"It was a wild and furious scene, but there was no sign of stampede
anywhere in the vast herd. The Indians would kill the number they had in
mind and let the remainder of the herd drift away from the fallen beasts,
and the squaws would go out, their knives sharp and shining, their throats
giving their chilling cry of exultation. God, what a thing to watch the squaws!
"He stared at them in wonder, with astonishment.and the passion in their
faces as they plunge the knife in..and plunge it in again, deep into the
throat or against the heart.
"Her skill with a knife few but Indians had. She was rolling the deep hide
back, and working inside, through the diaphragn and in..into the
guts..smelling steaming depth, toward the liver...She worked behind the mass
of intestines, thrusting her arm deep, feeling, drawing the arm out wet and
glistening..until she felt the liver; and without seeing it but feeling it
only, she went in with both hands and the knife and cut off a deep red slice
of it and lifted it to her mouth. She bit in deep like an animal, and began
to chew and gulp it down..."
And that is the vivid, gripping description of the buffalo hunt and the
dressing of the buffalo by Vardis Fisher (1956) in his historical novel,
PEMMICAN. The locale is early 19th century Canada, Alberta and Saskatchewan.
In the book, David MacDonald, an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company,
watched the slaughter of buffalo by the Blackfeet and the attack by Sunday
(a European girl captured by the Blackfeet) on the carcass.
Fisher continues his moving narrative of the making of pemmiccan after the hunt:
"The squaws were at their drying racks. The racks were covered with ribbons
of flesh and under them were fires, not to smoke the meat but to dry it, the
fires being so laid that the wind drove the smoke marrow out of the bones.
Marrow was by far the best fat for pemmican, but the marrow pemmican Indians
would keep, trading the Europeans the hump fat of the faintly yellow walls
of tallow that hung down over the kidneys or the grease from beaver and bear."
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