e herd had passed, and to shout and wave their robes. This
frightened the hinder-most buffalo, which pushed forward on the others, and
before long the whole herd was running at headlong speed toward the
precipice, the rock piles directing them to the point over the
enclosure. When they reached it, most of the animals were pushed over, and
usually even the last of the band plunged blindly down into the
pis'kun. Many were killed outright by the fall; others had broken legs or
broken backs, while some perhaps were uninjured. The barricade, however,
prevented them from escaping, and all were soon killed by the arrows of the
Indians.

It is said that there was another way to get the buffalo into this chute. A
man who was very skilful in arousing the buffalo's curiosity, might go out
without disguise, and by wheeling round and round in front of the herd,
appearing and disappearing, would induce them to move toward him, when it
was easy to entice them into the chute. Once there, the people began to
rise up behind them, shouting and waving their robes, and the now
terror-stricken animals rushed ahead, and were driven over the cliff into
the pis'kun, where all were quickly killed and divided among the people,
the chiefs and the leading warrior getting the best and fattest animals.

The pis'kun was in use up to within thirty-five or forty years, and many
men are still living who have seen the buffalo driven over the cliff. Such
men even now speak with enthusiasm of the plenty that successful drives
brought to the camp.

The pis'kuns of the Sik'-si-kau, or Blackfoot tribe, differed in some
particulars from those constructed by the Bloods and the Piegans, who live
further to the south, nearer to the mountains, and so in a country which is
rougher and more broken. The Sik'-si-kau built their pis'kuns like the
Crees, on level ground and usually near timber. A large pen or corral was
made of heavy logs about eight feet high. On the side where the wings of
the chute come together, a bridge, or causeway, was built, sloping gently
up from the prairie to the walls of the corral, which at this point were
cut away to the height of the bridge above the ground,--here about
four feet,--so that the animals running up the causeway could jump down into
the corral. The causeway was fenced in on either side by logs, so that the
buffalo could not run off it. After they had been lured within the wings of
the chute, they were driven toward the corral