Home >> The Beginnings >> Métis of the Northwest >>  Buffalo Hunting

Page 1 | 2

In the late 1860s, settlement began around Buffalo Lake, at Tail Creek, Boss Hill and the north shore, growing from wintering camps. Norbert Welsh described life in a winter camp where he spent the winters of 1863 to 1869. He was working out of Fort Garry (Red River) and trading in the area known as Round Plain, north and east of the mouth of the Red Deer River. He described how he built a log storehouse for his goods, and then a log house. They did not sleep in the house because they had no way to heat it. The first year there were only three men there. In the last years, he described a scattering of thirty or forty "log huts" made of logs, plastered with mud, as their village.

This, then, was how the wintering villages grew. The hunters and traders found a location where buffalo could still be found, and returned to it, season after season. The area around Buffalo Lake had long been a favorite buffalo hunting area. It receives more rain than further east, and has marshy plains around it. The resulting lush vegetation may explain why it was said to be the last place in the northern plains where buffalo were found. Old settlers tell a First Nations story of the buffalo going into the lake for the winter and not returning.

The last year Welsh was at Round Plain, the buffalo were very scarce. "The big herds had disappeared. The Indians almost starved that winter."⁴ Food was in such short supply that one trader sold pemmican back to the hunters. "That winter the Indians rode away in all directions, wherever they heard there were buffalo."⁵

Peter Erasmus similarly told of a buffalo-hunting trip he took in 1867, hunting south of Goodfish Lake and Saddle Lake. They were traveling in a mixed camp of twenty teepees, Metis and First Nations together, with Chief Seenum in charge. They found very few buffalo, only a few herds of ten to twelve animals.⁶
Victoria Callihoo told of a buffalo hunt she attended as a thirteen-year-old girl. The family had earlier lived in Lac Ste Anne, but had then moved to St. Albert. As she told it:

After the people of Lac Ste Anne planted their vegetable gardens each spring and by the time the potato leaves were out they would trundle off in their carts to St. Albert. There the carts were loaded with things they needed for the plains, including tent poles, firewood, birch bark and flint. They picked up friends and relatives, and then continued on to Edmonton where more people joined the group. A priest usually accompanied his flock. At some point, the leading men met and chose a leader for the hunt from amongst themselves. He flew a flag over his cart to identify his authority. The party traversed the North Saskatchewan River, carts, children, horses, oxen and all their baggage until they came to where the Provincial Legislature now stands. That crossing must have been quite a sight! Some one hundred people then headed south to set up camps in the region north of Red Deer where the last remaining herds of bison still roamed. The carts were placed in a circle as a kind of defensive barrier, because the Aboriginal People of the plains very much resented the incursion of the Metis into their territories. The horses also needed to be guarded at night. Ironically, the best horses were obtained by barter from the Blackfoot.

The hunting method was to run the bison down on horseback and shoot them. Some people had muzzle-loaders with caps, others had single barreled flintlocks. The animals were then butchered and the meat hung up to dry. It was later dumped onto a buffalo hide and pounded to a pulp by four men. Melted grease and berries were added to improve the flavour and food value. In some places, birch trees were tapped to get the sap to run out. It was made into sugar and added. This concentrated dried mixture, called "pemmican", was a very important staple in the diet of people in the West. Some people obtained enough meat at this time for the winter. Others returned to the hunt in the fall after the hay was in, while "hivernants" (winterers) spent the winters at Buffalo Lake where bison had been hunted for thousands of years." ⁷

For the northern plains, that was the last of the buffalo herds. For the area around Buffalo Lake, the time marked a transition from hunting to settlement, as had earlier occurred on the Battle River. Descendants of the some of those buffalo hunters who settled there still live in the area. Tail Creek had lasted for about a decade.

Norbert Welsh and his family followed the last of the buffalo to the Cyprus Hills. Some Metis followed the buffalo into Montana, but were forced to return. The buffalo hunting days were over.

[Top] [Back]

Life at Red River

Western Settlements

Buffalo Hunting

Agriculture

Fishing

Métis Traders