friends. ”

“ But a buffalo is not a fairy, and the next morning, when the women arrived to work in the fields, they stood still with astonishment, and said to each other:
‘Just look at this; a savage beast has been destroying our crops, and we can see traces of his feet!’ And they hurried to their homes to tell their tale.
In the evening the girl crept out to the buffalo’s hiding-place, and said to him:
‘They perceived what happened, of course; so to-night you had better seek your supper further off.’ And the buffalo nodded his head and followed her counsel ”

“ The buffalo used is a sham one. Four or five people throw a dark-coloured cloth over themselves, and the foremost of these holds in his hands a huge mask, supposed to be a buffalo's head. It would serve equally well for the head of any other creature known to natural history, for it is unlike anything but the fabulous creation of some man's mad imaginings. ”

“ The buffalo supplies them with almost all the necessaries of life; with habitations, food, clothing, and fuel; with strings for their bows, with thread, cordage, and trail-ropes for their horses, with coverings for their saddles, with vessels to hold water, with boats to cross streams, with glue, and with the means of purchasing all that they desire from the traders. ”

“ Around most of these great boulders the buffalo used to walk from time to time, rubbing against the rough surface of the rock to scratch themselves, as a cow rubs itself against a post or as a horse rolls on the ground—for the pleasant feeling that the rubbing of the skin gives it. ”

“ The voyageurs and travelers who cry up the buffalo as so delicious, have been living for weeks on rusty bacon and lean antelope; a rich hump with its proper menstruum, a cup of café noir as strong as possible, must truly be a "tit-bit." They boast that the fat does not disagree with the eater; neither do three pounds of heavy pork with the English plow-boy, who has probably taken less exercise than the Canadian hunter. Before long, buffalo flesh will reach New York, where I predict it will be held as inferior to butcher's meat as is the antelope to park-fed venison. ”

“ Here his limbs are wiped dry, and wrapped close and tight within the fur of the buffalo robes, in which he takes his nap, with his feet to the fire; then oils his limbs and hair with bear’s grease, dresses and plumes himself for a visit—a feast—a parade, or a council; or slicks down his long hair, and rubs his oiled limbs to a polish, with a piece of soft buckskin, prepared to join in games of ball or Tchung-kee. ”

“ To the people the capture of food was the most important thing in life, and they put forth every effort to accomplish it. For this reason it came about that the effort to capture buffalo was preceded usually by religious ceremonies, in which many prayers were offered to the powers of the earth, the sky, and the waters, many sacrifices made, and sacred objects, like the buffalo stone, were displayed. ”

“ With soft saddles made of the skin of buffalo, with their horses never urged beyond a walk, with bright skies above them, and vistas of beauty ever opening before them, and luxuriance, bloom and fragrance spread everywhere around, their journey seemed replete with enjoyment of the purest kind. ”

“ The men with the buffaloes' heads always keep in the dance at the outside of the group, imitate all the motions and the voice of this animal, as it timidly and cautiously retreats, looking around in all directions, &c. ”

“ Everything is valuable in the buffalo: the meat, the hide, the bones, the horns, and even the hair, which is made into hats comparable in beauty and substance to the best beaver. Why is not the buffalo, then, acclimatised in Europe? ”

“ Creatures that love the cold move northerly in summer, and such as delight in a warmer clime move southerly in winter. It is, however, principally to obtain food that they remove from one place to another. I must here explain to you, that though I have, in common with most others who use these terms, spoken of buffaloes, the animal which abounds in the prairie is not properly the buffalo, but the bison.”
Austin. But if they are bisons, why are they called buffaloes? ”

“ Clothed in a dense coat of long woolly hair, the buffalo is well constituted to stand the heats of summer as well as the cold of the snowy plains in the northern regions to which he extends his wanderings. ”

“ In the twinkling of an eye each warrior had selected one buffalo in particular as his own especial foe, and had planted himself with uplifted bangwan square in the brute’s path, while the buffalo, promptly accepting the challenge, responded to it with fierce bellows and savage flourishings of the terrible horns. ”

“ O woman of wonderful birth, renowned were you born, O flower, lime, O flower, tree. Having found a proper husband you married; having found a proper wife I married. I gave my best buffalo to Piedr for you. I took you as a beauty to Kuudr. A house we built, bracelets and buffalo horns we made in sport. I thought we should have had many children and many buffaloes should we have enjoyed. Liberal you were and refreshing like the shade of the umbrella tree. We thought that we should live long. We went together as we willed. We bought strong buffaloes and we prevailed over injustice. ”

“ When, however, he has killed a large animal, as a horse, or buffalo, he does not devour it on the spot, for fear of being disturbed, but drags it off to the forest, which he does with such ease, that the swiftness of his course seems scarcely retarded by the enormous load which he trails after him. ”

“ We saw this increase of our flock with great satisfaction; and for fear these useful animals should take it into their heads to stray from us, as our ass had done, we tied round their necks some small bells we had found on the wreck, intended to propitiate the savages, and which would always put us on the track of the fugitives.
The education of the young buffalo was one of the employments that varied our labour as carpenters. Through the incision in his nostrils, I had passed a small stick, to the ends of which I attached a strap. ”

“ All that old trouble is gone, and we want it to stay gone. If we stay here another year, and you continue to eat the way you do and grow the way you do, you'll be able to take a buffalo by the horns and wring its neck. ”

“ The halfbreeds had strange and superstitious ideas about the passing of the buffalo. They could not believe that they had gone never to return. It was only yesterday that the plains were black with the shaggy herds. ”

“ One trains his long locks till they take the admired form of the buffalo’s horns; others prefer to let their hair hang in a thick coil down their backs, like that animal’s tail; while another wears it in twisted cords, which, stiffened by fillets of the inner bark of a tree wound spirally round each curl, radiate from the head in all directions. ”

“ For many miles from the entrance to this pound two gradually diverging lines of tree-stumps and heaps of snow lead out into the plains. Within these lines the buffalo are led by the medicine-man, and as the lines narrow towards the entrance, the herd, finding itself hemmed in on both sides, becomes more and more alarmed, until at length the great beasts plunge on into the pound itself, across the mouth of which ropes are quickly thrown and barriers raised. ”