The buffalo meat is tough, unless from a young cow; and the Indians
make little difference in drying it for winter use, as they have good
teeth and always a first-rate appetite. The skins are dried and tanned
by the squaws, who lay them on the grass; and I saw an old gray-haired
squaw toiling away with a sharp instrument, made of the end of a
gun-barrel, something like a carpenter's gouge, and this had a bone
handle, with which she kept scraping off the inside of the skin of its
fibres, so as to make it soft and pliable. She had a stone to sharpen
the tool with, and as she leaned over, tugging away, the perspiration
rolled off her face in streams. Poor old creature, I felt sorry for
her, as the work might have been done by several big, lazy, half-grown
Indian boys I saw romping around and shooting their arrows at a mark.
But it is disgraceful for the _lords of creation to labor_, so they
only kill the game, and leave the squaws to cure and prepare it for
eating.

It is astonishing how poorly Indians are compensated for their robes
and furs. In Colorado, some Indians had been very successful in killing
buffaloes, had plenty of meat, and purchased with their robes flour,
sugar, coffee, dry-goods, and trinkets from the white and Mexican
traders; but they did not realize one-fourth their value. They were
worth eight or nine dollars by the bale at wholesale. The traders paid
seventy-five cents in brass wire or other trinkets for a robe; two
dollars in groceries, and less in goods. Six tribes, in 1864, furnished
at least fifteen thousand robes, which, at eight dollars, would amount
to one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. The traders literally
swindled the poor Indians. _They will give the robe off their backs
for a bottle of whisky on the coldest day._

The cimarron bear is avoided by the soldiers, if possible, when met by
them. Up in the Wind River country, a soldier was mauled terribly by
one which he had wounded, but failed to kill on the first fire. The
fight was desperate, for the bear, said to have been six or seven feet
long, and weighing nine hundred pounds, had clinched the soldier, and
both rolled down the ravine together, the other soldiers afraid to fire
lest they should hit the poor comrade, almost in the jaws of death.
They did rescue him, however, by lunging a knife into bruin's side,
compelling him to release his hold, after lacerating the soldier's arm
and side.

The coyote is a kind of wolf that pre