The Stampede, 1883 by Frederick Verner
Courtesy of the Glenbow CollectionCalgary & Southern Alberta
Bison figured prominently in religious ritual on the Western Plains. In post-Contact times, for example, preparations for the annual Sundance – held just after families had abandoned their sheltered winter quarters and congregated for a summer buffalo drive – included readying sacred buffalo tongues for rations during the dancing, covering the central pole in a medicine lodge with a consecrated bull bison hide, and placing buffalo skulls around a Sundance altar.
Bison were also important in the rites that some Plains tribes used to honour the dead. The Assiniboine, for example, laid out their deceased on scaffolds marked with buffalo skulls. In life, many Plains hunters wore protective buffalo amulets. The Assiniboine made charms from bison bull heads to protect themselves from their prey during bison hunts. Plains Cree hunters wore bison fetishes to ward off bullets.
Many Plains myths and legends also involved the bison. One Blackfoot tale, for instance, features an encounter between four bull bison, a fox, and the supernatural trickster, Old Man Coyote. According to the myth, the Trickster convinced a fox to allow him to remove the latter's fur, in the hope that the nearby bison would laugh themselves to death on witnessing the hairless animal. As planned, the buffalo fell to the ground in hysterics, and eventually died.
"As Old Man [Coyote] butchered the victims, the fox sat nearby, his teeth chattering in the icy air. When the last bull had been cut up, Old Man looked at the hairless fox and remarked, 'It's getting pretty cold, isn't it? Well, we don't care for the cold. We've got our winter's meat and we'll have nothing to do but feast and sing until spring.' The fox did not reply. Old Man prodded him, and the fox keeled over, frozen dead in the cold." (1)
(1) The Time of the Buffalo, by T. McHugh, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 140-141)
|
|
|
|
Return to The Bison Economy of the Southern Alberta Plains |
