Buffalo Country
Posted by: 
BruceS
N 45° 46.958 W 108° 00.187
12T E 732959 N 5074264
Historical marker giving history of buffalo and its use in through history.
Waymark Code: WM23CX
Location: Montana, United States
Date Posted: 08/28/2007
Views: 36
Buffalo Country
The Great Plains of eastern Montana was home to thousand of buffalo before
Euro-American hunters nearly wiped them out in the early 1880's. the
animals were central to the Indian lifeway. In the dog days, hunters
herded buffalo into corrals where they were killed. They also stampeded
the shaggy beasts over cliffs, called pishkuns. With the arrival of the
horse in the 1700s, hunting methods changed. As much a sport as a
necessity, hunting buffalo with bows and arrows on horseback was dangerous and
exciting.
A fat cow buffalo was the choice for meat. Women preserved the meat by
making by making jerky and pemmican. Pemmican was dried and pulverized
meat mixed with bone marrow and fat. Wild berries gave it flavor; and
ascorbic acid in the fruit acted as a preservative. Pemmican, packed away in
skin bags, kept indefinitely.
Indians used tanned buffalo robes and rawhide for clothes, tepees,
bedding, tools and utensils. Buffalo figured prominently in religious
practices, and disputes over prime hunting grounds frequently caused
intertribal conflicts. ~ text of marker
The marker was at rest area. The area would
have been good buffalo territory in the 1800s.