University of Virginia Library

PLATE No. 13.

BUFFALO HUNT. WITH WOLF-SKIN MASK.

Of the White Wolf and its habits I have given an account in Plate No. 10; and although, as I have there said, these animals live chiefly on the flesh of the buffalo,
they are often seen in large bands freely intermingling with the grazing herds, which their sagacity prevents them from attacking where there are numbers together, able and
pugnacious enough to protect each other from any attacks by their canine companions.

The buffaloes are very sagacious, and a sense of danger induces them to congregate in numerous herds for mutual protection. They are aware of their own superiority in
combined force, and seem then to have no dread of the wolf, allowing him to sneak amidst their ranks, apparently like one of their own family.

The Indian, superior in craft to both of these, and too poor, in many cases, to be the owner of a horse, has been driven to the stratagem represented in this plate, of
profiting by these circumstances, by placing himself under the skin of a white wolf, with his weapons in hand, in which plight he often creeps over the level prairies (where there
is no object to conceal him) to close company with the unsuspecting herd, and with deliberate and certain aim, brings down the fleetest and fattest of them.

In this plate is a just representation of the level prairies which often occur for many miles together, affording to the eye of a traveller, in all directions, a complete type
of the ocean in a calm; green, near and around him, but changing to blue in the distance; without tree or shrub, or slightest undulation to break the perfect line of the
surrounding horizon.