Fig. 2. Buffalo Skinners at Work. From a photograph by L. A. Huffman.
The opening cuts having been made, the broad-pointed “skinning-knife” was duly sharpened, and with it the operator fell to work to detach the skin from the body in the shortest possible time. The tail was always skinned and left on the hide. As soon as the skin was taken off it was spread out on a clean, smooth, and level spot of ground, and stretched to its fullest extent, inside uppermost. On the northern range, very few skins were “pegged out,” i. e., stretched thoroughly and held by means of wooden pegs driven through the edges of the skin into the earth. It was practiced to a limited extent on the southern range during the latter part of the great slaughter, when buffaloes were scarce and time abundant. Ordinarily, however, there was no time for pegging, nor were pegs available on the range to do the work with. A warm skin stretched on the curly buffalo-grass, hair side down, sticks to the ground of itself until it has ample time to harden. On the northern range the skinner always cut the initials of his outfit in the thin subcutaneous muscle which was always found adhering to the skin on each side, and which made a permanent and very plain mark of ownership.
In the south, the traders who bought buffalo robes on the range sometimes rigged up a rude press, with four upright posts and a huge lever, in which robes that had been folded into a convenient size were pressed into bales, like bales of cotton. These could be transported by wagon much more economically than could loose robes. An illustration of this process is given in an article by Theodore R. Davis, entitled “The Buffalo Range,” in Harper’s Magazine for January, 1869, Vol. xxxviii, p. 163. The author describes the process as follows:
“As the robes are secured, the trader has them arranged in lots of ten each, with but little regard for quality other than some care that particularly fine robes do not go too many in one lot. These piles are then pressed into a compact bale by means of a rudely constructed affair composed of saplings and a chain.”
On the northern range, skins were not folded until the time came to haul them in. Then the hunter repaired to the scene of his winter’s work, with a wagon surmounted by a hay-rack (or something like it), usually drawn by four horses. As the skins were gathered up they were folded once, lengthwise down the middle, with the hair inside. Sometimes as many as 100 skins were hauled at one load by four horses.
On one portion of the northern range the classification of buffalo peltries was substantially as follows: Under the head of robes was included all cow skins taken during the proper season, from one year old upward, and all bull skins from one to three years old. Bull skins over three years of age were classed as hides, and while the best of them were finally tanned and used as robes, the really poor ones were converted into leather. The large robes, when tanned, were used very generally throughout the colder portions of North America as sleigh robes and wraps, and for bedding in the regions of extreme cold. The small robes, from the young animals, and likewise many large robes, were made into overcoats, at once the warmest and the most cumbersome that ever enveloped a human being. Thousands of old bull robes were tanned with the hair on, and the body portions were made into overshoes, with the woolly hair inside—absurdly large and uncouth, but very warm.
I never wore a pair of buffalo overshoes without being torn by conflicting emotions—mortification at the ridiculous size of my combined foot-gear, big boots inside of huge overshoes, and supreme comfort derived from feet that were always warm.
Besides the ordinary robe, the hunters and fur buyers of Montana recognized four special qualities, as follows:
The “beaver robe,” with exceedingly fine, wavy fur, the color of a beaver, and having long, coarse, straight hairs coming through it. The latter were of course plucked out in the process of manufacture. These were very rare. In 1882 Mr. James McNaney took one, a cow robe, the only one out of 1,200 robes taken that season, and sold it for $75, when ordinary robes fetched only $3.50.
The “black-and-tan robe” is described as having the nose, flanks, and inside of fore legs black-and-tan (whatever that may mean), while the remainder of the robe is jet black.
A “buckskin robe” is from what is always called a “white buffalo,” and is in reality a dirty cream color instead of white. A robe of this character sold in Miles City in 1882 for $200, and was the only one of that character taken on the northern range during that entire winter. A very few pure white robes have been taken, so I have been told, chiefly by Indians, but I have never seen one.
A “blue robe” or “mouse-colored (?) robe” is one on which the body color shows a decidedly bluish cast, and at the same time has long, fine fur. Out of his 1,200 robes taken in 1882, Mr. McNaney picked out 12 which passed muster as the much sought for blue robes, and they sold at $16 each.
As already intimated, the price paid on the range for ordinary buffalo skins varied according to circumstances, and at different periods, and in different localities, ranged all the way from 65 cents to $10. The latter figure was paid in Texas in 1887 for the last lot of “robes” ever taken. The lowest prices ever paid were during the tremendous slaughter which annihilated the southern herd. Even as late as 1876, in the southern country, cow robes brought on the range only from 65 to 90 cents, and bull robes $1.15. On the northern range, from 1881 to 1883, the prices paid were much higher, ranging from $2.50 to $4.
