| Summary: | thundering herds preferred the valley's lush grass above all other and called the Red River Valley "Buffalo Country." Always stalking the herds were Cree, Assiniboin, Chippewa and Dakota or Sioux Indians. They had migrated to the valley from the forests and prairies of the Great Lakes area, Minnesota and Wisconsin, constantly pushed westward by more warlike tribes and the guns of advancing white civilization. Wandering tribes had reported to them that west of the Red River was a land of plenty teeming with herds of buffalo. Buffalo became the Indian staple diet. The tongue, liver and hump were the favorite parts. The women cut other parts into strips and hung them on poles to dry in the sun or over a fire. Some of the meat was chopped and pounded into powder and mixed with buffalo fat, salt, and high-bush cranberries or wild cherries for flavoring. This was called "pemmican" and packed in buffalo skins it kept indefinitely. It was very nourishing food and solved the problem of the white traders' and trappers' survival in the wilderness. The Indians killed buffalo for sustenance, not for sport, and it was not until the demands of the fur traders and hide hunters grew so great that buffalo hunting had any effect on the supply or the Indians' way of life. They were free from want. Buffalo supplied food in quantity, hides for clothing, robes for warmth and skins for teepees. Spoons and drinking vessels were made from the horns, and the shoulder blade became a hoe for a patch of Indian corn. The Indians' way of life was secure. No other animal in America's history had a more important role. From 1670 onward French and English explorers and fur traders vied for the rich furs of northern Red River Valley. The English came by way of Hudson Bay and up the Nelson and Hayes Rivers. The French came by way of the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, Rainy River, Lake of the Woods and the Winnipeg and Roseau Rivers. Hudson's Bay Company and North West Fur Company became rich from the fantastic supply of prime beaver, otter, mink, and marten pelts. These furs had been of little importance to the Indians until they learned the white man's way of trading iron kettles, cloth, beads, guns, knives, and alcohol for furs. Over the decades as the trappers and traders roamed over Red River land, a new race of men was born, the METIS or mixed bloods. Many of the French and English married, legally or otherwise, Cree and Assiniboine Indian women and by 1870 the population of present day Manitoba was 11,963, half of which were Metis. Fur traders and fur companies looked with disfavor on agriculture, claiming that it interfered with trapping, so the diet of the trappers, like that of the Indians and Metis, depended on pemmican, wild rice from the swamps of northern Minnesota, and a few vegetables at times from the settlement gardens. By 1867 the buffalo were fast disappearing from the Red River Valley — ever moving westward to the less luxurious plains, harried by the Metis and white hide and robe hunters. Traders' demands for hides and robes and the Indians' passion for trade goods and alcohol made them slaves of the traders, and close association with white men brought to the Indians small-pox and other diseases that rapidly decimated the Indian population. The Metis were the most talented of all buffalo hunters. They were a happy-go-lucky people. They liked to hunt, to race ponies, to sing their French fathers' songs and dance the French folk dances, to go on buffalo hunts; they Scanned with a Zeutschel Zeta book scanner at 300 dpi. Edited with Multi-Page TIFF Editor.
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