A pool of preserved bison meat

by Mr. Sheehy

I’ve been reading Pekka Hamalainen’s Lakota America and enjoying it, feeling like it’s a book I’ve been waiting for for quite some time. I particularly love this paragraph:

In the winter of 1703, Sicanu Lakotas walked above the bison, a thousand beasts under their feet. Beneath them they could see the broad faces and glimpse the massive bodies halted in mid-motion. There were rows and piles of them, a vast, jumbled pool of preserved meat. A lake’s ice coat had collapsed under a buffalo herd and then hardened again to seal the drowned animals in, leaving Sicangus a huge natural refrigerator of meat. Whenever they needed food, they could simply cut through the ice and bring up a carcass. The meat lasted an entire year. A Sicangu winter count remembered it as “Camped cutting the ice through winter.”