They were probably the best hunters of all the plains’ tribes, and in the early days before their contact with the whites their weapons were of the most primitive character.  They used merely bows with stone-pointed arrows, and they resorted to the most ingenious methods in order to capture the buffalo, which was their principal food.  In fact, they subsisted almost entirely upon that great ruminant.

One of their plans to catch the huge beasts was known as the “pis-kun,” literally meaning deep blood-kettle.  It was really an immense corral, generally constructed just below a steep precipice, and its sides and ends enclosed by logs, stone, or brush—­anything that came handy and answered the purpose.  On the prairie above the precipice, wings extended out on either side, in shape of an open triangle.  Into this the buffalo were carefully driven, and in their fright precipitated themselves over the brink.

The proceedings were always conducted with much ceremony, and involved a good deal of savage mummery.  The sun, which was one of their deities, must be propitiated.  The evening previous to the attempt to drive a herd of buffalo into the pis-kun, one of the medicine-men of the band commenced by praying to the sun for the success of the undertaking.  He was the one to make the buffalo come, and early in the morning he got out his robes and started on his mission, after warning his wives that they must not show themselves, even by looking out of the door of the lodge, until he came back from his mission, but that they must constantly burn sweet grass as an offering to the god of the day.

He must necessarily fast when engaged in this duty, and when he was ready to make his appearance on the prairie the warriors all followed him, hiding themselves behind the temporary fence that bounded the pis-kun.  He then dressed himself in a bonnet which was made of the head of a buffalo, and with a robe of the same animal thrown around him slowly approached the peacefully grazing herd.

Arriving in the immediate vicinity, the buffalo, attracted by the apparition, looked up.  The medicine-man walked then very deliberately toward the opening of the pis-kun.  Generally the buffalo began to follow him, and as he saw that they did so he increased his pace, the animals, whose curiosity was aroused, at the same time doing the same.

When the herd was securely within the corral, the hidden Indians suddenly rose from their places, yelling as only savages can, at the same instant shaking their robes, and the stampeded animals rushed headlong to their death over the precipice.  Hundreds were instantly killed, while others were so dreadfully disabled as to make them an easy prey.  Then commenced an indiscriminate skinning and cutting up, the chiefs and most noted warriors receiving the choicest meat.