Brain-tanning of a deer or elk takes about ten hours. Tanning of a hair-on buffalo takes thirty to forty hours.

To begin, a hide is stretched on the ground or in a frame. The meat, fat and membrane are removed with an elk horn scraper (wahintke (2)) or leg bone flesher (1). Next the hair is removed, unless it is destined to be a bison robe. Hair is pushed off with a beamer (3) while wet or removed later, after the skin has dried, with a

wahintke scraper (2) to produce rawhide. Many of the tribe’s containers were of rawhide.

An additional step to produce a soft hide involved re-wetting a hide, sewing up holes and rubbing brains onto the hide. The hide was stretched, pulled and rubbed until dry. A hide might be smoked so it would dry soft when it became wet.

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