Meriwether Lewis Describes a Buffalo Jump Site - Primary Source
Read this vivid account of a buffalo jump site to understand more about life on the frontier.
Living in America in the 21st century, we can have a hard time understanding the reality of life on the American frontier. I’ll use myself as an example. Although I enjoy camping with the same gear as frontiersmen, there are some things I’ll never know about their lives. Why? Well, for one, I’m lucky to live in a civilized country with law and order. As a result, the odds are pretty slim that a group of people will descend upon my camp during the middle of the night to kill me and take my stuff. It could happen, but the chances are low. However, that was a legitimate concern for frontiersmen almost every night. It was something they constantly dealt with, and it led to night guards and sleeping with one eye open. Although living history experiences can teach me a lot about life in the past, there are just some aspects that I will (fortunately) miss out on.
The more primary sources you read about the American frontier, the more you grasp what the world was really like. In many ways, it was raw and ragged with a bleakness that civilization tries to gloss over. One group that experienced this untamed world was the Corp of Discovery, better known as the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Most people know that Lewis and Clark were the first Americans to explore parts of the interior of what would eventually become America. Fortunately, several members of the corp journaled their daily experiences. These journals give us great insight into their lives and the region they explored. Interested people can read these journals to learn about anything from life on the river, plant and animal species, physical geography, or the Native people they met. In one particular entry, they left us with a description of a buffalo jump site they encountered. Below, you can read the journal entry Meriwether Lewis created on May 29, 1805. If you’re interested, here is an audio recording of the entry as well.
Meriwether Lewis May 29, 1805
“today we passed on the Stard. side the remains of a vast many mangled carcases of Buffalow which had been driven over a precipice of 120 feet by the Indians and perished; the water appeared to have washed away a part of this immence pile of slaughter and still their remained the fragments of at least a hundred carcases they created a most horrid stench. in this manner the Indians of the Missouri distroy vast herds of buffaloe at a stroke; for this purpose one of the most active and fleet young men is scelected and 〈being〉 disguised in a robe of buffaloe skin, having also the skin of the buffaloe's head with the years and horns fastened on his head in form of a cap, thus caparisoned he places himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffaloe and a precipice proper for the purpose, which happens in many places on this river for miles together; the other indians now surround the herd on the back and flanks and at a signal agreed on all shew themselves at the same time moving forward towards the buffaloe; the disguised indian or decoy has taken care to place himself sufficiently nigh the buffaloe to be noticed by them when they take to flight and runing before them they follow him in full speede to the precepice, the cattle behind driving those in front over and seeing them go do not look or hesitate about following untill the whole are precipitated down the precepice forming one common mass of dead an mangled carcases; the 〈Indian〉 decoy in the mean time has taken care to secure himself in some cranney or crivice of the clift which he had previously prepared for that purpose. the part of the decoy I am informed is extreamly dangerous, if they are not very fleet runers the buffaloe tread them under foot and crush them to death, and sometimes drive them over the precepice also, where they perish in common with the buffaloe.”
It may be worth noting that earlier in the entry Lewis recorded:
“I counted the remains of the fires of 126 Indian lodges which appeared to be of very recent date perhaps 12 or 15 days.”
This might indicate that a very large village had gathered for the buffalo jump.
Getting back to the main point, you can see Lewis paints an unvarnished picture of what he saw. Mangled buffalo. Terrible smell. Fragments of carcasses. Spend a minute and imagine the “most horrid stench” Lewis mentions.
Begin by imagining you are traveling upriver at mid-afternoon. It’s spring, so things are warming up. You may be enjoying the slow progress up the river. As you travel, you detect the whiff of something in the air. The further you go, the more intense the smell becomes. After coming around a bend, you finally see what is causing the unpleasant odor. There, heaped at the bottom of a bluff, is a massive pile of half-rotten, maggot-infested, decaying buffalo. The air is filled with flies, magpies, and vultures. Remember, this experience is not like a movie scene where you are exposed to it for a few seconds. Instead, it takes minutes to pass by as you fight against the river’s current. Caught in the river’s grip, the “horrid stench” fills your nostrils. As bad as it is, there is nothing to do but press on against it and continue.
The point of this isn’t to try and elicit a gag reaction. Instead, it’s a vivid picture of their world. The frontier wasn’t a place where things were neat and tidy. There was nobody to come and bury the carcasses. They simply decomposed in their own time.
This story may also help dispel notions that the frontier was a place where silent hunters crept within shooting range of their prey before delivering a single deadly arrow or rifle shot that perfectly pierced the animal’s heart. Sure, at times that happened. What also happened was people drove hundreds of buffalo over a cliff to kill them all, take what they could, and then leave to get away from the smell as soon as necessary. It was a place you did what you had to do to stay alive.
Today the world is just different. There are some who may like to condemn buffalo jumps as a wasteful act. That’s easy to do in a country where food is as plentiful and secure as in the United States. However, had any of us been in the same situation, it’s unlikely we would have done something different. In the end, these kinds of primary sources can help us understand life in the 19th century, and perhaps help us better appreciate things we may take for granted in the 21st century. It can also help us appreciate the struggle people faced in order to create the modern civilization that we benefit from in so many ways.