Funny thing... (and I’m 1/8 Cherokee, so I get to dog on us Indians :) )...
One of my accounts is in Chinle, AZ. On the way there, not too far from Ganado is a McDonald’s. I’ve stopped there on the long drive to my account. They have various paintings depicting Indian life on the walls.
One of the paintings shows a tribe on horseback driving an entire herd of buffalo off a cliff.
I really had to suppress laughter! The noble native murdering an entire herd? No way could they “use all parts of the buffalo” and not waste.
Sorry, this thread simply brought that memory back :)
I was schooled at the feet of an grizzled old Sioux, obviously not old enough to remember personally, but old enough to have heard the story from a grandfather.
He showed me one of the tribal winter counts, the traditional method of tribal history recording where one picture represented the passage of one year and the most important event. Once such picture represented the cliff method of hunting buffalo, dating from the 1840's.
The old Sioux told me that the tribal elders very much frowned on this method of hunting as they had seen herds come and go due to natural cycles. The young wouldn't listen because they believed the buffalo would always be plentiful like they were at that time. Sort of like the Obama morons who think the rich have an unlimited supply of wealth to tax for their own benefit.
“One of the paintings shows a tribe on horseback driving an entire herd of buffalo off a cliff.”
Archeological digs indicate this was done, even before Indians had horses. (I read about it in “1491.”)