or winding
sheets for the dead, etc. Other portions utilized were sinews, which
furnished fibre for ropes, thread, bowstrings, snow shoe webs, etc.;
hair, which was sometimes made into belts and ornaments; "buffalo
chips," which formed a valuable and highly prized fuel; bones, from
which many articles of use and ornament were made; horns, which were
made into spoons, drinking vessels, etc." The Rev. John Heckewelder, in
speaking of the skill of the Delawares of Ohio, in dressing and curing
buffalo hides, in the latter part of the eighteenth century, says that
they cured them so that they became quite soft and supple, and so that
they would last for many years without wearing out.

All at once, and near the beginning of the last decade of the eighteenth
century, the buffalo herds east of the Mississippi, suddenly
disappeared. George Wilson, in his history of Dubois County, Indiana,
says that, "toward the close of the eighteenth century a very cold
winter, continuing several months, froze all vegetable growth, starved
the noble animals, and the herds never regained their loss." This
statement is borne out by the testimony of the famous Potawatomi
chieftain Shaubena, of northern Illinois, who says that the trade in
buffalo robes east of the Mississippi ceased in about the year 1790;
that when a youth he joined in the chase of buffalos on the prairies,
but while he was still young, they all disappeared from the country. "A
big snow, about five feet deep, fell, and froze so hard on the top that
people walked on it, causing the buffalo to perish by starvation. Next
spring a few buffalo, poor and haggard in appearance, were seen going
westward, and as they approached the carcasses of dead ones, lying here
and there on the prairies, they would stop, commence pawing and lowing,
then start off again in a lope for the west." It is true that
Brigadier-General Josiah Harmar, in marching from Vincennes to
Kaskaskia, in 1787, gives a striking account of the early prairies,
"like the ocean, as far as the eye can see, the view terminated by the
horizon," and describes the country as excellent for grazing, and
abounding with deer and buffalo. Pachan, or Pecan, a famous Miami
chieftain from Miamitown, and an Indian comrade, supplied the military
party with buffalo and deer meat on the march out, and on the return.
Notwithstanding these facts, the story of the terrible winter and the
deep snow as told by Shaubena seems authentic, and while