Before tipis shrouded in buffalo skins, Comanche women work on fresh hides of the animal that enwrapped the lives of Plains Indians. To them, the buffalo gave its all: from its flesh, food; from its skin, shelter and clothing; from its bones and sinews, the raw material soft tools and weapons. Its meat was the staff of life for the nomads, who rarely fished or trapped; consumption often averaged three pounds per person per day. Infants and toothless elders sucked sustenance from juicy tidbits. Other choice dishes: tongue, brains, raw liver, kidneys, sausage made by filling intestines with pounded meat and marrow; a dessert of berries and blood.

The underscraping of hides, softened in boiling water, were used as flour for berry cakes. Meat and marrow grease formed ingredients of pemmican, a trail food stored in bags made of unborn calves' skins; in lean days the grease-soaked bag was eaten. Dried strips of lean flesh were packed with layers of fat, peppermint, and berries into a rawhide envelope-the parfleche. Misnamed by Frenchmen who apparently saw it as a shield (parer, "parry: fleche, "arrow"), it was a folded piece of rawhide. Women painted geometric designs, their brushes porous buffalo bones. Men, using tufts of buffalo hair, painted large blank areas on lodge covers. Pigments in pre-trading days came from mineral sources; buffalo gallstones supplied a yellow.

"Green" rawhide lashed stone and metal tools to handles; long, seasoned strips became rope. "Soft-dressed" hides were fleshed-rid of fat-on the ground or on racks, then scaped; women softened them by rubdowns with brains, liver, and fat. Thick, shaggy hair was left on winter hides-the Indian's overcoat, wrapped around the body hair-side in. Old, smoke-softened lodge covers were cut up to be recycled as shirts, breechclouts, dresses, and moccasins. Sinews became thread, bow strings, and cord to bind arrowheads and feathers to shafts.

From horns came spoons, powder flasks, ladles; from a paunch, a bucket. Hair was stuffed in saddle pads or braided from bridles and halters. Even the skeleton served. Through eyesockets rawhide was drawn to strip it of hair. Bone tools fleshed hides and straightened arrow shafts. Children sledded on rib-bone runners. And they grew up in a culture whose range nearly coincided with that of the buffalo. Swaddled at birth in its soft, warm skin, they would ever be touched by it even in the winding sheets of death.