Fig. 2. Scene on the Northern Buffalo Range. Photographed by L. A. Huffman.
A few hundred dressed robes still remain in the hands of some of the largest fur dealers in New York, Chicago, and Montreal, which can be purchased at prices much lower than one would expect, considering the circumstances. In 1888, good robes, Indian tanned, were offered in New York at prices ranging from $15 to $30, according to size and quality, but in Montreal no first-class robes were obtainable at less than $40.
Hides.—Next in importance to robes was the class of skins known commercially as hides. Under this head were classed all skins which for any reason did not possess the pelage necessary to a robe, and were therefore fit only for conversion into leather. Of these, the greater portion consisted of the skins of old bulls on which the hair was of poor quality and the skin itself too thick and heavy to ever allow of its being made into a soft, pliable, and light-weight robe. The remaining portion of the hides marketed were from buffaloes killed in spring and summer, when the body and hindquarters ware almost naked. Apparently the quantity of summer-killed hides marketed was not very great, for it was only the meanest and most unprincipled ones of the grand army of buffalo-killers who were mean enough to kill buffaloes in summer simply for their hides. It is said that at one time summer-killing was practiced on the southern range to an extent that became a cause for alarm to the great body of more respectable hunters, and the practice was frowned upon so severely that the wretches who engaged in it found it wise to abandon it.
Bones.—Next in importance to robes and hides was the bone product, the utilization of which was rendered possible by the rigorous climate of the buffalo plains. Under the influence of the wind and sun and the extremes of heat and cold, the flesh remaining upon a carcass dried up, disintegrated, and fell to dust, leaving the bones of almost the entire skeleton as clean and bare as if they had been stripped of flesh by some powerful chemical process. Very naturally, no sooner did the live buffaloes begin to grow scarce than the miles of bleaching’ bones suggested the idea of finding a use for them. A market was readily found for them in the East, and the prices paid per ton were sufficient to make the business of bone-gathering quite remunerative. The bulk of the bone product was converted into phosphate for fertilizing purposes, but much of it was turned into carbon for use in the refining of sugar.
The gathering of bones became a common industry as early as 1872, during which year 1,135,300 pounds were shipped over the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad. In the year following the same road shipped 2,743,100 pounds, and in 1874 it handled 6,914,950 pounds more. This trade continued from that time on until the plains have been gleaned so far back from the railway lines that it is no longer profitable to seek them. For that matter, however, it is said that south of the Union Pacific nothing worth the seeking now remains.
The building of the Northern Pacific Railway made possible the shipment of immense quantities of dry bones. Even as late as 1886 overland travelers saw at many of the stations between Jamestown, Dakota, and Billings, Montana, immense heaps of bones lying alongside the track awaiting shipment. In 1885 a single firm shipped over 200 tons of bones from Miles City.
The valley of the Missouri River was gleaned by teamsters who gathered bones from as far back as 100 miles and hauled them to the river for shipment on the steamers. An operator who had eight wagons in the business informed me that in order to ship bones on the river steamers it was necessary to crush them, and that for crushed bones, shipped in bags, a Michigan fertilizer company paid $18 per ton. Uncrushed bones, shipped by the railway, sold for $12 per ton.
It is impossible to ascertain the total amount or value of the bone product, but it is certain that it amounted to many thousand tons, and in value must have amounted to some hundreds of thousands of dollars. But for the great number of railroads, river steamers, and sea-going vessels (from Texas ports) engaged in carrying this product, it would have cut an important figure in the commerce of the country, but owing to the many interests between which it was divided it attracted little attention.
Meat.—The amount of fresh buffalo meat cured and marketed was really very insignificant. So long as it was to be had at all it was so very abundant that it was worth only from 2 to 3 cents per pound in the market, and many reasons combined to render the trade in fresh buffalo meat anything but profitable. Probably not more than one one-thousandth of the buffalo meat that might have been saved and utilized was saved. The buffalo carcasses that were wasted on the great plains every year during the two great periods of slaughter (of the northern and southern herds) would probably have fed to satiety during the entire time more than a million persons.
As to the quality of buffalo meat, it may be stated in general terms that it differs in no way whatever from domestic beef of the same age produced by the same kind of grass. Perhaps there is no finer grazing ground in the world than Montana, and the beef it produces is certainly entitled to rank with the best. There are many persons who claim to recognize a difference between the taste of buffalo meat and domestic beef; but for my part I do not believe any difference really exists, unless it is that the flesh of the buffalo is a little sweeter and more juicy. As for myself, I feel certain I could not tell the difference between the flesh of a three-year old buffalo and that of a domestic beef of the same age, nor do I believe any one else could, even on a wager. Having once seen a butcher eat an elephant steak in the belief that it was beef from his own shop, and another butcher eat loggerhead turtle steak for beef, I have become somewhat skeptical in regard to the intelligence of the human palate.
As a matter of experiment, during our hunt for buffalo we had buffalo meat of all ages, from one year up to eleven, cooked in as many different ways as our culinary department could turn out. We had it broiled, fried with batter, roasted, boiled, and stewed. The last method, when employed upon slices of meat that had been hacked from a frozen hind-quarter, produced results that were undeniably tough and not particularly good. But it was an unfair way to cook any kind of meat, and may be guarantied to spoil the finest beef in the world.
Hump meat from a cow buffalo not too old, cut in slices and fried in batter, a la cowboy, is delicious—a dish fit for the gods. We had tongues in plenty, but the ordinary meat was so good they were not half appreciated. Of course the tenderloin was above criticism, and even the round steaks, so lightly esteemed by the epicure, were tender and juicy to a most satisfactory degree.
It has been said that the meat of the buffalo has a coarser texture or “grain” than domestic beef. Although I expected to find such to be the case, I found no perceptible difference whatever, nor do I believe that any exists. As to the distribution of fat I am unable to say, for the reason that our buffaloes were not fat.
It is highly probable that the distribution of fat through the meat, so characteristic of the shorthorn breeds, and which has been brought about only by careful breeding, is not found in either the beef of the buffalo or common range cattle. In this respect, shorthorn beef no doubt surpasses both the others mentioned, but in all other points, texture, flavor, and general tenderness, I am very sure it does not.
It is a great mistake for a traveler to kill a patriarchal old bull buffalo, and after attempting to masticate a small portion of him to rise up and declare that buffalo meat is coarse, tough, and dry. A domestic bull of the same age would taste as tough. It is probably only those who have had the bad taste to eat bull-beef who have ever found occasion to asperse the reputation of Bison americanus as a beef animal.
Until people got tired of them, buffalo tongues were in considerable demand, and hundreds, if not even thousands, of barrels of them were shipped east from the buffalo country.
Pemmican.—Out of the enormous waste of good buffalo flesh one product stands forth as a redeeming feature—pemmican. Although made almost exclusively by the half-breeds and Indians of the Northwest it constituted a regular article of commerce of great value to overland travelers, and was much sought for as long as it was produced. Its peculiar “staying powers,” due to the process of its manufacture, which yielded a most nourishing food in a highly condensed form, made it of inestimable value to the overland traveler who must travel light or not at all. A handful of pemmican was sufficient food to constitute a meal when provisions were at all scarce. The price of pemmican in Winnipeg was once as low as 2d. per pound, but in 1883 a very small quantity which was brought in sold at 10 cents per pound. This was probably the last buffalo pemmican made. H. M. Robinson states that in 1878 pemmican was worth 1s. 3d. per pound.
The manufacture of pemmican, as performed by the Red River half-breeds, was thus described by the Rev. Mr. Belcourt, a Catholic priest, who once accompanied one of the great buffalo-hunting expeditions:[45]
“Other portions which are destined to be made into pimikehigan, or pemmican, are exposed to an ardent heat, and thus become brittle and easily reducible to small particles by the use of a flail, the buffalo-hide answering the purpose of a threshing-floor. The fat or tallow, being cut up and melted in large kettles of sheet iron, is poured upon this pounded meat, and the whole mass is worked together with shovels until it is well amalgamated, when it is pressed, while still warm, into bags made of buffalo skin, which are strongly sewed up, and the mixture gradually cools and becomes almost as hard as a rock. If the fat used in this process is that taken from the parts containing the udder, the meat is called fine pemmican. In some cases, dried fruits, such as the prairie pear and cherry, are intermixed, which forms what is called seed pemmican. Tho lovers of good eating judge the first described to be very palatable; the second, better; the third, excellent. A taurean of pemmican weighs from 100 to 110 pounds. Some idea may be formed of the immense destruction of buffalo by these people when it is stated that a whole cow yields one-half a bag of pemmican and three fourths of a bundle of dried meat; so that the most economical calculate that from eight to ten cows are required for the load of a single vehicle.”
It is quite evident from the testimony of disinterested travelers that ordinary pemmican was not very palatable to one unaccustomed to it as a regular article of food. To the natives, however, especially the Canadian voyageur, it formed one of the most valuable food products of the country, and it is said that the demand for it was generally greater than the supply.
Dried, or “jerked” meat.—The most popular and universal method of curing buffalo meat was to cut it into thin flakes, an inch or less in thickness and of indefinite length, and without salting it in the least to hang it over poles, ropes, wicker-frames, or even clumps of standing sage brush, and let it dry in the sun. This process yielded the famous “jerked” meat so common throughout the West in the early days, from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan. Father Belcourt thus described the curing process as it was practiced by the half-breeds and Indians of the Northwest:
“The meat, when taken to camp, is cut by the women into long strips about a quarter of an inch thick, which are hung upon the lattice-work prepared for that purpose to dry. This lattice-work is formed of small pieces of wood, placed horizontally, transversely, and equidistant from each other, not unlike an immense gridiron, and is supported by wooden uprights (trepieds). In a few days the meat is thoroughly desiccated, when it is bent into proper lengths and tied into bundles of 60 or 70 pounds weight. This is called dried meat (viande seche). To make the hide into parchment (so called) it is stretched on a frame, and then scraped on the inside with a piece of sharpened bone and on the outside with a small but sharp-curved iron, proper to remove the hair. This is considered, likewise, the appropriate labor of women. The men break the bones, which are boiled in water to extract the marrow to be used for frying and other culinary purposes. The oil is then poured into the bladder of the animal, which contains, when filled, about 12 pounds, being the yield of the marrow-bones of two buffaloes.”
In the Northwest Territories dried meat, which formerly sold at 2d. per pound, was worth in 1878 10d. per pound.
Although I have myself prepared quite a quantity of jerked buffalo meat, I never learned to like it. Owing to the absence of salt in its curing, the dried meat when pounded and made into a stew has a “far away” taste which continually reminds one of hoofs and horns. For all that, and despite its resemblance in flavor to Liebig’s Extract of Beef, it is quite good, and better to the taste than ordinary pemmican.
The Indians formerly cured great quantities of buffalo meat in this way—in summer, of course, for use in winter—but the advent of that popular institution called “Government beef” long ago rendered it unnecessary for the noble red man to exert his squaw in that once honorable field of labor.
During the existence of the buffalo herds a few thrifty and enterprising white men made a business of killing buffaloes in summer and drying the meat in bulk, in the same manner which to-day produces our popular “dried beef.” Mr. Allen states that “a single hunter at Hays City shipped annually for some years several hundred barrels thus prepared, which the consumers probably bought for ordinary beef.”
Uses of bison’s hair.—Numerous attempts have been made to utilize the woolly hair of the bison in the manufacture of textile fabrics. As early as 1729 Col. William Byrd records the fact that garments were made of this material, as follows:
“The Hair growing upon his Head and Neck is long and Shagged, and so Soft that it will spin into Thread not unlike Mohair, and might be wove into a sort of Camlet. Some People have Stockings knit of it, that would have served an Israelite during his forty Years march thro’ the Wilderness.”[46]
In 1637 Thomas Morton published, in his “New English Canaan,” p. 98,[47] the following reference to the Indians who live on the southern shore of Lake Erocoise, supposed to be Lake Ontario:
“These Beasts [buffaloes, undoubtedly] are of the bignesse of a Cowe, their flesh being very good foode, their hides good lether, their fleeces very usefull, being a kind of wolle, as fine as the wolle of the Beaver, and the Salvages doe make garments thereof.”
Professor Allen quotes a number of authorities who have recorded statements in regard to the manufacture of belts, garters, scarfs, sacks, etc., from buffalo wool by various tribes of Indians.[48] He also calls attention to the only determined efforts ever made by white men on a liberal scale for the utilization of buffalo “wool” and its manufacture into cloth, an account of which appears in Ross’s “Red River Settlement,” pp. 69-72. In 1821 some of the more enterprising of the Red River (British) colonists conceived the idea of making fortunes out of the manufacture of woolen goods from the fleece of the buffalo, and for that purpose organized the Buffalo Wool Company, the principal object of which was declared to be “to provide a substitute for wool, which substitute was to be the wool of the wild buffalo, which was to be collected in the plains and manufactured both for the use of the colonists and for export.” A large number of skilled workmen of various kinds were procured from England, and also a plant of machinery and materials. When too late, it was found that the supply of buffalo wool obtainable was utterly insufficient, the raw wool costing the company 1s. 6d. per pound, and cloth which it cost the company £2 10s. per yard to produce was worth only 4s. 6d. per yard in England. The historian states that universal drunkenness on the part of all concerned aided very materially in bringing about the total failure of the enterprise in a very short time.
While it is possible to manufacture the fine, woolly fur of the bison into cloth or knitted garments, provided a sufficient supply of the raw material could be obtained (which is and always has been impossible), nothing could be more visionary than an attempt to thus produce salable garments at a profit.
Articles of wearing apparel made of buffalo’s hair are interesting as curiosities, for their rarity makes them so, but that is the only end they can ever serve so long as there is a sheep living.
In the National Museum, in the section of animal products, there is displayed a pair of stockings made in Canada from the finest buffalo wool, from the body of the animal. They are thick, heavy, and full of the coarse, straight hairs, which it seems can never be entirely separated from the fine wool. In general texture they are as coarse as the coarsest sheep’s wool would produce.
With the above are also displayed a rope-like lariat, made by the Comanche Indians, and a smaller braided lasso, seemingly a sample more than a full-grown lariat, made by the Otoe Indians of Nebraska. Both of the above are made of the long, dark-brown hair of the head and shoulders, and in spite of the fact that they have been twisted as hard as possible, the ends of the hairs protrude so persistently that the surface of each rope is extremely hairy.
Buffalo chips.—Last, but by no means least in value to the traveler on the treeless plains, are the droppings of the buffalo, universally known as “buffalo chips.” When over one year old and thoroughly dry, this material makes excellent fuel. Usually it occurs only where fire-wood is unobtainable, and thousands of frontiersmen have a million times found it of priceless value. When dry, it catches easily, burns readily, and makes a hot fire with but very little smoke, although it is rapidly consumed. Although not as good for a fire as even the poorest timber it is infinitely better than sage-brush, which, in the absence of chips, is often the traveler’s last resort.
It usually happens that chips are most-abundant in the sheltered creek-bottoms and near the water-holes, the very situations which travelers naturally select for their camps. In these spots the herds have gathered either for shelter in winter or for water in summer, and remained in a body for some hours. And now, when the cowboy on the round-up, the surveyor, or hunter, who must camp out, pitches his tent in the grassy coulée or narrow creek-bottom, his first care is to start out with his largest gunning bag to “rustle some buffalo chips” for a campfire. He, at least, when he returns well laden with the spoil of his humble chase, still has good reason to remember the departed herd with feelings of gratitude. Thus even the last remains of this most useful animal are utilized by man in providing for his own imperative wants.
IX. The Present Value of the Bison to Cattle-Growers.
The bison in captivity and domestication.—Almost from time immemorial it has been known that the American bison takes kindly to captivity, herds contentedly with domestic cattle, and crosses with them with the utmost readiness. It was formerly believed, and indeed the tradition prevails even now to quite an extent, that on account of the hump on the shoulders a domestic cow could not give birth to a half-breed calf. This belief is entirely without foundation, and is due to theories rather than facts.
Numerous experiments in buffalo breeding have been made, and the subject is far from being a new one. As early as 1701 the Huguenot settlers at Manikintown, on the James River, a few miles above Richmond, began to domesticate buffaloes. It is also a matter of historical record that in 1786, or thereabouts, buffaloes were domesticated and bred in captivity in Virginia, and Albert Gallatin states that in some of the northwestern counties the mixed breed was quite common. In 1815 a series of elaborate and valuable experiments in cross-breeding the buffalo and domestic cattle was begun by Mr. Robert Wickliffe, of Lexington, Ky., and continued by him for upwards of thirty years.[49]
Quite recently the buffalo-breeding operations of Mr. S. L. Bedson, of Stony Mountain, Manitoba, and Mr. C. J. Jones, of Garden City, Kans., have attracted much attention, particularly for the reason that the efforts of both these gentlemen have been directed toward the practical improvement of the present breeds of range cattle. For this reason the importance of the work in which they are engaged can hardly be overestimated, and the results already obtained by Mr. Bedson, whose experiments antedate those of Mr. Jones by several years, are of the greatest interest to western cattle-growers. Indeed, unless the stock of pure-blood buffaloes now remaining proves insufficient for the purpose, I fully believe that we will gradually see a great change wrought in the character of western cattle by the introduction of a strain of buffalo blood.
The experiments which have been made thus far prove conclusively that—
(1) The male bison crosses readily with the opposite sex of domestic cattle, but a buffalo cow has never been known to produce a half-breed calf.
(2) The domestic cow produces a half-breed calf successfully.
(3) The progeny of the two species is fertile to any extent, yielding half-breeds, quarter, three-quarter breeds, and so on.
(4) The bison breeds in captivity with perfect regularity and success.
Need of an improvement in range cattle.—Ever since the earliest days of cattle-ranching in the West, stockmen have had it in their power to produce a breed which would equal in beef-bearing qualities the best breeds to be found upon the plains, and be so much better calculated to survive the hardships of winter, that their annual losses would have been very greatly reduced. Whenever there is an unusually severe winter, such as comes about three times in every decade, if not even oftener, range cattle perish by thousands. It is an absolute impossibility for every ranchman who owns several thousand, or even several hundred, head of cattle to provide hay for them, even during the severest portion of the winter season, and consequently the cattle must depend wholly upon their own resources. When the winter is reasonably mild, and the snows never very deep, nor lying too long at a time on the ground, the cattle live through the winter with very satisfactory success. Thanks to the wind, it usually happens that the falling snow is blown off the ridges as fast as it falls, leaving the grass sufficiently uncovered for the cattle to feed upon it. If the snow-fall is universal, but not more than a few inches in depth, the cattle paw through it here and there, and eke out a subsistence, on quarter rations it may be, until a friendly chinook wind sets in from the southwest and dissolves the snow as if by magic in a few hours’ time.
But when a deep snow comes, and lies on the ground persistently, week in and week out, when the warmth of the sun softens and moistens its surface sufficiently for a returning cold wave to freeze it into a hard crust, forming a universal wall of ice between the luckless steer and his only food, the cattle starve and freeze in immense numbers. Being totally unfitted by nature to survive such unnatural conditions, it is not strange that they succumb.
Under present conditions the stockman simply stakes his cattle against the winter elements and takes his chances on the results, which are governed by circumstances wholly beyond his control. The losses of the fearful winter of 1886-’87 will probably never be forgotten by the cattlemen of the great Western grazing ground. In many portions of Montana and Wyoming the cattlemen admitted a loss of 50 per cent of their cattle, and in some localities the loss was still greater. The same conditions are liable to prevail next winter, or any succeeding winter, and we may yet see more than half the range cattle in the West perish in a single month.
Yet all this time the cattlemen have had it in their power, by the easiest and simplest method in the world, to introduce a strain of hardy native blood in their stock which would have made it capable of successfully resisting a much greater degree of hunger and cold. It is really surprising that the desirability of cross-breeding the buffalo and domestic cattle should for so long a time have been either overlooked or disregarded. While cattle-growers generally have shown the greatest enterprise in producing special breeds for milk, for butter, or for beef, cattle with short horns and cattle with no horns at all, only two or three men have had the enterprise to try to produce a breed particularly hardy and capable.
A buffalo can weather storms and outlive hunger and cold which would kill any domestic steer that ever lived. When nature placed him on the treeless and blizzard-swept plains, she left him well equipped to survive whatever natural conditions he would have to encounter. The most striking feature of his entire tout ensemble is his magnificent suit of hair and fur combined, the warmest covering possessed by any quadruped save the musk-ox. The head, neck, and fore quarters are clothed with hide and hair so thick as to be almost, if not entirely, impervious to cold. The hair on the body and hind quarters is long, fine, very thick, and of that peculiar woolly quality which constitutes the best possible protection against cold. Let him who doubts the warmth of a good buffalo robe try to weather a blizzard with something else, and then try the robe. The very form of the buffalo—short, thick legs, and head hung very near the ground—suggests most forcibly a special fitness to wrestle with mother earth for a living, snow or no snow. A buffalo will flounder for days through deep snow-drifts without a morsel of food, and survive where the best range steer would literally freeze on foot, bolt upright, as hundreds did in the winter of 1886-’87. While range cattle turn tail to a blizzard and drift helplessly, the buffalo faces it every time, and remains master of the situation.
It has for years been a surprise to me that Western stockmen have not seized upon the opportunity presented by the presence of the buffalo to improve the character of their cattle. Now that there are no longer any buffalo calves to be had on the plains for the trouble of catching them, and the few domesticated buffaloes that remain are worth fabulous prices, we may expect to see a great deal of interest manifested in this subject, and some costly efforts made to atone for previous lack of forethought.
The character of the buffalo-domestic hybrid.—The subjoined illustration from a photograph kindly furnished by Mr. C. J. Jones, represents a ten months’ old half-breed calf (male), the product of a buffalo bull and domestic cow. The prepotency of the sire is apparent at the first glance, and to so marked an extent that the illustration would pass muster anywhere as having been drawn from a full-blood buffalo. The head, neck, and hump, and the long woolly hair that covers them, proclaim the buffalo in every line. Excepting that the hair on the shoulders (below the hump) is of the same length as that on the body and hind quarters, there is, so far as one can judge from an excellent photograph, no difference whatever observable between this lusty young half-breed and a full blood buffalo calf of the same age and sex. Mr. Jones describes the color of this animal as “iron-gray,” and remarks: “You will see how even the fur is, being as long on the hind parts as on the shoulders and neck, very much unlike the buffalo, which is so shaggy about the shoulders and so thin farther back.” Upon this point it is to be remarked that the hair on the body of a yearling or two year-old buffalo is always very much longer in proportion to the hair on the forward parts than it is later in life, and while the shoulder hair is always decidedly longer than that back of it, during the first two years the contrast is by no means so very great. A reference to the memoranda of hair measurements already given will afford precise data on this point.
In regard to half-breed calves, Mr. Bedson states in a private letter that “the hump does not appear until several months after birth.”
Altogether, the male calf described above so strongly resembles a pure-blood buffalo as to be generally mistaken for one; the form of the adult half-blood cow promptly proclaims her origin. The accompanying plate, also from a photograph supplied by Mr. Jones, accurately represents a half-breed cow, six years old, weighing about 1,800 pounds. Her body is very noticeably larger in proportion than that of the cow buffalo, her pelvis much heavier, broader, and more cow-like, therein being a decided improvement upon the small and weak hind quarters of the wild species. The hump is quite noticeable, but is not nearly so high as in the pure buffalo cow. The hair on the fore quarters, neck, and head is decidedly shorter, especially on the head; the frontlet and chin beard being conspicuously lacking. The tufts of long, coarse, black hair which clothe the fore-arm of the buffalo cow are almost absent, but apparently the hair on the body and hind quarters has lost but little, if any, of its length, density, and fine, furry quality. The horns are decidedly cow-like in their size, length, and curvature.
Half-breed (Buffalo-Domestic) Calf.—Herd of C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kansas.
Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson.
Regarding the general character of the half-breed buffalo, and his herd in general, Mr. Bedson writes me as follows, in a letter dated September 12, 1888:
“The nucleus of my herd consisted of a young buffalo bull and four heifer calves, which I purchased in 1877, and the increase from these few has been most rapid, as will be shown by a tabular statement farther on.
“Success with the breeding of the pure buffalo was followed by experiments in crossing with the domestic animal. This crossing has generally been between a buffalo bull and an ordinary cow, and with the most encouraging results, since it had been contended by many that although the cow might breed a calf from the buffalo, yet it would be at the expense of her life, owing to the hump on a buffalo’s shoulder; but this hump does not appear until several months after birth. This has been proved a fallacy respecting this herd at least, for calving has been attended with no greater percentage of losses than would be experienced in ranching with the ordinary cattle. Buffalo cows and crosses have dropped calves at as low a temperature as 20° below zero, and the calves were sturdy and healthy.
“The half breed resulting from the cross as above mentioned has been again crossed with the thoroughbred buffalo bull, producing a three quarter breed animal closely resembling the buffalo, the head and robe being quite equal, if not superior. The half-breeds are very prolific. The cows drop a calf annually. They are also very hardy indeed, as they take the instinct of the buffalo during the blizzards and storms, and do not drift like native cattle. They remain upon the open prairie during our severest winters, while the thermometer ranges from 30 to 40 degrees below zero, with little or no food except what they rustled on the prairie, and no shelter at all. In nearly all the ranching parts of North America foddering and housing of cattle is imperative in a more or less degree,[50] creating an item of expense felt by all interested in cattle-raising; but the buffalo [half]breed retains all its native hardihood, needs no housing, forages in the deepest snows for its own food, yet becomes easily domesticated, and consequently needs but little herding. Therefore the progeny of the buffalo is easily reared, cheaply fed, and requires no housing in winter; three very essential points in stock-raising.
“They are always in good order, and I consider the meat of the half-breed much preferable to domestic animals, while the robe is very fine indeed, the fur being evened up on the hind parts, the same as on the shoulders. During the history of the herd, accident and other causes have compelled the slaughtering of one or two, and in these instances the carcasses have sold for 18 cents per pound; the hides in their dressed state for $50 to $75 each. A half-breed buffalo ox (four years old, crossed with buffalo bull and Durham cow) was killed last winter, and weighed 1,280 pounds dressed beef. One pure buffalo bull now in my herd weighs fully 2,000 pounds, and a [half]breed bull 1,700 to 1,800 pounds.
“The three-quarter breed is an enormous animal in size, and has an extra good robe, which will readily bring $40 to $50 in any market where there is a demand for robes. They are also very prolific, and I consider them the coming cattle for our range cattle for the Northern climate, while the half and quarter breeds will be the animals for the more Southern district. The half and three-quarter breed cows, when really matured, will weigh from 1,400 to 1,800 pounds.
“I have never crossed them except with a common grade of cows, while I believe a cross with the Galloways would produce the handsomest robe ever handled, and make the best range cattle in the world. I have not had time to give my attention to my herd, more than to let them range on the prairies at will. By proper care great results can be accomplished.”
Hon. C. J. Jones, of Garden City, Kans., whose years of experience with the buffalo, both as old-time hunter, catcher, and breeder, has earned for him the sobriquet of “Buffalo Jones,” five years ago became deeply interested in the question of improving range cattle by crossing with the buffalo. With characteristic Western energy he has pursued the subject from that time until the present, having made five trips to the range of the only buffaloes remaining from the great southern herd, and captured sixty-eight buffalo calves and eleven adult cows with which to start a herd. In a short article published in the Farmers’ Review (Chicago, August 22, 1888), Mr. Jones gives his views on the value of the buffalo in cross-breeding as follows:
“In all my meanderings I have not found a place but I could count more carcasses [of cattle] than living animals. Who has not ridden over some of the Western railways and counted dead cattle by the thousands? The great question is, Where can we get a race of cattle that will stand blizzards, and endure the drifting snow, and will not be driven with the storms against the railroad fences and pasture fences, there to perish for the want of nerve to face the northern winds for a few miles, to where the winter grasses could be had in abundance? Realizing these facts, both from observation and pocket, we pulled on our ‘thinking cap,’ and these points came vividly to our mind:
“(1) We want an animal that is hardy.
“(2) We want an animal with nerve and endurance.
“(3) We want an animal that faces the blizzards and endures the storms.
“(4) We want an animal that will rustle the prairies, and not yield to discouragement.
“(5) We want an animal that will fill the above bill, and make good beef and plenty of it.
Half-breed (Buffalo-Domestic) Cow.—Herd of C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kansas.
Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson.
“All the points above could easily be found in the buffalo, excepting the fifth, and even that is more than filled as to the quality, but not in quantity. Where is the ‘old timer’ who has not had a cut from the hump or sirloin of a fat buffalo cow in the fall of the year, and where is the one who will not make affidavit that it was the best meat he ever ate? Yes, the fat was very rich, equal to the marrow from the bone of domestic cattle. * * *
“The great question remained unsolved as to the quantity of meat from the buffalo. I finally heard of a half-breed buffalo in Colorado, and immediately set out to find it. I traveled at least 1,000 miles to find it, and found a five-year-old half-breed cow that had been bred to domestic bulls and had brought forth two calves—a yearling and a sucking calf that gave promise of great results.
“The cow had never been fed, but depended altogether on the range, and when I saw her, in the fall of 1883. I estimated her weight at 1,800 pounds. She was a brindle, and had a handsome robe even in September; she had as good hind quarters as ordinary cattle; her foreparts were heavy and resembled the buffalo, yet not near so much of the hump. The offspring showed but very little of the buffalo, yet they possessed a woolly coat, which showed clearly that they were more than domestic cattle. * * *
“What we can rely on by having one-fourth, one-half, and three-fourths breeds might be analyzed as follows:
“We can depend upon a race of cattle unequaled in the world for hardiness and durability; a good meat-bearing animal; the best and only fur-bearing animal of the bovine race; the animal always found in a storm where it is overtaken by it; a race of cattle so clannish as never to separate and go astray; the animal that can always have free range, as they exist where no other animal can live; the animal that can water every third day and keep fat, ranging from 20 to 30 miles from water; in fact, they are the perfect animal for the plains of North America. One-fourth breeds for Texas, one-half breeds for Colorado and Kansas, and three-fourths breeds for more northern country, is what will soon be sought after more than any living animal. Then we will never be confronted with dead carcarsses from starvation, exhaustion, and lack of nerve, as in years gone by.”
The bison as a beast of burden.—On account of the abundance of horses for all purposes throughout the entire country, oxen are so seldom used they almost constitute a curiosity. There never has existed a necessity to break buffaloes to the yoke and work them like domestic oxen, and so few experiments have been made in this direction that reliable data on this subject is almost wholly wanting. While at Miles City, Mont., I heard of a German “granger” who worked a small farm in the Tongue River Valley, and who once had a pair of cow buffaloes trained to the yoke. It was said that they were strong, rapid walkers, and capable of performing as much work as the best domestic oxen, but they were at times so uncontrollably headstrong and obstinate as to greatly detract from their usefulness. The particular event of their career on which their historian dwelt with special interest occurred when their owner was hauling a load of potatoes to town with them. In the course of the long drive the buffaloes grew very thirsty, and upon coming within sight of the water in the river they started for it in a straight course. The shouts and blows of the driver only served to hasten their speed, and presently, when they reached the edge of the high bank, they plunged down it without the slightest hesitation, wagon, potatoes, and all, to the loss of everything except themselves and the drink they went after!
Mr. Robert Wickliffe states that trained buffaloes make satisfactory oxen. “I have broken them to the yoke, and found them capable of making excellent oxen; and for drawing wagons, carts, or other heavily laden vehicles on long journeys they would, I think, be greatly preferable to the common ox.”
It seems probable that, in the absence of horses, the buffalo would make a much more speedy and enduring draught animal than the domestic ox, although it is to be doubted whether he would be as strong. His weaker pelvis and hind quarters would surely count against him under certain circumstances, but for some purposes his superior speed and endurance would more than counterbalance that defect.
BISON HERDS AND INDIVIDUALS IN CAPTIVITY AND DOMESTICATION, JANUARY 1, 1889.
Herd of Mr. S. L. Bedson, Stony Mountain, Manitoba.—In 1877 Mr. Bedson purchased 5 buffalo calves, 1 bull, and 4 heifers, for which he paid $1,000. In 1888 his herd consisted of 23 full-blood bulls, 35 cows, 3 half-breed cows, 5 half-breed bulls, and 17 calves, mixed and pure;[51] making a total of 83 head. These were all produced from the original 5, no purchases having been made, nor any additions made in any other way. Besides the 83 head constituting the herd when it was sold, 5 were killed and 9 given away, which would otherwise make a total of 97 head produced since 1877. In November, 1888, this entire herd was purchased, for $50,000, by Mr. C. J. Jones, and added to the already large herd owned by that gentleman in Kansas.
Young Half-breed (Buffalo-Domestic) Bull.—Herd of C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kansas.
Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson.
Herd of Mr. C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kans.—Mr. Jones’s original herd of 57 buffaloes constitute a living testimonial to his individual enterprise, and to his courage, endurance, and skill in the chase. The majority of the individuals composing the herd he himself ran down, lassoed, and tied with his own hands. For the last five years Mr. Jones has made an annual trip, in June, to the uninhabited “panhandle” of Texas, to capture calves out of the small herd of from one hundred to two hundred head which represented the last remnant of the great southern herd. Each of these expeditious involved a very considerable outlay in money, an elaborate “outfit” of men, horses, vehicles, camp equipage, and lastly, but most important of all, a herd of a dozen fresh milch cows to nourish the captured calves and keep them from dying of starvation and thirst. The region visited was fearfully barren, almost without water, and to penetrate it was always attended by great hardship. The buffaloes were difficult to find, but the ground was good for running, being chiefly level plains, and the superior speed of the running horses always enabled the hunters to overtake a herd whenever one was sighted, and to “cut out” and lasso two, three, or four of its calves. The degree of skill and daring displayed in these several expeditions are worthy of the highest admiration, and completely surpass anything I have ever seen or read of being accomplished in connection with hunting, or the capture of live game. The latest feat of Mr. Jones and his party comes the nearest to being incredible. During the month of May, 1888, they not only captured seven calves, but also eleven adult cows, of which some were lassoed in full career on the prairie, thrown, tied, and hobbled! The majority, however, were actually “rounded up,” herded, and held in control until a bunch of tame buffaloes was driven down to meet them, so that it would thus be possible to drive all together to a ranch. This brilliant feat can only be appreciated as it deserves by those who have lately hunted buffalo, and learned by dear experience the extent of their wariness, and the difficulties, to say nothing of the dangers, inseparably connected with their pursuit.
The result of each of Mr. Jones’s five expeditions is as follows: In 1884 no calves found; 1885, 11 calves captured, 5 died, 6 survived; 1886, 14 calves captured, 7 died, 7 survived; 1887, 36 calves captured, 6 died, 30 survived; 1888, 7 calves captured, all survived; 1888, 11 old cows captured, all survived. Total, 79 captures, 18 losses, 57 survivors.
The census of the herd is exactly as follows: Adult cows, 11; three-year olds, 7, of which 2 are males and 5 females; two-year olds, 4, of which all are males; yearling, 28, of which 15 are males and 13 females; calves, 7, of which 3 are males and 4 females. Total herd, 57; 24 males and 33 females. To this, Mr. Jones’s original herd, must now be added the entire herd formerly owned by Mr. Bedson.
Respecting his breeding operations Mr. Jones writes: “My oldest [bull] buffaloes are now three years old, and I am breeding one hundred domestic cows to them this year. Am breeding the Galloway cows quite extensively; also some Shorthorns, Herefords, and Texas cows. I expect best results from the Galloways. If I can get the black luster of the latter and the fur of a buffalo, I will have a robe that will bring more money than we get for the average range steer.”
In November, 1888, Mr. Jones purchased Mr. Bedson’s entire herd, and in the following mouth proceeded to ship a portion of it to Kansas City. Thirty-three head were separated from the remainder of the herd on the prairie near Stony Mountain, 12 miles from Winnipeg, and driven to the railroad. Several old bulls broke away en route and ran back to the herd, and when the remainder were finally corraled in the pens at the stock-yards “they began to fight among themselves, and some fierce encounters were waged between the old bulls. The younger cattle were raised on the horns of their seniors, thrown in the air, and otherwise gored.” While on the way to St. Paul three of the half-breed buffaloes were killed by their companions. On reaching Kansas City and unloading the two cars, 13 head broke away from the large force of men that attempted to manage them, stampeded through the city, and finally took refuge in the low-lands along the river. In due time, however, all were recaptured.
Since the acquisition of this northern herd and the subsequent press comment that it has evoked, Mr. Jones has been almost overwhelmed with letters of inquiry in regard to the whole subject of buffalo breeding, and has found it necessary to print and distribute a circular giving answers to the many inquiries that have been made.
Herd of Mr. Charles Allard, Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana.—This herd was visited in the autumn of 1888 by Mr. G. O. Shields, of Chicago, who reports that it consists of thirty-five head of pure-blood buffaloes, of which seven are calves of 1888, six are yearlings, and six are two-year olds. Of the adult animals, four cows and two bulls are each fourteen years old, “and the beards of the bulls almost sweep the ground as they walk.”
Herd of Hon. W. F. Cody (“Buffalo Bill”).—The celebrated “Wild West Show” has, ever since its organization, numbered amongst its leading attractions a herd of live buffaloes of all ages. At present this herd contains eighteen head, of which fourteen were originally purchased of Mr. H. T. Groome, of Wichita, Kansas, and have made a journey to London and back. As a proof of the indomitable persistence of the bison in breeding under most unfavorable circumstances, the fact that four of the members of this herd are calves which were born in 1888 in London, at the American Exposition, is of considerable interest.
This herd is now (December, 1888) being wintered on General Beale’s farm, near the city of Washington. In 1886-’87, while the Wild West Show was at Madison Square Garden, New York City, its entire herd of twenty buffaloes was carried off by pleuro-pneumonia. It is to be greatly feared that sooner or later in the course of its travels the present herd will also disappear, either through disease or accident.
Herd of Mr. Charles Goodnight, Clarendon, Texas.—Mr. Goodnight writes that he has “been breeding buffaloes in a small way for the past ten years,” but without giving any particular attention to it. At present his herd consists of thirteen head, of which two are three-year old bulls and four are calves. There are seven cows of all ages, one of which is a half-breed.
Herd at the Zoological Society’s Gardens, Philadelphia, Arthur E. Brown, superintendent.—This institution is the fortunate possessor of a small herd of ten buffaloes, of which four are males and six females. Two are calves of 1877. In 1886 the Gardens sold an adult bull and cow to Hon. W. F. Cody for $300.
Herd at Bismarck Grove, Kansas, owned by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad Company.—A small herd of buffaloes has for several years past been kept at Bismarck Grove as an attraction to visitors. At present it contains ten head, one of which is a very large bull, another in a four-year-old bull, six are cows of various ages, and two are two-year olds. In 1885 a large bull belonging to this herd grew so vicious and dangerous that it was necessary to kill him.
The following interesting account of this herd was published in the Kansas City Times of December 8, 1888:
“Thirteen years ago Colonel Stanton purchased a buffalo bull calf for $8 and two heifers for $25. The descendants of these three buffaloes now found at Bismarck Grove, where all were born, number in all ten. There were seventeen, but the rest have died, with the exception of one, which was given away. They are kept in an inclosure containing about 30 acres immediately adjoining the park, and there may be seen at any time. The sight is one well worth a trip and the slight expense that may attach to it, especially to one who has never seen the American bison in his native state.
“The present herd includes two fine bull calves dropped last spring, two heifers, five cows, and a bull six years old and as handsome as a picture. The latter has been named Cleveland, after the colonel’s favorite Presidential candidate. The entire herd is in as fine condition as any beef cattle, though they were never fed anything but hay and are never given any shelter. In fact they don’t take kindly to shelter, and whether a blizzard is blowing, with the mercury 20 degrees below zero, or the sun pouring down his scorching rays, with the thermometer 110 degrees above, they set their heads resolutely toward storm or sun and take their medicine as if they liked it. Hon. W. F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill,” tried to buy the whole herd two years ago to take to Europe with his Wild West Show, but they were not for sale at his own figures, and, indeed, there is no anxiety to dispose of them at any figures. The railroad company has been glad to furnish them pasturage for the sake of adding to the attractions of the park, in which there are also forty-three head of deer, including two as fine bucks as ever trotted over the national deer trail toward the salt-licks in northern Utah.
“While the bison at Bismark Grove are splendid specimens of their class, “Cleveland” is decidedly the pride of the herd, and as grand a creature as ever trod the soil of Kansas on four legs. He is just six years old and is a perfect specimen of the kings of the plains. There is royal blood in his veins, and his coat is finer than the imperial purple. It is not possible to get at him to measure his stature and weight. He must weigh fully 3,000 pounds, and it is doubtful if there is to-day living on the face of the earth a handsomer buffalo bull than he. “Cleveland’s” disposition is not so ugly as old Barney’s was, but at certain seasons he is very wild, and there is no one venturesome enough to go into the inclosure. It is then not altogether safe to even look over the high and heavy board fence at him, for he is likely to make a run for the visitor, as the numerous holes in the fence where he has knocked off the boards will testify.”
Herd of Mr. Frederick Dupree, Cheyenne Indian Agency, near Fort Bennett, Dakota.—This herd contains at present nine pure-blood buffaloes, five of which are cows and seven mixed bloods. Of the former, there are two adult bulls and four adult cows. Of the mixed blood animals, six are half-breeds and one a quarter-breed buffalo.
Mr. Dupree obtained the nucleus of his herd in 1882, at which time he captured five wild calves about 100 miles west of Fort Bennett. Of these, two died after two months of captivity and a third was killed by an Indian in 1885.
Mr. D. F. Carlin, of the Indian service, at Fort Bennett, has kindly furnished me the following information respecting this herd, under date of November 1, 1888:
“The animals composing this herd are all in fine condition and are quite tame. They keep by themselves most of the time, except the oldest bull (six years old), who seems to appreciate the company of domestic cattle more than that of his own family. Mr. Dupree has kept one half-breed bull as an experiment; he thinks it will produce a hardy class of cattle. His half-breeds are all black, with one exception, and that is a roan; but they are all built like the buffalo, and when young they grunt more like a hog than like a calf, the same as a full-blood buffalo.
“Mr. Dupree has never lost a [domestic] cow in giving birth to a half-breed calf, as was supposed by many people would be the case. There have been no sales from this herd, although the owner has a standing offer of $650 for a cow and bull. The cows are not for sale at any price.”
Herd at Lincoln Park, Chicago, Mr. W. P. Walker, superintendent.—This very interesting and handsomely-kept herd is composed of seven individuals of the following character: One bull eight years old, one bull four years old, two cows eight years old, two cows two years old in the spring of 1888, and one female calf born in the spring of 1888.
Zoological Gardens, Cincinnati, Ohio.—This collection contains four bison, an adult bull and cow, and one immature specimen.
Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy, Rapid City, Dakota, has a herd of four pure buffaloes and one half-breed. Of the former, the two adults, a bull and cow seven years old, were caught by Sioux Indians near the Black Hills for the owner in the spring of 1882. The Indians drove two milch cows to the range to nourish the calves when caught. These have produced two calves, one of which, a bull, is now three years old, and the other is a yearling heifer.
Central Park Menagerie, New York, Dr. W. A. Conklin, director.—This much-visited collection contains four bison, an adult bull and cow, a two-year-old calf, and a yearling.
Mr. John H. Starin, Glen Inland, near New York City.—There are four buffaloes at this summer resort.
The U. S. National Museum, Washington, District of Columbia.—The collection of the department of living animals at this institution contains two fine young buffaloes; a bull four years old in July, 1888, and a cow three years old in May of the same year. These animals were captured in western Nebraska, when they were calves, by H. R. Jackett, of Ogalalla, and kept by him on his ranch until 1885. In April, 1888, Hon. Eugene G. Blackford, of New York, purchased them of Mr. Frederick D. Nowell, of North Platte, Nebraska, for $100 for the pair, and presented them to the National Museum, in the hope that they might form the nucleus of a herd to be owned and exhibited by the United States Government in or near the city of Washington. The two animals were received in Ogalalla by Mr. Joseph Palmer, of the National Museum, and by him they were brought on to Washington in May, in fine condition. Since their arrival they have been exhibited to the public in a temporary inclosure on the Smithsonian Grounds, and have attracted much attention.
Mr. B. C. Winston, of Hamline, Minnesota, owns a pair of buffaloes, one of which, a young bull, was caught by him in western Dakota in the spring of 1886, soon after its birth. The cow was purchased at Rosseau, Dakota Territory, a year later, for $225.
Mr. I. P. Butler, of Colorado, Texas, is the owner of a young bull buffalo and a half-breed calf.
Mr. Jesse Huston, of Miles City, Montana, owns a fine five-year-old bull buffalo.
Mr. L. F. Gardner, of Bellwood, Oregon, is the owner of a large adult bull.
The Riverside Ranch Company, south of Mandan, Dakota, owns a pair of full-blood buffaloes.
In Dakota, in the hands of parties unknown, there are four full-blood buffaloes.
Mr. James R. Hitch, of Optima, Indian Territory, has a pair of young buffaloes, which he has offered for sale for $750.
Mr. Joseph A. Hudson, of Estell, Nebraska, owns a three-year-old bull buffalo, which is for sale.
In other countries there are live specimens of Bison americanus reported as follows: two at Belleview Gardens, Manchester, England; one at the Zoological Gardens, London; one at Liverpool, England (purchased of Hon. W. F. Cody in 1888); two at the Zoological Gardens, Dresden; one at the Zoological Gardens, Calcutta.
Statistics of full-blood buffaloes in captivity January 1, 1889.
| Number kept for breeding purposes | 216 |
| Number kept for exhibition | 40 |
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| Total pure-blood buffaloes in captivity | 256 |
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| Wild buffaloes under Government protection in the Yellowstone Park | 200 |
| Number of mixed-breed buffalo-domestics | 40 |
There are, without doubt, a few half-breeds in Manitoba of which I have no account. It is probable there are also a very few more captive buffaloes scattered singly here and there which will be heard of later, but the total will be a very small number, I am sure.
PART II.—THE EXTERMINATION.
I. Causes of the Extermination.
The causes which led to the practical extinction (in a wild state, at least) of the most economically valuable wild animal that ever inhabited the American continent, are by no means obscure. It is well that we should know precisely what they were, and by the sad fate of the buffalo be warned in time against allowing similar causes to produce the same results with our elk, antelope, deer, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, mountain goat, walrus, and other animals. It will be doubly deplorable if the remorseless slaughter we have witnessed during the last twenty years carries with it no lessons for the future. A continuation of the record we have lately made as wholesale game butchers will justify posterity in dating us back with the mound-builders and cave-dwellers, when man’s only known function was to slay and eat.
The primary cause of the buffalo’s extermination, and the one which embraced all others, was the descent of civilization, with all its elements of destructiveness, upon the whole of the country inhabited by that animal. From the Great Slave Lake to the Rio Grande the home of the buffalo was everywhere overrun by the man with a gun; and, as has ever been the case, the wild creatures were gradually swept away, the largest and most conspicuous forms being the first to go.
The secondary causes of the extermination of the buffalo may be catalogued as follows:
(1) Man’s reckless greed, his wanton destructiveness, and improvidence in not husbanding such resources as come to him from the hand of nature ready made.
(2) The total and utterly inexcusable absence of protective measures and agencies on the part of the National Government and of the West States and Territories.
(3) The fatal preference on the part of hunters generally, both white and red, for the robe and flesh of the cow over that furnished by the bull.
(4) The phenomenal stupidity of the animals themselves, and their indifference to man.
(5) The perfection of modern breech-loading rifles and other sporting fire-arms in general.
Each of these causes acted against the buffalo with its fall force, to offset which there was not even one restraining or preserving influence, and it is not to be wondered at that the species went down before them. Had any one of these conditions been eliminated the result would have been reached far less quickly. Had the buffalo, for example, possessed one-half the fighting qualities of the grizzly bear he would have fared very differently, but his inoffensiveness and lack of courage almost leads one to doubt the wisdom of the economy of nature so far as it relates to him.
II. Methods of Slaughter.
1. The still-hunt.—Of all the deadly methods of buffalo slaughter, the still-hunt was the deadliest. Of all the methods that were unsportsmanlike, unfair, ignoble, and utterly reprehensible, this was in every respect the lowest and the worst. Destitute of nearly every element of the buoyant excitement and spice of danger that accompanied genuine buffalo hunting on horseback, the still-hunt was mere butchery of the tamest and yet most cruel kind. About it there was none of the true excitement of the chase; but there was plenty of greedy eagerness to “down” as many “head” as possible every day, just as there is in every slaughter-house where the killers are paid so much per head. Judging from all accounts, it was about as exciting and dangerous work as it would be to go out now and shoot cattle on the Texas or Montana ranges. The probabilities are, however, that shooting Texas cattle would be the most dangerous; for, instead of running from a man on foot, as the buffalo used to do, range cattle usually charge down upon him, from motives of curiosity, perhaps, and not infrequently place his life in considerable jeopardy.
The buffalo owes his extermination very largely to his own unparalleled stupidity; for nothing else could by any possibility have enabled the still-hunters to accomplish what they did in such an incredibly short time. So long as the chase on horseback was the order of the day, it ordinarily required the united efforts of from fifteen to twenty-five hunters to kill a thousand buffalo in a single season; but a single still-hunter, with a long-range breech-loader, who knew how to make a “sneak” and get “a stand on a bunch,” often succeeded in killing from one to three thousand in one season by his own unaided efforts. Capt. Jack Brydges, of Kansas, who was one of the first to begin the final slaughter of the southern herd, killed, by contract, one thousand one hundred and forty-two buffaloes in six weeks.
So long as the buffalo remained in large herds their numbers gave each individual a feeling of dependence upon his fellows and of general security from harm, even in the presence of strange phenomena which he could not understand. When he heard a loud report and saw a little cloud of white smoke rising from a gully, a clump of sage-brash, or the top of a ridge, 200 yards away, he wondered what it meant, and held himself in readiness to follow his leader in case she should run away. But when the leader of the herd, usually the oldest cow, fell bleeding upon the ground, and no other buffalo promptly assumed the leadership of the herd, instead of acting independently and fleeing from the alarm, he merely did as he saw the others do, and waited his turn to be shot. Latterly, however, when the herds were totally broken up, when the few survivors were scattered in every direction, and it became a case of every buffalo for himself, they became wild and wary, ever ready to start off at the slightest alarm, and run indefinitely. Had they shown the same wariness seventeen years ago that the survivors have manifested during the last three or four years, there would now be a hundred thousand head alive instead of only about three hundred in a wild and unprotected state.
Notwithstanding the merciless war that had been waged against the buffalo for over a century by both whites and Indians, and the steady decrease of its numbers, as well as its range, there were several million head on foot, not only up to the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, but as late as the year 1870. Up to that time the killing done by white men had been chiefly for the sake of meat, the demand for robes was moderate, and the Indians took annually less than one hundred thousand for trading. Although half a million buffaloes were killed by Indians, half-breeds, and whites, the natural increase was so very considerable as to make it seem that the evil day of extermination was yet far distant.
But by a coincidence which was fatal to the buffalo, with the building of three lines of railway through the most populous buffalo country there came a demand for robes and hides, backed up by an unlimited supply of new and marvellously accurate breech-loading rifles and fixed ammunition. And then followed a wild rush of hunters to the buffalo country, eager to destroy as many head as possible in the shortest time. For those greedy ones the chase on horseback was “too slow” and too unfruitful. That was a retail method of killing, whereas they wanted to kill by wholesale. From their point of view, the still-hunt or “sneak” hunt was the method par excellence. If they could have obtained Gatling guns with which to mow down a whole herd at a time, beyond a doubt they would have gladly used them.
The still-hunt was seen at its very worst in the years 1871, 1872, and 1873, on the southern buffalo range, and ten years later at its best in Montana, on the northern. Let us first consider it at its best, which in principle was bad enough.
The great rise in the price of robes which followed the blotting out of the great southern herd at once put buffalo-hunting on a much more comfortable and respectable business basis in the North than it had ever occupied in the South, where prices had all along been phenomenally low.
In Montana it was no uncommon thing for a hunter to invest from $1,000 to $2,000 in his “outfit” of horses, wagons, weapons, ammunition, provisions, and sundries.
One of the men who accompanied the Smithsonian Expedition for Buffalo, Mr. James McNaney, of Miles City, Montana, was an ex-buffalo banter, who had spent three seasons on the northern range, killing buffalo for their robes, and his standing as a hunter was of the best. A brief description of his outfit and its work during its last season on the range (1882-’83) may fairly be taken as a typical illustration of the life and work of the still-hunter at its best. The only thing against it was the extermination of the buffalo.
During the winters of 1880 and 1881 Mr. McNaney had served in Maxwell’s outfit as a hunter, working by the month, but his success in killing was such that he decided to work the third year on his own account. Although at that time only seventeen years of age, he took an elder brother as a partner, and purchased an outfit in Miles City, of which the following were the principal items: Two wagons, 2 four-horse teams, 2 saddle-horses, 2 wall-tents, 1 cook-stove with pipe, 1 40-90 Sharp’s rifle (breech-loading), 1 45-70 Sharps rifle (breech-loading), 1 45-120 Sharps rifle (breech-loading), 50 pounds gunpowder, 550 pounds lead, 4,500 primers, 600 brass shells, 4 sheets patch-paper, 60 Wilson skinning knives, 3 butcher’s steels, 1 portable grindstone, flour, bacon, baking-powder, coffee, sugar, molasses, dried apples, canned vegetables, beans, etc., in quantity.
The entire cost of the outfit was about $1,400. Two men were hired for the season at $50 per month, and the party started from Miles City on November 10, which was considered a very late start. The usual time of setting out for the range was about October 1.
The outfit went by rail northeastward to Terry, and from thence across country south and east about 100 miles, around the head of O’Fallon Creek to the head of Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Little Missouri. A good range was selected, without encroachment upon the domains of the hunters already in the field, and the camp was made near the bank of the creek, close to a supply of wood and water, and screened from distant observation by a circle of hills and ridges. The two rectangular wall-tents were set up end to end, with the cook-stove in the middle, where the ends came together. In one tent the cooking and eating was done, and the other contained the beds.
It was planned that the various members of the party should cook turn about, a week at a time, but one of them soon developed such a rare and conspicuous talent for bread-making and general cookery that he was elected by acclamation to cook during the entire season. To the other three members fell the hunting. Each man hunted separately from the others, and skinned all the animals that his rifle brought down.
There were buffalo on the range when the hunters arrived, and the killing began at once. At daylight the still-hunter sallied forth on foot, carrying in his hand his huge Sharps rifle, weighing from 16 to 19 pounds, with from seventy-five to one hundred loaded cartridges in his two belts or his pockets. At his side, depending from his belt, hung his “hunter’s companion,” a flat leather scabbard, containing a ripping knife, a skinning knife, and a butcher’s steel upon which to sharpen them. The total weight carried was very considerable, seldom less than 36 pounds, and often more.
Inasmuch as it was highly important to move camp as seldom as possible in the course of a season’s work, the hunter exercised the greatest precaution in killing his game, and had ever before his mind the necessity of doing his killing without frightening away the survivors.
With ten thousand buffaloes on their range, it was considered the height of good luck to find a “bunch” of fifty head in a secluded “draw” or hollow, where it was possible to “make a kill” without disturbing the big herd.
The still-hunter usually went on foot, for when buffaloes became so scarce as to make it necessary for him to ride his occupation was practically gone. At the time I speak of, the hunter seldom had to walk more than 3 miles from camp to find buffalo, in case there were any at all on his range, and it was usually an advantage to be without a horse. From the top of a ridge or high butte the country was carefully scanned, and if several small herds were in sight the one easiest to approach was selected as the one to attack. It was far better to find a herd lying down or quietly grazing, or sheltering from a cold wind, than to find it traveling, for while a hard run of a mile or two often enabled the hunter to “head off” a moving herd and kill a certain number of animals out of it, the net results were never half so satisfactory as with herds absolutely at rest.
Having decided upon an attack, the hunter gets to leeward of his game, and approaches it according to the nature of the ground. If it is in a hollow, he secures a position at the top of the nearest ridge, as close as he can get. If it is in a level “flat,” he looks for a gully up which he can skulk until within good rifle-shot. If there is no gully, he may be obliged to crawl half a mile on his hands and knees, often through snow or amongst beds of prickly pear, taking advantage of even such scanty cover as sage-brush affords. Some Montana still-hunters adopted the method of drawing a gunny-sack over the entire upper half of the body, with holes cut for the eyes and arms, which simple but unpicturesque arrangement often enabled the hunter to approach his game much more easily and more closely than would otherwise have been possible.
Still-hunting Buffaloes on the Northern Range.
From a painting by J. H. Moser, in the National Museum.
Having secured a position within from 100 to 250 yards of his game (often the distance was much greater), the hunter secures a comfortable rest for his huge rifle, all the time keeping his own person thoroughly hidden from view, estimates the distance, carefully adjusts his sights, and begins business. If the herd is moving, the animal in the lead is the first one shot, close behind the fore leg and about a foot above the brisket, which sends the ball through the lungs. If the herd is at rest, the oldest cow is always supposed to be the leader, and she is the one to kill first. The noise startles the buffaloes, they stare at the little cloud of white smoke and feel inclined to run, but seeing their leader hesitate they wait for her. She, when struck, gives a violent start forward, but soon stops, and the blood begins to run from her nostrils in two bright crimson streams. In a couple of minutes her body sways unsteadily, she staggers, tries hard to keep her feet, but soon gives a lurch sidewise and falls. Some of the other members of the herd come around her and stare and sniff in wide-eyed wonder, and one of the more wary starts to lead the herd away. But before she takes half a dozen steps “bang!” goes the hidden rifle again, and her leadership is ended forever. Her fall only increases the bewilderment of the survivors over a proceeding which to them is strange and unaccountable, because the danger is not visible. They cluster around the fallen ones, sniff at the warm blood, bawl aloud in wonderment, and do everything but run away.
The policy of the hunter is to not fire too rapidly, but to attend closely to business, and every time a buffalo attempts to make off, shoot it down. One shot per minute was a moderate rate of firing, but under pressure of circumstances two per minute could be discharged with deliberate precision. With the most accurate hunting rifle ever made, a “dead rest,” and a large mark practically motionless, it was no wonder that nearly every shot meant a dead buffalo. The vital spot on a buffalo which stands with its side to the hunter is about a foot in diameter, and on a full-grown bull is considerably more. Under such conditions as the above, which was called getting “a stand,” the hunter nurses his victims just as an angler plays a big fish with light tackle, and in the most methodical manner murders them one by one, either until the last one falls, his cartridges are all expended, or the stupid brutes come to their senses and run away. Occasionally the poor fellow was troubled by having his rifle get too hot to use, but if a snow-bank was at hand he would thrust the weapon into it without ceremony to cool it off.
A success in getting a stand meant the slaughter of a good-sized herd. A hunter whom I met in Montana, Mr. Harry Andrews, told me that he once fired one hundred and fifteen shots from one spot and killed sixty-three buffalo in less than an hour. The highest number Mr. McNaney ever knew of being killed in one stand was ninety-one head, but Colonel Dodge once counted one hundred and twelve carcasses of buffalo “inside of a semicircle of 200 yards radius, all of which were killed by one man from the same spot, and in less than three-quarters of an hour.”
The “kill” being completed, the hunter then addressed himself to the task of skinning his victims. The northern hunters were seldom guilty of the reckless carelessness and lack of enterprise in the treatment of robes which at one time was so prominent a feature of work on the southern range. By the time white men began to hunt for robes on the northern range, buffalo were becoming comparatively scarce, and robes were worth from $2 to $4 each. The fur-buyers had taught the hunters, with the potent argument of hard cash, that a robe carefully and neatly taken off, stretched, and kept reasonably free from blood and dirt, was worth more money in the market than one taken off in a slovenly manner, and contrary to the nicer demands of the trade. After 1880, buffalo on the northern range were skinned with considerable care, and amongst the robe-hunters not one was allowed to become a loss when it was possible to prevent it. Every full-sized cow robe was considered equal to $3.50 in hard cash, and treated accordingly. The hunter, or skinner, always stretched every robe out on the ground to its fullest extent while it was yet warm, and cut the initials of his employer in the thin subcutaneous muscle which always adhered to the inside of the skin. A warm skin is very elastic, and when stretched upon the ground the hair holds it in shape until it either dries or freezes, and so retains its full size. On the northern range skins were so valuable that many a dispute arose between rival outfits over the ownership of a dead buffalo, some of which produced serious results.
2. The chase on horseback or “running buffalo.”—Next to the still-hunt the method called “running buffalo” was the most fatal to the race, and the one most universally practiced. To all hunters, save greedy white men, the chase on horseback yielded spoil sufficient for every need, and it also furnished sport of a superior kind—manly, exhilarating, and well spiced with danger. Even the horses shared the excitement and eagerness of their riders.
So long as the weapons of the Indian consisted only of the bow and arrow and the spear, he was obliged to kill at close quarters or not at all. And even when fire-arms were first placed in his hands their caliber was so small, the charge so light, and the Indian himself so poor a marksman at long range, that his best course was still to gallop alongside the herd on his favorite “buffalo horse” and kill at the shortest possible range. From all accounts, the Red River half-breeds, who hunted almost exclusively with fire-arms, never dreamed of the deadly still hunt, but always killed their game by “running” it.
In former times even the white men of the plains did the most of their buffalo hunting on horseback, using the largest-sized Colt’s revolver, sometimes one in each hand, until the repeating-rifle made its appearance, which in a great measure displaced the revolver in running buffalo. But about that time began the mad warfare for “robes” and “hides,” and the only fair and sportsmanlike method of hunting was declared too slow for the greedy buffalo-skinners.
Then came the cold-blooded butchery of the still-hunt. From that time on the buffalo as a game animal steadily lost caste. It soon came to be universally considered that there was no sport in hunting buffalo. True enough of still-hunting, where the hunter sneaks up and shoots them down one by one at such long range the report of his big rifle does not even frighten them away. So far as sportsmanlike fairness is concerned, that method was not one whit more elevated than killing game by poison.
Bat the chase on horseback was a different thing. Its successful prosecution demanded a good horse, a bold rider, a firm seat, and perfect familiarity with weapons. The excitement of it was intense, the dangers not to be despised, and, above all, the buffalo had a fair show for his life, or partially so, at least. The mode of attack is easily described.
Whenever the hunters discovered a herd of buffalo, they usually got to leeward of it and quietly rode forward in a body, or stretched out in a regular skirmish line, behind the shelter of a knoll, perhaps, until they had approached the herd as closely as could be done without alarming it. Usually the unsuspecting animals, with a confidence due more to their great numbers than anything else, would allow a party of horsemen to approach within from 200 to 400 yards of their flankers, and then they would start off on a slow trot. The hunters then put spurs to their horses and dashed forward to overtake the herd as quickly as possible. Once up with it, each hunter chooses the best animal within his reach, chases him until his flying steed carries him close alongside, and then the arrow or the bullet is sent into his vitals. The fatal spot is from 12 to 18 inches in circumference, and lies immediately back of the fore leg, with its lowest point on a line with the elbow.
This, the true chase of the buffalo, was not only exciting, but dangerous. It often happened that the hunter found himself surrounded by the flying herd, and in a cloud of dust, so that neither man nor horse could see the ground before them. Under such circumstances fatal accidents to both men and horses were numerous. It was not an uncommon thing for half-breeds to shoot each other in the excitement of the chase; and, while now and then a wounded bull suddenly turned upon his pursuer and overthrew him, the greatest number of casualties were from falls.
Of the dangers involved in running buffalo Colonel Dodge writes as follows:[52]
“The danger is not so much from the buffalo, which rarely makes an effort to injure his pursuer, as from the fact that neither man nor horse can see the ground, which may be rough and broken, or perforated with prairie-dog or gopher holes. This danger is so imminent, that a man who runs into a herd of buffalo may be said to take his life in his hand. I have never known a man hurt by a buffalo in such a chase. I have known of at least six killed, and a very great many more or less injured, some very severely, by their horses falling with them.”
On this point Catlin declares that to engage in running buffalo is “at the hazard of every bone in one’s body, to feel the fine and thrilling exhilaration of the chase for a moment, and then as often to upbraid and blame himself for his folly and imprudence.”
Previous to my first experience in “running buffalo” I had entertained a mortal dread of ever being called upon to ride a chase across a prairie-dog town. The mouth of a prairie-dog’s burrow is amply large to receive the hoof of a horse, and the angle at which the hole descends into the earth makes it just right for the leg of a running horse to plunge into up to the knee and bring down both horse and rider instantly; the former with a broken leg, to say the least of it. If the rider sits loosely, and promptly resigns his seat, he will go flying forward, as if thrown from a catapult, for 20 feet or so, perhaps to escape with a few broken bones, and perhaps to have his neck broken, or his skull fractured on the hard earth. If he sticks tightly to his saddle, his horse is almost certain to fall upon him, and perhaps kill him. Judge, then, my feelings when the first bunch of buffalo we started headed straight across the largest prairie-dog town I had ever seen up to that time. And not only was the ground honey-combed with gaping round holes, but it was also crossed here and there by treacherous ditch-like gullies, cut straight down into the earth to an uncertain depth, and so narrow as to be invisible until it was almost time to leap across them.
But at such a time, with the game thundering along a few rods in advance, the hunter thinks of little else except getting up to it. He looks as far ahead as possible, and helps his horse to avoid dangers, but to a great extent the horse must guide himself. The rider plies his spurs and looks eagerly forward, almost feverish with excitement and eagerness, but at the same time if he is wise he expects a fall, and holds himself in readiness to take the ground with as little damage as he can.
Mr. Catlin gives a most graphic description of a hunting accident, which may fairly be quoted in full as a type of many such. I must say that I fully sympathize with M. Chardon in his estimate of the hardness of the ground he fell upon, for I have a painful recollection of a fall I had from which I arose with the settled conviction that the ground in Montana is the hardest in the world! It seemed more like falling upon cast-iron than prairie turf.
“I dashed along through the thundering mass as they swept away over the plain, scarcely able to tell whether I was on a buffalo’s back or my horse, hit and hooked and jostled about, till at length I found myself alongside my game, when I gave him a shot as I passed him.
The Chase on Horseback.
From a painting in the National Museum by George Catlin.
I saw guns flash about me in several directions, but I heard them not. Amidst the trampling throng Mons. Chardon had wounded a stately bull, and at this moment was passing him with his piece leveled for another shot. They were both at full speed and I also, within the reach of the muzzle of my gun, when the bull instantly turned, receiving the horse upon his horns, and the ground received poor Chardon, who made a frog’s leap of some 20 feet or more over the bull’s back and almost under my horse’s heels. I wheeled my horse as soon as possible and rode back where lay poor Chardon, gasping to start his breath again, and within a few paces of him his huge victim, with his heels high in the air, and the horse lying across him. I dismounted instantly, but Chardon was raising himself on his hands, with his eyes and mouth full of dirt, and feeling for his gun, which lay about 30 feet in advance of him. ‘Heaven spare you! are you hurt, Chardon?’ ‘Hi-hic—hic—hic—hic—no;—hic—no—no, I believe not. Oh, this is not much, Mons. Cataline—this is nothing new—but this is a d—d hard piece of ground here—hic—oh! hic!’ At this the poor fellow fainted, but in a few moments arose, picked up his gun, took his horse by the bit, which then opened its eyes, and with a hic and a ugh—ughk!—sprang upon its feet, shook off the dirt, and here we were, all upon our legs again, save the bull, whose fate had been more sad than that of either.”[53]
The following passage from Mr. Alexander Ross’s graphic description of a great hunt,[54] in which about four hundred hunters made an onslaught upon a herd, affords a good illustration of the dangers in running buffalo:
“On this occasion the surface was rocky and full of badger-holes. Twenty-three horses and riders were at one moment all sprawling on the ground; one horse, gored by a bull, was killed on the spot; two more were disabled by the fall; one rider broke his shoulder-blade; another burst his gun and lost three of his fingers by the accident; and a third was struck on the knee by an exhausted ball. These accidents will not be thought overnumerous, considering the result, for in the evening no less than thirteen hundred and seventy-five tongues were brought into camp.”
It really seems as if the horses of the plains entered willfully and knowingly into the war on the doomed herds. But for the willingness and even genuine eagerness with which the “buffalo horses” of both white men and Indians entered into the chase, hunting on horseback would have been attended with almost insurmountable difficulties, and the results would have been much less fatal to the species. According to all accounts the horses of the Indians and half-breeds were far better trained than those of their white rivals, no doubt owing to the fact that the use of the bow, which required the free use of both hands, was only possible when the horse took the right coarse of his own free will or else could be guided by the pressure of the knees. If we may believe the historians of that period, and there is not the slightest reason to doubt them, the “buffalo horses” of the Indians displayed almost as much intelligence and eagerness in the chase as did their human riders. Indeed, in “running buffalo” with only the bow and arrow, nothing but the willing co-operation of the horse could have possibly made this mode of hunting either satisfactory or successful.
In Lewis and Clarke’s Travels, volume II, page 387, appears the following record:
“He [Sergeant Pryor] had found it almost impossible with two men to drive on the remaining horses, for as soon as they discovered a herd of buffaloes the loose horses immediately set off in pursuit of them, and surrounded the buffalo herd with almost as much skill as their riders could have done. At last he was obliged to send one horseman forward and drive all the buffaloes from the route.”
The Hon. H. H. Sibley, who once accompanied the Red River half-breeds on their annual hunt, relates the following[55]:
“One of the hunters fell from his saddle, and was unable to overtake his horse, which continued the chase as if he of himself could accomplish great things, so much do these animals become imbued with a passion for this sport! On another occasion a half-breed left his favorite steed at the camp, to enable him to recruit his strength, enjoining upon his wife the necessity of properly securing the animal, which was not done. Not relishing the idea of being left behind, he started after us and soon was alongside, and thus he continued to keep pace with the hunters in their pursuit of the buffalo, seeming to await with impatience the fall of some of them to the earth. The chase ended, he came neighing to his master, whom he soon singled out, although the men were dispersed here and there for a distance of miles.”
Col. R. I. Dodge, in his Plains of the Great West, page 129, describes a meeting with two Mexican buffalo-hunters whose horses were so fleet and so well trained that whenever a herd of buffalo came in sight, instead of shooting their game wherever they came up with it, the one having the best horse would dash into the herd, cut out a fat two-year old, and, with the help of his partner, then actually drive it to their camp before shooting it down. “They had a fine lot of meat and a goodly pile of skins, and they said that every buffalo had been driven into camp and killed as the one I saw. ‘It saves a heap of trouble packing the meat to camp,’ said one of them, naively.”
Probably never before in the history of the world, until civilized man came in contact with the buffalo, did whole armies of men march out in true military style, with officers, flags, chaplains, and rules of war, and make war on wild animals. No wonder the buffalo has been exterminated. So long as they existed north of the Missouri in any considerable number, the half-breeds and Indians of the Manitoba Red River settlement used to gather each year in a great army, and go with carts to the buffalo range. On these great hunts, which took place every year from about the 15th of June to the 1st of September, vast numbers of buffalo were killed, and the supply was finally exhausted. As if Heaven had decreed the extirpation of the species, the half-breed hunters, like their white robe-hunting rivals farther south, always killed cows in preference to bulls so long as a choice was possible, the very course best calculated to exterminate any species in the shortest possible time.
The army of half-breeds and Indians which annually went forth from the Red River settlement to make war on the buffalo was often far larger than the army with which Cortez subdued a great empire. As early as 1846 it had become so great, that it was necessary to divide it into two divisions, one of which, the White Horse Plain division, was accustomed to go west by the Assinniboine River to the “rapids crossing-place,” and from there in a southwesterly direction. The Red River division went south to Pembina, and did the most of their hunting in Dakota. The two divisions sometimes met (says Professor Hind), but not intentionally. In 1849 a Mr. Flett took a census of the White Horse Plain division, in Dakota Territory, and found that it contained 603 carts, 700 half-breeds, 200 Indians, 600 horses, 200 oxen, 400 dogs, and 1 cat.
In his “Red River Settlement” Mr. Alexander Ross gives the following census of the number of carts assembled in camp for the buffalo hunt at five different-periods:
Number of carts assembled for the first trip.
In 1820 | 540 |
In 1825 | 680 |
In 1830 | 820 |
In 1835 | 970 |
In 1840 | 1,210 |
The expedition which was accompanied by Rev. Mr. Belcourt, a Catholic priest, whose account is set forth in the Hon. Mr. Sibley’s paper on the buffalo,[56] was a comparatively small one, which started from Pembina, and very generously took pains not to spoil the prospects of the great Red River division, which was expected to take the field at the same time. This, therefore, was a small party, like others which had already reached the range; but it contained 213 carts, 55 hunters and their families, making 60 lodges in all. This party killed 1,776 cows (bulls not counted, many of which were killed, though “not even a tongue was taken”), which yielded 228 bags of pemmican, 1,213 bales of dried meat, 166 sacks of tallow, and 556 bladders full of marrow. But this was very moderate slaughter, being about 33 buffalo to each family. Even as late as 1872, when buffalo were getting scarce, Mr. Grant[57] met a half-breed family on the Qu’Appelle, consisting of man, wife, and seven children, whose six carts were laden with the meat and robes yielded by sixty buffaloes; that number representing this one hunter’s share of the spoils of the hunt.
To afford an idea of the truly military character of those Red River expeditions, I have only to quote a page from Prof. Henry Youle Hind:[58]
“After the start from the settlement has been well made, and all stragglers or tardy hunters have arrived, a great council is held and a president elected. A number of captains are nominated by the president and people jointly. The captains then proceed to appoint their own policemen, the number assigned to each not exceeding ten. Their duties are to see that the laws of the hunt are strictly carried out. In 1840, if a man ran a buffalo without permission before the general hunt began, his saddle and bridle were cut to pieces for the first offense; for the second offense his clothes were cut off his back. At the present day these punishments are changed to a fine of 20 shillings for the first offense. No gun is permitted to be fired when in the buffalo country before the ‘race’ begins. A priest sometimes goes with the hunt, and mass is then celebrated in the open prairies.
“At night the carts are placed in the form of a circle, with the horses and cattle inside the ring, and it is the duty of the captains and their policemen to see that this is rightly done. All laws are proclaimed in camp, and relate to the hunt alone. All camping orders are given by signal, a flag being carried by the guides, who are appointed by election. Each guide has his tarn of one day, and no man can pass a guide on duty without subjecting himself to a fine of 5 shillings. No hunter can leave the camp to return home without permission, and no one is permitted to stir until any animal or property of value supposed to be lost is recovered. The policemen, at the order of their captains, can seize any cart at night-fall and place it where they choose for the public safety, but on the following morning they are compelled to bring it back to the spot from which they moved it the previous evening. This power is very necessary, in order that the horses may not be stampeded by night attacks of the Sioux or other Indian tribes at war with the half-breeds. A heavy fine is imposed in case of neglect in extinguishing fires when the camp is broken up in the morning.
“In sight of buffalo all the hunters are drawn up in line, the president, captains, and police being a few yards in advance, restraining the impatient hunters. ‘Not yet! Not yet!’ is the subdued whisper of the president. The approach to the herd is cautiously made. ‘Now!’ the president exclaims; and as the word leaves his lips the charge is made, and in a few minutes the excited half-breeds are amongst the bewildered buffalo.”
“After witnessing one buffalo hunt,” says Prof. John Macoun, “I can not blame the half-breed and the Indian for leaving the farm and wildly making for the plains when it is reported that buffalo have crossed the border.”
The “great fall hunt” was a regular event with about all the Indian tribes living within striking distance of the buffalo, in the course of which great numbers of buffalo were killed, great quantities of meat dried and made into pemmican, and all the skins taken were tanned in various ways to suit the many purposes they were called upon to serve.
Mr. Francis La Flesche informs me that during the presence of the buffalo in western Nebraska and until they were driven south by the Sioux, the fall hunt of the Omahas was sometimes participated in by three hundred lodges, or about 3,000 people all told, six hundred of whom were warriors, and each of whom generally killed about ten buffaloes. The laws of the hunt were very strict and inexorable. In order that all participants should have an equal chance, it was decreed that any hunter caught “still-hunting” should be soundly flogged. On one occasion an Indian was discovered in the act, but not caught. During the chase which was made to capture him many arrows were fired at him by the police, but being better mounted than his pursuers he escaped, and kept clear of the camp during the remainder of the hunt. On another occasion an Omaha, guilty of the same offense, was chased, and in his effort to escape his horse fell with him in a coulée and broke one of his legs. In spite of the sad plight of the Omaha, his pursuers came up and flogged him, just as if nothing had happened.
After the invention of the Colt’s revolver, and breech-loading rifles generally, the chase on horseback speedily became more fatal to the bison than it ever had been before. With such weapons, it was possible to gallop into the midst of a flying herd and, during the course of a run of 2 or 3 miles, discharge from twelve to forty shots at a range of only a few yards, or even a few feet. In this kind of hunting the heavy Navy revolver was the favorite weapon, because it could be held in one hand and fired with far greater precision than could a rifle held in both hands. Except in the hands of an expert, the use of the rifle was limited, and often attended with risk to the hunter; but the revolver was good for all directions; it could very often be used with deadly effect where a rifle could not have been used at all, and, moreover, it left the bridle-hand free. Many cavalrymen and hunters were able to use a revolver with either hand, or one in each hand. Gen. Lew. Wallace preferred the Smith and Wesson in 1867, which he declared to be “the best of revolvers” then.
It was his marvelous skill in shooting buffaloes with a rifle, from the back of a galloping horse, that earned for the Hon. W. F. Cody the sobriquet by which he is now familiarly known to the world—“Buffalo Bill.” To the average hunter on horseback the galloping of the horse makes it easy for him to aim at the heart of a buffalo and shoot clear over its back. No other shooting is so difficult, or requires such consummate dexterity as shooting with any kind of a gun, especially a rifle, from the back of a running horse. Let him who doubts this statement try it for himself and he will doubt no more. It was in the chase of the buffalo on horseback, armed with a rifle, that “Buffalo Bill” acquired the marvelous dexterity with the rifle which he has since exhibited in the presence of the people of two continents. I regret that circumstances have prevented my obtaining the exact figures of the great kill of buffaloes that Mr. Cody once made in a single run, in which he broke all previous records in that line, and fairly earned his title. In 1867 he entered into a contract with the Kansas Pacific Railway, then in course of construction through western Kansas, at a monthly salary of $500, to deliver all the buffalo meat that would be required by the army of laborers engaged in building the road. In eighteen mouths he killed 4,280 buffaloes.
3. Impounding or Killing in Pens.—At first thought it seems hard to believe that it was ever possible for Indians to build pens and drive wild buffaloes into them, as cowboys now corral their cattle, yet such wholesale catches were of common occurrence among the Plains Crees of the south Saskatchewan country, and the same general plan was pursued, with slight modifications, by the Indians of the Assinniboine, Blackfeet, and Gros Ventres, and other tribes of the Northwest. Like the keddah elephant-catching operations in India, this plan was feasible only in a partially wooded country, and where buffalo were so numerous that their presence could be counted upon to a certainty. The “pound” was simply a circular pen, having a single entrance; but being unable to construct a gate of heavy timbers, such as is made to drop and close the entrance to an elephant pen, the Indians very shrewdly got over the difficulty by making the opening at the edge of a perpendicular bank 10 or 12 feet high, easy enough for a buffalo to jump down, but impossible for him to scale afterward. It is hardly probable that Indians who were expert enough to attack and kill buffalo on foot would have been tempted to undertake the labor that building a pound always involved, had it not been for the wild excitement attending captures made in this way, and which were shared to the fullest possible extent by warriors, women, and children alike.
The best description of this method which has come under our notice is that of Professor Hind, who witnessed its practice by the Plains Crees, on the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle River, in 1858. He describes the pound he saw as a fence, constructed of the trunks of trees laced together with green withes, and braced on the outside by props, inclosing a circular space about 120 feet in diameter. It was placed in a pretty dell between sand-hills, and leading from it in two diverging rows (like the guiding wings of an elephant pen) were the two rows of bushes which the Indians designate “dead men,” which serve to guide the buffalo into the pound. The “dead men” extended a distance of 4 miles into the prairie. They were placed about 50 feet apart, and the two rows gradually diverged until at their extremities they were from 1½ to 2 miles apart.
Cree Indians Impounding Buffaloes.
Reproduced from Prof. H. Y. Hind’s—“Red River, Assinniboine and Saskatchewan Expedition.”
“When the skilled hunters are about to bring in a herd of buffalo from the prairie,” says Professor Hind, “they direct the course of the gallop of the alarmed animals by confederates stationed in hollows or small depressions, who, when the buffalo appear inclined to take a direction leading from the space marked out by the ‘dead men,’ show themselves for a moment and wave their robes, immediately hiding again. This serves to turn the buffalo slightly in another direction, and when the animals, having arrived between the rows of ‘dead men,’ endeavor to pass through them, Indians stationed here and there behind a ‘dead man’ go through the same operation, and thus keep the animals within the narrowing limits of the converging lines. At the entrance to the pound there is a strong trunk of a tree placed about a foot from the ground, and on the inner side an excavation is made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. As soon as the animals have taken the fatal spring, they begin to gallop round and round the ring fence, looking for a chance to escape, but with the utmost silence women and children on the outside hold their robes before every orifice until the whole herd is brought in; then they climb to the top of the fence, and, with the hunters who have followed closely in the rear of the buffalo, spear or shoot with bows and arrows or fire-arms at the bewildered animals, rapidly becoming frantic with rage and terror, within the narrow limits of the pound.
“A dreadful scene of confusion and slaughter then begins; the oldest and strongest animals crush and toss the weaker; the shouts and screams of the excited Indians rise above the roaring of the bulls, the bellowing of the cows, and the piteous moaning of the calves. The dying struggles of so many huge and powerful animals crowded together create a revolting and terrible scene, dreadful from the excess of its cruelty and waste of life, but with occasional displays of wonderful brute strength and rage; while man in his savage, untutored, and heathen state shows both in deed and expression how little he is superior to the noble beasts he so wantonly and cruelly destroys.”[59]
The last scene of the bloody tragedy is thus set forth a week later:
“Within the circular fence ... lay, tossed in every conceivable position, over two hundred dead buffalo. [The exact number was 240.] From old bulls to calves of three months’ old, animals of every age were huddled together in all the forced attitudes of violent death. Some lay on their backs, with eyes starting from their heads and tongue thrust out through clotted gore. Others were impaled on the horns of the old and strong bulls. Others again, which had been tossed, were lying with broken backs, two and three deep. One little calf hung suspended on the horns of a bull which had impaled it in the wild race round and round the pound. The Indians looked upon the dreadful and sickening sight with evident delight, and told how such and such a bull or cow had exhibited feats of wonderful strength in the death-struggle. The flesh of many of the cows had been taken from them, and was drying in the sun on stages near the tents. It is needless to say that the odor was overpowering, and millions of large blue flesh-flies, humming and buzzing over the putrefying bodies, was not the least disgusting part of the spectacle.”
It is some satisfaction to know that when the first “run” was made, ten days previous, the herd of two hundred buffaloes was no sooner driven into the pound than a wary old bull espied a weak spot in the fence, charged it at full speed, and burst through to freedom and the prairie, followed by the entire herd.
Strange as it may seem to-day, this wholesale method of destroying buffalo was once practiced in Montana. In his memoir on “The American Bison,” Mr. J. A. Allen states that as late as 1873, while journeying through that Territory in charge of the Yellowstone Expedition, he “several times met with the remains of these pounds and their converging fences in the region above the mouth of the Big Horn River.” Mr. Thomas Simpson states that in 1840 there were three camps of Assinniboine Indians in the vicinity of Carlton House, each of which had its buffalo pound into which they drove forty or fifty animals daily.
4. The “Surround.”—During the last forty years the final extermination of the buffalo has been confidently predicted by not only the observing white man of the West, but also nearly all the Indians and half-breeds who formerly depended upon this animal for the most of the necessities, as well as luxuries, of life. They have seen the great herds driven westward farther and farther, until the plains were left tenantless, and hunger took the place of feasting on the choice tid-bits of the chase. And is it not singular that during this period the Indian tribes were not moved by a common impulse to kill sparingly, and by the exercise of a reasonable economy in the chase to make the buffalo last as long as possible.
But apparently no such thoughts ever entered their minds, so far as they themselves were concerned. They looked with jealous eyes upon the white hunter, and considered him as much of a robber as if they had a brand on every buffalo. It has been claimed by some authors that the Indians killed with more judgment and more care for the future than did the white man, but I fail to find any evidence that such was ever the fact. They all killed wastefully, wantonly, and always about five times as many head as were really necessary for food. It was always the same old story, whenever a gang of Indians needed meat a whole herd was slaughtered, the choicest portions of the finest animals were taken, and about 75 per cent of the whole left to putrefy and fatten the wolves. And now, as we read of the appalling slaughter, one can scarcely repress the feeling of grim satisfaction that arises when we also read that many of the ex-slaughterers are almost starving for the millions of pounds of fat and juicy buffalo meat they wasted a few years ago. Verily, the buffalo is in a great measure avenged already.
The following extract from Mr. Catlin’s “North American Indians,”[60] I, page 199-200, serves well to illustrate not only a very common and very deadly Indian method of wholesale slaughter—the “surround”—but also to show the senseless destructiveness of Indians even when in a state of semi-starvation, which was brought upon them by similar acts of improvidence and wastefulness.
“The Minatarees, as well as the Mandans, had suffered for some months past for want of meat, and had indulged in the most alarming fears that the herds of buffalo were emigrating so far off from them that there was great danger of their actual starvation, when it was suddenly announced through the village one morning at an early hour that a herd of buffaloes was in sight. A hundred or more young men mounted their horses, with weapons in hand, and steered their course to the prairies. * * *
“The plan of attack, which in this country is familiarly called a surround, was explicitly agreed upon, and the hunters, who were all mounted on their ‘buffalo horses’ and armed with bows and arrows or long lances, divided into two columns, taking opposite directions, and drew themselves gradually around the herd at a mile or more distance from them, thus forming a circle of horsemen at equal distances apart, who gradually closed in upon them with a moderate pace at a signal given. The unsuspecting herd at length ‘got the wind’ of the approaching enemy and fled in a mass in the greatest confusion. To the point where they were aiming to cross the line the horsemen were seen, at full speed, gathering and forming in a column, brandishing their weapons, and yelling in the most frightful manner, by which they turned the black and rushing mass, which moved off in an opposite direction, where they were again met and foiled in a similar manner, and wheeled back in utter confusion; by which time the horsemen had closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line around them, whilst the poor affrighted animals were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other, when the work of death commenced. I had rode up in the rear and occupied an elevated position at a few rods’ distance, from which I could (like the general of a battlefield) survey from my horse’s back the nature and the progress of the grand mêlée, but (unlike him) without the power of issuing a command or in any way directing its issue.
“In this grand turmoil [see illustration] a cloud of dust was soon raised, which in parts obscured the throng where the hunters were galloping their horses around and driving the whizzing arrows or their long lances to the hearts of these noble animals; which in many instances, becoming infuriated with deadly wounds in their sides, erected their shaggy manes over their bloodshot eyes and furiously plunged forward at the sides of their assailants’ horses, sometimes goring them to death at a lunge and putting their dismounted riders to flight for their lives. Sometimes their dense crowd was opened, and the blinded horsemen, too intent on their prey amidst the cloud of dust, were hemmed and wedged in amidst the crowding beasts, over whose backs they were obliged to leap for security, leaving their horses to the fate that might await them in the results of this wild and desperate war. Many were the bulls that turned upon their assailants and met them with desperate resistance, and many were the warriors who were dismounted and saved themselves by the superior muscles of their legs; some who were closely pursued by the bulls wheeled suddenly around, and snatching the part of a buffalo robe from around their waists, threw it over the horns and eyes of the infuriated beast, and darting by its side drove the arrow or the lance to its heart; others suddenly dashed off upon the prairie by the side of the affrighted animals which had escaped from the throng, and closely escorting them for a few rods, brought down their heart’s blood in streams and their huge carcasses upon the green and enameled turf.
“In this way this grand hunt soon resolved itself into a desperate battle, and in the space of fifteen minutes resulted in the total destruction of the whole herd, which in all their strength and fury were doomed, like every beast and living thing else, to fall before the destroying hands of mighty man.
“I had sat in trembling silence upon my horse and witnessed this extraordinary scene, which allowed not one of these animals to escape out of my sight. Many plunged off upon the prairie for a distance, but were overtaken and killed, and although I could not distinctly estimate the number that were slain, yet I am sure that some hundreds of these noble animals fell in this grand mêlée. * * * Amongst the poor affrighted creatures that had occasionally dashed through the ranks of their enemy and sought safety in flight upon the prairie (and in some instances had undoubtedly gained it), I saw them stand awhile, looking back, when they turned, and, as if bent on their own destruction, retraced their steps, and mingled themselves and their deaths with those of the dying throng. Others had fled to a distance on the prairies, and for want of company, of friends or of foes, had stood and gazed on till the battle-scene was over, seemingly taking pains to stay and hold their lives in readiness for their destroyers until the general destruction was over, when they fell easy victims to their weapons, making the slaughter complete.”
It is to be noticed that every animal of this entire herd of several hundred was slain on the spot, and there is no room to doubt that at least half (possibly much more) of the meat thus taken was allowed to become a loss. People who are so utterly senseless as to wantonly destroy their own source of food, as the Indians have done, certainly deserve to starve.
This “surround” method of wholesale slaughter was also practiced by the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, Sioux, Pawnees, Ornabas, and probably many other tribes.
The Surround.
From a painting in the National Museum by George Catlin.
5. Decoying and Driving.—Another method of slaughtering by wholesale is thus described by Lewis and Clarke, I, 235. The locality indicated was the Missouri River, in Montana, just above the mouth of Judith River:
“On the north we passed a precipice about 120 feet high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred carcasses of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the lower part of the hill, must have carried off many of the dead. These buffaloes had been chased down a precipice in a way very common on the Missouri, and by which vast herds are destroyed in a moment. The mode of hunting is to select one of the most active and fleet young men, who is disguised by a buffalo skin round his body; the skin of the head with the ears and horns fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffaloes. Thus dressed, he fixes himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffaloes and any of the river precipices, which sometimes extend for some miles.
“His companions in the mean time get in the rear and side of the herd, and at a given signal show themselves, and advance towards the buffaloes. They instantly take alarm, and, finding the hunters beside them, they run toward the disguised Indian or decoy, who leads them on at full speed toward the river, when, suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff which he had previously fixed on, the herd is left on the brink of the precipice; it is then in vain for the foremost to retreat or even to stop; they are pressed on by the hindmost rank, who, seeing no danger but from the hunters, goad on those before them till the whole are precipitated and the shore is strewed with their dead bodies. Sometimes in this perilous seduction the Indian is himself either trodden under foot by the rapid movements of the buffaloes, or, missing his footing in the cliff, is urged down the precipice by the falling herd. The Indians then select as much meat as they wish, and the rest is abandoned to the wolves, and creates a most dreadful stench.”
Harper’s Magazine, volume 38, page 147, contains the following from the pen of Theo. E. Davis, in an article entitled “The Buffalo Range:”
“As I have previously stated, the best hunting on the range is to be found between the Platte and Arkansas Rivers. Here I have seen the Indians have recourse to another method of slaughtering buffalo in a very easy, but to me a cruel way, for where one buffalo is killed several are sure to be painfully injured; but these, too, are soon killed by the Indians, who make haste to lance or shoot the cripples.
“The mode of hunting is somewhat as follows: A herd is discovered grazing on the table-lands. Being thoroughly acquainted with the country, the Indians are aware of the location of the nearest point where the table land is broken abruptly by a precipice which descends a hundred or more feet. Toward this ‘devil-jump’ the Indians head the herd, which is at once driven pell mell to and over the precipice. Meanwhile a number of Indians have taken their way by means of routes known to them, and succeed in reaching the cañon through which the crippled buffalo are running in all directions. These are quickly killed, so that out of a very considerable band of buffalo but few escape, many having been killed by the fall and others dispatched while limping off. This mode of hunting is sometimes indulged in by harum-scarum white men, but it is done more for deviltry than anything else. I have never known of its practice by army officers or persons who professed to hunt buffalo as a sport.”
6. Hunting on Snow-shoes.—“In the dead of the winters,” says Mr. Catlin,[61] “which are very long and severely cold in this country, where horses can not be brought into the chase with any avail, the Indian runs upon the surface of the snow by aid of his snow-shoes, which buoy him up, while the great weight of the buffaloes sinks them down to the middle of their sides, and, completely stopping their progress, insures them certain and easy victims to the bow or lance of their pursuers. The snow in these regions often lies during the winter to the depth of 3 and 4 feet, being blown away from the tops and sides of the hills in many places, which are left bare for the buffaloes to graze upon, whilst it is drifted in the hollows and ravines to a very great depth, and rendered almost entirely impassable to these huge animals, which, when closely pursued by their enemies, endeavor to plunge through it, but are soon wedged in and almost unable to move, where they fall an easy prey to the Indian, who runs up lightly upon his snow-shoes and drives his lance to their hearts. The skins are then stripped off, to be sold to the fur traders, and the carcasses left to be devoured by the wolves. [Owing to the fact that the winter’s supply of meat was procured and dried in the summer and fall months, the flesh of all buffalo killed in winter was allowed to become a total loss.] This is the season in which the greatest number of these animals are destroyed for their robes; they are most easily killed at this time, and their hair or fur, being longer and more abundant, gives greater value to the robe.”
III. Progress of the Extermination.
A. The Period of Desultory Destruction, from 1730 to 1830.
Indians on Snow-shoes Hunting Buffaloes.
From a painting in the National Museum by George Catlin.
The disappearance of the buffalo from all the country east of the Mississippi was one of the inevitable results of the advance of civilization. To the early pioneers who went forth into the wilderness to wrestle with nature for the necessities of life, this valuable animal might well have seemed a gift direct from the hand of Providence. During the first few years of the early settler’s life in a new country, the few domestic animals he had brought with him were far too valuable to be killed for food, and for a long period he looked to the wild animals of the forest and the prairie for his daily supply of meat. The time was when no one stopped to think of the important part our game animals played in the settlement of this country, and even now no one has attempted to calculate the lessened degree of rapidity with which the star of empire would have taken its westward way without the bison, deer, elk, and antelope. The Western States and Territories pay little heed to the wanton slaughter of deer and elk now going on in their forests, but the time will soon come when the “grangers” will enter those regions and find the absence of game a very serious matter.
Although the bison was the first wild species to disappear before the advance of civilization, he served a good purpose at a highly critical period. His huge bulk of toothsome flesh fed many a hungry family, and his ample robe did good service in the settler’s cabin and sleigh in winter weather. By the time game animals had become scarce, domestic herds and flocks had taken their place, and hunting became a pastime instead of a necessity.
As might be expected, from the time the bison was first seen by white men he has always been a conspicuous prize, and being the largest of the land quadrupeds, was naturally the first to disappear. Every man’s hand has been against him. While his disappearance from the eastern United States was, in the main, due to the settler who killed game as a means of subsistence, there were a few who made the killing of those animals a regular business. This occurred almost exclusively in the immediate vicinity of salt springs, around which the bison congregated in great numbers, and made their wholesale slaughter of easy accomplishment. Mr. Thomas Ashe[62] has recorded some very interesting facts and observations on this point. In speaking of an old man who in the latter part of the last century built a log house for himself “on the immediate borders of a salt spring,” in western Pennsylvania, for the purpose of killing buffaloes out of the immense droves which frequented that spot, Mr. Ashe says:
“In the first and second years this old man, with some companions, killed from six to seven hundred of these noble creatures merely for the sake of their skins, which to them were worth only 2 shillings each; and after this ‘work of death’ they were obliged to leave the place till the following season, or till the wolves, bears, panthers, eagles, rooks, ravens, etc., had devoured the carcasses and abandoned the place for other prey. In the two following years the same persons killed great numbers out of the first droves that arrived, skinned them, and left their bodies exposed to the sun and air; but they soon had reason to repent of this, for the remaining droves, as they came up in succession, stopped, gazed on the mangled and putrid bodies, sorrowfully moaned or furiously lowed aloud, and returned instantly to the wilderness in an unusual run, without tasting their favorite spring or licking the impregnated earth, which was also once their most agreeable occupation; nor did they nor any of their race ever revisit the neighborhood.
“The simple history of this spring is that of every other in the settled parts of this Western World; the carnage of beasts was everywhere the same. I met with a man who had killed two thousand buffaloes with his own hand, and others no doubt have done the same thing. In consequence of such proceedings not one buffalo is at this time to be found east of the Mississippi, except a few domesticated by the curious, or carried through the country on a public show.”
But, fortunately, there is no evidence that such slaughter as that described by Mr. Ashe was at all common, and there is reason for the belief that until within the last forty years the buffalo was sacrificed in ways conducive to the greatest good of the greatest number.
From Coronado to General Frémont there has hardly been an explorer of United States territory who has not had occasion to bless the bison, and its great value to mankind can hardly be overestimated, although by many it can readily be forgotten.
The disappearance of the bison from the eastern United States was due to its consumption as food. It was very gradual, like the march of civilization, and, under the circumstances, absolutely inevitable. In a country so thickly peopled as this region speedily became, the mastodon could have survived extinction about as easily as the bison. Except when the latter became the victim of wholesale slaughter, there was little reason to bemoan his fate, save upon grounds that may be regarded purely sentimental. He served a most excellent purpose in the development of the country. Even as late as 1875 the farmers of eastern Kansas were in the habit of making trips every fall into the western part of that State for wagon loads of buffalo meat as a supply for the succeeding winter. The farmers of Texas, Nebraska, Dakota, and Minnesota also drew largely upon the buffalo as long as the supply lasted.
The extirpation of the bison west of the Rocky Mountains was due to legitimate hunting for food and clothing rather than for marketable peltries. In no part of that whole region was the species ever numerous, although in the mountains themselves, notably in Colorado, within easy reach of the great prairies on the east, vast numbers were seen by the early explorers and pioneers. But to the westward, away from the mountains, they were very rarely met with, and their total destruction in that region was a matter of easy accomplishment. According to Prof. J. A. Allen the complete disappearance of the bison west of the Rocky Mountains took place between 1838 and 1840.
B. The Period of Systematic Slaughter, from 1830 to 1838.
We come now to a history which I would gladly leave unwritten. Its record is a disgrace to the American people in general, and the Territorial, State, and General Government in particular. It will cause succeeding generations to regard us as being possessed of the leading characteristics of the savage and the beast of prey—cruelty and greed. We will be likened to the blood-thirsty tiger of the Indian jungle, who slaughters a dozen bullocks at once when he knows he can eat only one.
In one respect, at least, the white men who engaged in the systematic slaughter of the bison were savages just as much as the Piegan Indians, who would drive a whole herd over a precipice to secure a week’s rations of meat for a single village. The men who killed buffaloes for their tongues and those who shot them from the railway trains for sport were murderers. In no way does civilized man so quickly revert to his former state as when he is alone with the beasts of the field. Give him a gun and something which he may kill without getting himself in trouble, and, presto! he is instantly a savage again, finding exquisite delight in bloodshed, slaughter, and death, if not for gain, then solely for the joy and happiness of it. There is no kind of warfare against game animals too unfair, too disreputable, or too mean for white men to engage in if they can only do so with safety to their own precious carcasses. They will shoot buffalo and antelope from running railway trains, drive deer into water with hounds and cut their throats in cold blood, kill does with fawns a week old, kill fawns by the score for their spotted skins, slaughter deer, moose, and caribou in the snow at a pitiful disadvantage, just as the wolves do; exterminate the wild ducks on the whole Atlantic seaboard with punt guns for the metropolitan markets; kill off the Rocky Mountain goats for hides worth only 50 cents apiece, destroy wagon loads of trout with dynamite, and so on to the end of the chapter.
Perhaps the most gigantic task ever undertaken on this continent in the line of game-slaughter was the extermination of the bison in the great pasture region by the hide-hunters. Probably the brilliant rapidity and success with which that lofty undertaking was accomplished was a matter of surprise even to those who participated in it. The story of the slaughter is by no means a long one.
The period of systematic slaughter of the bison naturally begins with the first organized efforts in that direction, in a business-like, wholesale way. Although the species had been steadily driven westward for a hundred years by the advancing settlements, and had during all that time been hunted for the meat and robes it yielded, its extermination did not begin in earnest until 1820, or thereabouts. As before stated, various persons had previous to that time made buffalo killing a business in order to sell their skins, but such instances were very exceptional. By that time the bison was totally extinct in all the region lying east of the Mississippi River except a portion of Wisconsin, where it survived until about 1830. In 1820 the first organized buffalo hunting expedition on a grand scale was made from the Red River settlement, Manitoba, in which five hundred and forty carts proceeded to the range. Previous to that time the buffaloes were found near enough to the settlements around Fort Garry that every settler could hunt independently; but as the herds were driven farther and farther away, it required an organized effort and a long journey to reach them.
The American Fur Company established trading posts along the Missouri River, one at the mouth of the Tetón River and another at the mouth of the Yellowstone. In 1826 a post was established at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains, at the head of the Arkansas River, and in 1832 another was located in a corresponding situation at the head of the South Fork of the Platte, close to where Denver now stands. Both the latter were on what was then the western border of the buffalo range. Elsewhere throughout the buffalo country there were numerous other posts, always situated as near as possible to the best hunting ground, and at the same time where they would be most accessible to the hunters, both white and red.
As might be supposed, the Indians were encouraged to kill buffaloes for their robes, and this is what Mr. George Catlin wrote at the mouth of the Tetón River (Pyatt County, Dakota) in 1832 concerning this trade:[63]
“It seems hard and cruel (does it not?) that we civilized people, with all the luxuries and comforts of the world about us, should be drawing from the backs of these useful animals the skins for our luxury, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves; that we should draw from that country some one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand of their robes annually, the greater part of which are taken from animals that are killed expressly for the robe, at a season when the meat is not cured and preserved, and for each of which skins the Indian has received but a pint of whisky! Such is the fact, and that number, or near it, are annually destroyed, in addition to the number that is necessarily killed for the subsistence of three hundred thousand Indians, who live chiefly upon them.”
The author further declared that the fur trade in those “great western realms” was then limited chiefly to the purchase of buffalo robes.
1. The Red River half-breeds.—In June, 1840, when the Red River half-breeds assembled at Pembina for their annual expedition against the buffalo, they mustered as follows:
| Carts | 1,210 | |
| Hunters | 620 | 1,630 |
| Women | 650 | |
| Boys and girls | 360 | |
| Horses (buffalo runners) | 403 | |
| Dogs | 542 | |
| Cart horses | 655 | |
| Draught oxen | 586 | |
| Skinning knives | 1,240 | |
The total value of the property employed in this expedition and the working time occupied by it (two months) amounted to the enormous sum of £24,000.
Although the bison formerly ranged to Fort Garry (near Winnipeg), they had been steadily killed off and driven back, and in 1840 none were found by the expedition until it was 250 miles from Pembina, which is situated on the Red River, at the international boundary. At that time the extinction of the species from the Red River to the Cheyenne was practically complete. The Red River settlers, aided, of course, by the Indians of that region, are responsible for the extermination of the bison throughout northeastern Dakota as far as the Cheyenne River, northern Minnesota, and the whole of what is now the province of Manitoba. More than that; as the game grew scarce and retired farther and farther, the half-breeds, who despised agriculture as long as there was a buffalo to kill, extended their hunting operations westward along the Qu’Appelle until they encroached upon the hunting-grounds of the Plain Crees, who lived in the Saskatchewan country.
Thus was an immense inroad made in the northern half of the herd which had previously covered the entire pasture region from the Great Slave Lake to central Texas. This was the first visible impression of the systematic killing which began in 1820. Up to 1840 it is reasonably certain, as will be seen by figures given elsewhere, that by this business-like method of the half-breeds, at least 652,000 buffaloes were destroyed by them alone.
Even as early as 1840 the Red River hunt was prosecuted through Dakota southwestwardly to the Missouri River and a short distance beyond it. Here it touched the wide strip of territory, bordering that stream, which was even then being regularly drained of its animal resources by the Indian hunters, who made the river their base of operations, and whose robes were shipped on its steam-boats.
It is certain that these annual Red River expeditions into Dakota were kept up as late as 1847, and as long thereafter as buffaloes were to be found in any number between the Cheyenne and the Missouri. At the same time, the White Horse Plains division, which hunted westward from Fort Garry, did its work of destruction quite as rapidly and as thoroughly as the rival expedition to the United States.
In 1857 the Plains Crees, inhabiting the country around the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle River (250 miles due west from Winnipeg), assembled in council, and “determined that in consequence of promises often made and broken by the white men and half-breeds, and the rapid destruction by them of the buffalo they fed on, they would not permit either white men or half-breeds to hunt in their country, or travel through it, except for the purpose of trading for their dried meat, pemmican, skins and robes.”
In 1858 the Crees reported that between the two branches of the Saskatchewan buffalo were “very scarce.” Professor Hind’s expedition saw only one buffalo in the whole course of their journey from Winnipeg until they reached Sand Hill Lake, at the head of the Qu’Appelle, near the south branch of the Saskatchewan, where the first herd was encountered. Although the species was not totally extinct on the Qu’Appelle at that time, it was practically so.
2. The country of the Sioux.—The next territory completely depopulated of buffaloes by systematic hunting was very nearly the entire southern half of Dakota, southwestern Minnesota, and northern Nebraska as far as the North Platte. This vast region, once the favorite range for hundreds of thousands of buffaloes, had for many years been the favorite hunting ground of the Sioux Indians of the Missouri, the Pawnees, Omahas, and all other tribes of that region. The settlement of Iowa and Minnesota presently forced into this region the entire body of Mississippi Sioux from the country west of Prairie du Chien and around Fort Snelling, and materially hastened the extermination of all the game animals which were once so abundant there. It is absolutely certain that if the Indians had been uninfluenced by the white traders, or, in other words, had not been induced to take and prepare a large number of robes every year for the market, the species would have survived very much longer than it did. But the demand quickly proved to be far greater than the supply. The Indians, of course, found it necessary to slaughter annually a great number of buffaloes for their own wants—for meat, robes, leather, teepees, etc. When it came to supplementing this necessary slaughter by an additional fifty thousand or more every year for marketable robes, it is no wonder that the improvident savages soon found, when too late, that the supply of buffaloes was not inexhaustible. Naturally enough, they attributed their disappearance to the white man, who was therefore a robber, and a proper subject for the scalping-knife. Apparently it never occurred to the minds of the Sioux that they themselves were equally to blame; it was always the paleface who killed the buffaloes; and it was always Sioux buffaloes that they killed. The Sioux seemed to feel that they held a chattel mortgage on all the buffaloes north of the Platte, and it required more than one pitched battle to convince them otherwise.
Up to the time when the great Sioux Reservation was established in Dakota (1875-’77), when 33,739 square miles of country, or nearly the whole southwest quarter of the Territory, was set aside for the exclusive occupancy of the Sioux, buffaloes were very numerous throughout that entire region. East of the Missouri River, which is the eastern boundary of the Sioux Reservation, from Bismarck all the way down, the species was practically extinct as early as 1870. But at the time when it became unlawful for white hunters to enter the territory of the Sioux nation there were tens of thousands of buffaloes upon it, and their subsequent slaughter is chargeable to the Indians alone, save as to those which migrated into the hunting grounds of the whites.
3. Western railways, and their part in the extermination of the buffalo.—The building of a railroad means the speedy extermination of all the big game along its line. In its eagerness to attract the public and build up “a big business,” every new line which traverses a country containing game does its utmost, by means of advertisements and posters, to attract the man with a gun. Its game resorts are all laid bare, and the market hunters and sportsmen swarm in immediately, slaying and to slay.
Within the last year the last real retreat for our finest game, the only remaining stronghold for the mountain sheep, goat, caribou, elk, and deer—northwestern Montana, northern Idaho, and thence westward—has been laid open to the very heart by the building of the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway, which runs up the valley of the Milk River to Fort Assinniboine, and crosses the Rocky Mountains through Two Medicine Pass. Heretofore that region has been so difficult to reach that the game it contains has been measurably secure from general slaughter; but now it also must “go.”
The marking out of the great overland trail by the Argonauts of ’49 in their rush for the gold fields of California was the foreshadowing of the great east-and-west breach in the universal herd, which was made twenty years later by the first transcontinental railway.
The pioneers who “crossed the plains” in those days killed buffaloes for food whenever they could, and the constant harrying of those animals experienced along the line of travel, soon led them to retire from the proximity of such continual danger. It was undoubtedly due to this cause that the number seen by parties who crossed the plains in 1849 and subsequently, was surprisingly small. But, fortunately for the buffaloes, the pioneers who would gladly have halted and turned aside now and then for the excitement of the chase, were compelled to hurry on, and accomplish the long journey while good weather lasted. It was owing to this fact, and the scarcity of good horses, that the buffaloes found it necessary to retire only a few miles from the wagon route to get beyond the reach of those who would have gladly hunted them.
Mr. Allen Varner, of Indianola, Illinois, has kindly furnished me with the following facts in regard to the presence of the buffalo, as observed by him during his journey westward, over what was then known as the Oregon Trail.
“The old Oregon trail ran from Independence, Missouri, to old Fort Laramie, through the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, and thence up to Salt Lake City. We left Independence on May C, 1849, and struck the Platte River at Grand Island. The trail had been traveled but very little previous to that year. We saw no buffaloes whatever until we reached the forks of the Platte, on May 20, or thereabouts. There we saw seventeen head. From that time on we saw small bunches now and then; never more than forty or fifty together. We saw no great herds anywhere, and I should say we did not see over five hundred head all told. The most western point at which we saw buffaloes was about due north of Laramie Peak, and it must have been about the 20th of June. We killed several head for meat during our trip, and found them all rather thin in flesh. Plainsmen who claimed to know, said that all the buffaloes we saw had wintered in that locality, and had not had time to get fat. The annual migration from the south had not yet begun, or rather had not yet brought any of the southern buffaloes that far north.”
In a few years the tide of overland travel became so great, that the buffaloes learned to keep away from the dangers of the trail, and many a pioneer has crossed the plains without ever seeing a live buffalo.
4. The division of the universal herd.—Until the building of the first transcontinental railway made it possible to market the “buffalo product,” buffalo hunting as a business was almost wholly in the hands of the Indians. Even then, the slaughter so far exceeded the natural increase that the narrowing limits of the buffalo range was watched with anxiety, and the ultimate extinction of the species confidently predicted. Even without railroads the extermination of the race would have taken place eventually, but it would have been delayed perhaps twenty years. With a recklessness of the future that was not to be expected of savages, though perhaps perfectly natural to civilized white men, who place the possession of a dollar above everything else, the Indians with one accord singled out the cows for slaughter, because their robes and their flesh better suited the fastidious taste of the noble redskin. The building of the Union Pacific Railway began at Omaha in 1865, and during that year 40 miles were constructed. The year following saw the completion of 265 miles more, and in 1867 245 miles were added, which brought it to Cheyenne. In 1868, 350 miles were built, and in 1869 the entire line was open to traffic.
In 1867, when Maj. J. W. Powell and Prof. A. H. Thompson crossed the plains by means of the Union Pacific Railway as far as it was constructed and thence onward by wagon, they saw during the entire trip only one live buffalo, a solitary old bull, wandering aimlessly along the south bank of the Platte River.
The completion of the Union Pacific Railway divided forever the buffaloes of the United States into two great herds, which thereafter became known respectively as the northern and southern herds. Both retired rapidly and permanently from the railway, and left a strip of country over 50 miles wide almost uninhabited by them. Although many thousand buffaloes were killed by hunters who made the Union Pacific Railway their base of operations, the two great bodies retired north and south so far that the greater number were beyond striking distance from that line.
5. The destruction of the southern herd.—The geographical center of the great southern herd during the few years of its separate existence previous to its destruction was very near the present site of Garden City, Kansas. On the east, even as late as 1872, thousands of buffaloes ranged within 10 miles of Wichita, which was then the headquarters of a great number of buffalo-hunters, who plied their occupation vigorously during the winter. On the north the herd ranged within 25 miles of the Union Pacific, until the swarm of hunters coming down from the north drove them farther and farther south. On the west, a few small bands ranged as far as Pike’s Peak and the South Park, but the main body ranged east of the town of Pueblo, Colorado. In the southwest, buffaloes were abundant as far as the Pecos and the Staked Plains, while the southern limit of the herd was about on a line with the southern boundary of New Mexico. Regarding this herd, Colonel Dodge writes as follows: “Their most prized feeding ground was the section of country between the South Platte and Arkansas rivers, watered by the Republican, Smoky, Walnut, Pawnee, and other parallel or tributary streams, and generally known as the Republican country. Hundreds of thousands went south from here each winter, but hundreds of thousands remained. It was the chosen home of the buffalo.”
Although the range of the northern herd covered about twice as much territory as did the southern, the latter contained probably twice as many buffaloes. The number of individuals in the southern herd in the year 1871 must have been at least three millions, and most estimates place the total much higher than that.
During the years from 1866 to 1871, inclusive, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railway and what is now known as the Kansas Pacific, or Kansas division of the Union Pacific Railway, were constructed from the Missouri River westward across Kansas, and through the heart of the southern buffalo range. The southern herd was literally cut to pieces by railways, and every portion of its range rendered easily accessible. There had always been a market for buffalo robes at a fair price, and as soon as the railways crossed the buffalo country the slaughter began. The rush to the range was only surpassed by the rush to the gold mines of California in earlier years. The railroad builders, teamsters, fortune-seekers, “professional” hunters, trappers, guides, and every one out of a job turned out to hunt buffalo for hides and meat. The merchants who had already settled in all the little towns along the three great railways saw an opportunity to make money out of the buffalo product, and forthwith began to organize and supply hunting parties with arms, ammunition, and provisions, and send them to the range. An immense business of this kind was done by the merchants of Dodge City (Fort Dodge), Wichita, and Leavenworth, and scores of smaller towns did a corresponding amount of business in the same line. During the years 1871 to 1874 but little else was done in that country except buffalo killing. Central depots were established in the best buffalo country, from whence hunting parties operated in all directions. Buildings were erected for the curing of meat, and corrals were built in which to heap up the immense piles of buffalo skins that accumulated. At Dodge City, as late as 1878, Professor Thompson saw a lot of baled buffalo skins in a corral, the solid cubical contents of which he calculated to equal 120 cords.
At first the utmost wastefulness prevailed. Every one wanted to kill buffalo, and no one was willing to do the skinning and curing. Thousands upon thousands of buffaloes were killed for their tongues alone, and never skinned. Thousands more were wounded by unskillful marksmen and wandered off to die and become a total loss. But the climax of wastefulness and sloth was not reached until the enterprising buffalo-butcher began to skin his dead buffaloes by horse-power. The process is of interest, as showing the depth of degradation to which a man can fall and still call himself a hunter. The skin of the buffalo was ripped open along the belly and throat, the legs cut around at the knees, and ripped up the rest of the way. The skin of the neck was divided all the way around at the back of the head, and skinned back a few inches to afford a start. A stout iron bar, like a hitching post, was then driven through the skull and about 18 inches into the earth, after which a rope was tied very firmly to the thick skin of the neck, made ready for that purpose. The other end of this rope was then hitched to the whiffletree of a pair of horses, or to the rear axle of a wagon, the horses were whipped up, and the skin was forthwith either torn in two or torn off the buffalo with about 50 pounds of flesh adhering to it. It soon became apparent to even the most enterprising buffalo skinner that this method was not an unqualified success, and it was presently abandoned.
The slaughter which began in 1871 was prosecuted with great vigor and enterprise in 1872, and reached its heighten 1873. By that time, the buffalo country fairly swarmed with hunters, each, party putting forth its utmost efforts to destroy more buffaloes than its rivals. By that time experience had taught the value of thorough organization, and the butchering was done in a more business-like way. By a coincidence that proved fatal to the bison, it was just at the beginning of the slaughter that breech-loading, long-range rifles attained what was practically perfection. The Sharps 40-90 or 45-120, and the Remington were the favorite weapons of the buffalo-hunter, the former being the one in most general use. Before the leaden hail of thousands of these deadly breech-loaders the buffaloes went down at the rate of several thousand daily during the hunting season.
During the years 1871 and 1872 the most wanton wastefulness prevailed. Colonel Dodge declares that, though hundreds of thousands of skins were sent to market, they scarcely indicated the extent of the slaughter. Through want of skill in shooting and want of knowledge in preserving the hides of those slain by green hunters, one hide sent to market represented three, four, or even five dead buffalo. The skinners and curers knew so little of the proper mode of curing hides, that at least half of those actually taken were lost. In the summer and fall of 1872 one hide sent to market represented at least three dead buffalo. This condition of affairs rapidly improved; but such was the furor for slaughter, and the ignorance of all concerned, that every hide sent to market in 1871 represented no less than five dead buffalo.
By 1873 the condition of affairs had somewhat improved, through better organization of the hunting parties and knowledge gained by experience in curing. For all that, however, buffaloes were still so exceedingly plentiful, and shooting was so much easier than skinning, the latter was looked upon as a necessary evil and still slighted to such an extent that every hide actually sold and delivered represented two dead buffaloes.
In 1874 the slaughterers began to take alarm at the increasing scarcity of buffalo, and the skinners, having a much smaller number of dead animals to take care of than ever before, were able to devote more time to each subject and do their work properly. As a result, Colonel Dodge estimated that during 1874, and from that time on, one hundred skins delivered represented not more than one hundred and twenty-five dead buffaloes; but that “no parties have ever got the proportion lower than this.”
The great southern herd was slaughtered by still-hunting, a method which has already been fully described. A typical hunting party is thus described by Colonel Dodge:[64]
“The most approved party consisted of four men—one shooter, two skinners, and one man to cook, stretch hides, and take care of camp. Where buffalo were very plentiful the number of skinners was increased. A light wagon, drawn by two horses or mules, takes the outfit into the wilderness, and brings into camp the skins taken each day. The outfit is most meager: a sack of flour, a side of bacon, 5 pounds of coffee, tea, and sugar, a little salt, and possibly a few beans, is a month’s supply. A common or “A” tent furnishes shelter; a couple of blankets for each man is a bed. One or more of Sharps or Remington’s heaviest sporting rifles, and an unlimited supply of ammunition, is the armament; while a coffee-pot, Dutch-oven, frying-pan, four tin plates, and four tin cups constitute the kitchen and table furniture.
“The skinning knives do duty at the platter, and ‘fingers were made before forks.’ Nor must be forgotten one or more 10-gallon kegs for water, as the camp may of necessity be far away from a stream. The supplies are generally furnished by the merchant for whom the party is working, who, in addition, pays each of the party a specified percentage of the value of the skins delivered. The shooter is carefully selected for his skill and knowledge of the habits of the buffalo. He is captain and leader of the party. When all is ready, he plunges into the wilderness, going to the center of the best buffalo region known to him, not already occupied (for there are unwritten regulations recognized as laws, giving to each hunter certain rights of discovery and occupancy). Arrived at the position, he makes his camp in some hidden ravine or thicket, and makes all ready for work.”
Of course the slaughter was greatest along the lines of the three great railways—the Kansas Pacific, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé, and the Union Pacific, about in the order named. It reached its height in the season of 1873. During that year the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad carried out of the buffalo country 251,443 robes, 1,017,600 pounds of meat, and 2,743,100 pounds of bones. The end of the southern herd was then near at hand. Could the southern buffalo range have been roofed over at that time it would have made one vast charnel-house. Putrifying carcasses, many of them with the hide still on, lay thickly scattered over thousands of square miles of the level prairie, poisoning the air and water and offending the sight. The remaining herds had become mere scattered bands, harried and driven hither and thither by the hunters, who now swarmed almost as thickly as the buffaloes. A cordon of camps was established along the Arkansas River, the South Platte, the Republican, and the few other streams that contained water, and when the thirsty animals came to drink they were attacked and driven away, and with the most fiendish persistency kept from slaking their thirst, so that they would again be compelled to seek the river and come within range of the deadly breech-loaders. Colonel Dodge declares that in places favorable to such warfare, as the south bank of the Platte, a herd of buffalo has, by shooting at it by day and by lighting fires and firing guns at night, been kept from water until it has been entirely destroyed. In the autumn of 1873, when Mr. William Blackmore traveled for some 30 or 40 miles along the north bank of the Arkansas River to the east of Port Dodge, “there was a continuous line of putrescent carcasses, so that the air was rendered pestilential and offensive to the last degree. The hunters had formed a line of camps along the banks of the river, and had shot down the buffalo, night and morning, as they came to drink. In order to give an idea of the number of these carcasses, it is only necessary to mention that I counted sixty-seven on one spot not covering 4 acres.”
White hunters were not allowed to hunt in the Indian Territory, but the southern boundary of the State of Kansas was picketed by them, and a herd no sooner crossed the line going north than it was destroyed. Every water-hole was guarded by a camp of hunters, and whenever a thirsty herd approached, it was promptly met by rifle-bullets.
During this entire period the slaughter of buffaloes was universal. The man who desired buffalo meat for food almost invariably killed five times as many animals as he could utilize, and after cutting from each victim its very choicest parts—the tongue alone, possibly, or perhaps the hump and hind quarters, one or the other, or both—fully four-fifths of the really edible portion of the carcass would be left to the wolves. It was no uncommon thing for a man to bring in two barrels of salted buffalo tongues, without another pound of meat or a solitary robe. The tongues were purchased at 25 cents each and sold in the markets farther east at 50 cents. In those days of criminal wastefulness it was a very common thing for buffaloes to be slaughtered for their tongues alone. Mr. George Catlin[65] relates that a few days previous to his arrival at the mouth of the Tetón River (Dakota), in 1832, “an immense herd of buffaloes had showed themselves on the opposite side of the river,” whereupon a party of five or six hundred Sioux Indians on horseback forded the river, attacked the herd, recrossed the river about sunset, and came into the fort with fourteen hundred fresh buffalo tongues, which were thrown down in a mass, and for which they required only a few gallons of whisky, which was soon consumed in “a little harmless carouse.” Mr. Catlin states that from all that he could learn not a skin or a pound of meat, other than the tongues, was saved after this awful slaughter.
Judging from all accounts, it is making a safe estimate to say that probably no fewer than fifty thousand buffaloes have been killed for their tongues alone, and the most of these are undoubtedly chargeable against white men, who ought to have known better.
A great deal has been said about the slaughter of buffaloes by foreign sportsmen, particularly Englishmen; but I must say that, from all that can be ascertained on this point, this element of destruction has been greatly exaggerated and overestimated. It is true that every English sportsman who visited this country in the days of the buffalo always resolved to have, and did have, “a buffalo hunt,” and usually under the auspices of United States Army officers. Undoubtedly these parties did kill hundreds of buffaloes, but it is very doubtful whether the aggregate of the number slain by foreign sportsmen would run up higher than ten thousand. Indeed, for myself, I am well convinced that there are many old ex-still-hunters yet living, each of whom is accountable for a greater number of victims than all buffaloes killed by foreign sportsmen would make added together. The professional butchers were very much given to crying out against “them English lords,” and holding up their hands in holy horror at buffaloes killed by them for their heads, instead of for hides to sell at a dollar apiece; but it is due the American public to say that all this outcry was received at its true value and deceived very few. By those in possession of the facts it was recognized as “a blind,” to divert public opinion from the real culprits.
Nevertheless it is very true that many men who were properly classed as sportsmen, in contradistinction from the pot-hunters, did engage in useless and inexcusable slaughter to an extent that was highly reprehensible, to say the least. A sportsman is not supposed to kill game wantonly, when it can be of no possible use to himself or any one else, but a great many do it for all that. Indeed, the sportsman who kills sparingly and conscientiously is rather the exception than the rule. Colonel Dodge thus refers to the work of some foreign sportsmen:
“In the fall of that year [1872] three English gentlemen went out with me for a short hunt, and in their excitement bagged more buffalo than would have supplied a brigade.” As a general thing, however, the professional sportsmen who went out to have a buffalo hunt for the excitement of the chase and the trophies it yielded, nearly always found the bison so easy a victim, and one whose capture brought so little glory to the hunter, that the chase was voted very disappointing, and soon abandoned in favor of nobler game. In those days there was no more to boast of in killing a buffalo than in the assassination of a Texas steer.
It was, then, the hide-hunters, white and red, but especially white, who wiped out the great southern herd in four short years. The prices received for hides varied considerably, according to circumstances, but for the green or undressed article it usually ranged from 50 cents for the skins of calves to $1.25 for those of adult animals in good condition. Such prices seem ridiculously small, but when it is remembered that, when buffaloes were plentiful it was no uncommon thing for a hunter to kill from forty to sixty head in a day, it will readily be seen that the chances of making very handsome profits were sufficient to tempt hunters to make extraordinary exertions. Moreover, even when the buffaloes were nearly gone, the country was overrun with men who had absolutely nothing else to look to as a means of livelihood, and so, no matter whether the profits were great or small, so long as enough buffaloes remained to make it possible to get a living by their pursuit, they were hunted down with the most determined persistency and pertinacity.
6. Statistics of the slaughter.—The most careful and reliable estimate ever made of results of the slaughter of the southern buffalo herd is that of Col. Richard Irving Dodge, and it is the only one I know of which furnishes a good index of the former size of that herd. Inasmuch as this calculation was based on actual statistics, supplemented by personal observations and inquiries made in that region during the great slaughter, I can do no better than to quote Colonel Dodge almost in full.[66]
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad furnished the following statistics of the buffalo product carried by it during the years 1872, 1873, and 1874:
Buffalo product.
| Year. | No. of skins carried. | Meat carried. | Bone carried. |
| Pounds. | Pounds. | ||
1872 | 165,721 | … | 1,135,300 |
1873 | 251,443 | 1,617,600 | 2,743,100 |
1874 | 42,289 | 632,800 | 6,914,950 |
| Total | 459,453 | 2,250,400 | 10,793,350 |
The officials of the Kansas Pacific and Union Pacific railroads either could not or would not furnish any statistics of the amount of the buffalo product carried by their lines during this period, and it became necessary to proceed without the actual figures in both cases. Inasmuch as the Kansas Pacific road cuts through a portion of the buffalo country which was in every respect as thickly inhabited by those animals as the region traversed by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé, it seemed absolutely certain that the former road hauled out fully as many hides as the latter, if not more, and its quota is so set down. The Union Pacific line handled a much smaller number of buffalo hides than either of its southern rivals, but Colonel Dodge believes that this, “with the smaller roads which touch the buffalo region, taken together, carried about as much as either of the two principal buffalo roads.”
Colonel Dodge considers it reasonably certain that the statistics furnished by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé road represent only one-third of the entire buffalo product, and there certainly appears to be good ground for this belief. It is therefore in order to base further calculations upon these figures.
According to evidence gathered on the spot by Colonel Dodge during the period of the great slaughter, one hide sent to market in 1872 represented three dead buffaloes, in 1873 two, and in 1874 one hundred skins delivered represented one hundred and twenty-five dead animals. The total slaughter by white men was therefore about as below:
| Year. | Hides shipped by A., T. and S. F. railway. | Hides shipped by other roads, same period (estimated). | Total number of buffaloes utilized. | Total number killed and wasted. | Total of buffaloes slaughtered by whites. |
1872 | 165,721 | 331,442 | 497,163 | 994,326 | 1,491,489 |
1873 | 251,443 | 502,886 | 754,329 | 754,329 | 1,508,658 |
1874 | 42,289 | 84,578 | 126,867 | 31,716 | 158,583 |
| Total | 459,453 | 918,906 | 1,378,359 | 1,780,481 | 3,158,730 |
During all this time the Indians of all tribes within striking distance of the herds killed an immense number of buffaloes every year. In the summer they killed for the hairless hides to use for lodges and for leather, and in the autumn they slaughtered for robes and meat, but particularly robes, which were all they could offer the white trader in exchange for his goods. They were too lazy and shiftless to cure much buffalo meat, and besides it was not necessary, for the Government fed them. In regard to the number of buffaloes of the southern herd killed by the Indians, Colonel Dodge arrives at an estimate, as follows:
“It is much more difficult to estimate the number of dead buffalo represented by the Indian-tanned skins or robes sent to market. This number varies with the different tribes, and their greater or less contact with the whites. Thus, the Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and Kiowas of the southern plains, having less contact with whites, use skins for their lodges, clothing, bedding, par-fléches, saddles, lariats, for almost everything. The number of robes sent to market represent only what we may call the foreign exchange of these tribes, and is really not more than one-tenth of the skins taken. To be well within bounds I will assume that one robe sent to market by these Indians represents six dead buffaloes.
“Those bands of Sioux who live at the agencies, and whose peltries are taken to market by the Union Pacific Railroad, live in lodges of cotton cloth furnished by the Indian Bureau. They use much civilized clothing, bedding, boxes, ropes, etc. For these luxuries they must pay in robes, and as the buffalo range is far from wide, and their yearly ‘crop’ small, more than half of it goes to market.”
Leaving out of the account at this point all consideration of the killing done north of the Union Pacific Railroad, Colonel Dodge’s figures are as follows:
Southern buffaloes slaughtered by southern Indians.
| Indians. | Sent to market. | No. of dead buffaloes represented. |
| Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and other Indians whose robes go over the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad | 19,000 | 114,000 |
| Sioux at agencies, Union Pacific Railroad | 10,000 | 16,000 |
| Total slaughtered per annum | 29,000 | 130,000 |
| Total for the three years 1872-1874 | … | 390,000 |
Reference has already been made to the fact that during those years an immense number of buffaloes were killed by the farmers of eastern Kansas and Nebraska for their meat. Mr. William Mitchell, of Wabaunsee, Kansas, stated to the writer that “in those days, when buffaloes were plentiful in western Kansas, pretty much everybody made a trip West in the fall and brought back a load of buffalo meat. Everybody had it in abundance as long as buffaloes remained in any considerable number. Very few skins were saved; in fact, hardly any, for the reason that nobody knew how to tan them, and they always spoiled. At first a great many farmers tried to dress the green hides that they brought back, but they could not succeed, and finally gave up trying. Of course, a great deal of the meat killed was wasted, for only the best parts were brought back.”
The Wichita (Kansas) World of February 9, 1889, contains the following reference:
“In 1871 and 1872 the buffalo ranged within 10 miles of Wichita, and could be counted by the thousands. The town, then in its infancy, was the headquarters for a vast number of buffalo-hunters, who plied their occupation vigorously during the winter. The buffalo were killed principally for their hides, and daily wagon trains arrived in town loaded with them. Meat was very cheap in those days; fine, tender buffalo steak selling from 1 to 2 cents per pound. * * * The business was quite profitable for a time, but a sudden drop in the price of hides brought them down as low as 25 and 50 cents each. * * * It was a very common thing in those days for people living in Wichita to start out in the morning and return by evening with a wagon load of buffalo meat.”
Unquestionably a great many thousand buffaloes were killed annually by the settlers of Kansas, Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado, and the mountain Indians living west of the great range. The number so slain can only be guessed at, for there is absolutely no data on which to found an estimate. Judging merely from the number of people within reach of the range, it may safely be estimated that the total number of buffaloes slaughtered annually to satisfy the wants of this heterogeneous element could not have been less than fifty thousand, and probably was a much higher number. This, for the three years, would make one hundred and fifty thousand, and the grand total would therefore be about as follows:
The slaughter of the southern herd.
| Killed by “professional” white hunters in 1872, 1873, and 1874 | 3,158,730 |
| Killed by Indians, same period | 390,000 |
| Killed by settlers and mountain Indians | 150,000 |
| Total slaughter in three years | 3,098,730 |
These figures seem incredible, but unfortunately there is not the slightest reason for believing they are too high. There are many men now living who declare that during the great slaughter they each killed from twenty-five hundred to three thousand buffaloes every year. With thousands of hunters on the range, and such possibilities of slaughter before each, it is, after all, no wonder that an average of nearly a million and a quarter of buffaloes fell each year during that bloody period.
By the close of the hunting season of 1875 the great southern herd had ceased to exist. As a body, it had been utterly annihilated. The main body of the survivors, numbering about ten thousand head, fled southwest, and dispersed through that great tract of wild, desolate, and inhospitable country stretching southward from the Cimarron country across the “Public Land Strip,” the Pan-handle of Texas, and the Llano Estacado, or Staked Plain, to the Pecos River. A few small bands of stragglers maintained a precarious existence for a few years longer on the headwaters of the Republican River and in southwestern Nebraska, near Ogalalla, where calves were caught alive as late as 1885. Wild buffaloes were seen in southwestern Kansas for the last time in 1886, and the two or three score of individuals still living in the Canadian River country of the Texas Pan-handle are the last wild survivors of the great Southern herd.
The main body of the fugitives which survived the great slaughter of 1871-’74 continued to attract hunters who were very “hard up,” who pursued them, often at the risk of their own lives, even into the terrible Llano Estacado. In Montana in 1886 I met on a cattle ranch an ex-buffalo-hunter from Texas, named Harry Andrews, who from 1874 to 1876 continued in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the great southern herd through the Pan-handle of Texas and on into the Staked Plain itself. By that time the market had become completely overstocked with robes, and the prices received by Andrews and other hunters was only 65 cents each for cow robes and $1.15 each for bull robes, delivered on the range, the purchaser providing for their transportation to the railway. But even at those prices, which were so low as to make buffalo killing seem like downright murder, Mr. Andrews assured me that he “made big money.” On one occasion, when he “got a stand” on a large bunch of buffalo, he fired one hundred and fifteen shots from one spot, and killed sixty-three buffaloes in about an hour.
In 1880 buffalo hunting as a business ceased forever in the Southwest, and so far as can be ascertained, but one successful hunt for robes has been made in that region since that time. That occurred in the fall and winter of 1887, about 100 miles north of Tascosa, Texas, when two parties, one of which was under the leadership of Lee Howard, attacked the only band of buffaloes left alive in the Southwest, and which at that time numbered about two hundred head. The two parties killed fifty-two buffaloes, of which ten skins were preserved entire for mounting. Of the remaining forty-two, the heads were cut off and preserved for mounting and the skins were prepared as robes. The mountable skins were finally sold at the following prices: Young cows, $50 to $60; adult cows, $75 to $100; adult bull, $150. The unmounted heads sold as follows: Young bulls, $25 to $30; adult bulls, $50; young cows, $10 to $12; adult cows, $15 to $25. A few of the choicest robes sold at $20 each, and the remainder, a lot of twenty eight, of prime quality and in excellent condition, were purchased by the Hudson’s Bay Fur Company for $350.
Such was the end of the great southern herd. In 1871 it contained certainly no fewer than three million buffaloes, and by the beginning of 1875 its existence as a herd had utterly ceased, and nothing but scattered, fugitive bands remained.
7. The Destruction of the Northern Herd.—Until the building of the Northern Pacific Railway there were but two noteworthy outlets for the buffalo robes that were taken annually in the Northwestern Territories of the United States. The principal one was the Missouri River, and the Yellowstone River was the other. Down these streams the hides were transported by steam-boats to the nearest railway shipping point. For fifty years prior to the building of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1880-’82, the number of robes marketed every year by way of these streams was estimated variously at from fifty to one hundred thousand. A great number of hides taken in the British Possessions fell into the hands of the Hudson’s Bay Company, and found a market in Canada.
In May, 1881, the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal contained the following information in regard to the buffalo robe “crop” of the previous hunting season—the winter of 1880-’81:
“It is estimated by competent authorities that one hundred thousand buffalo hides will be shipped out of the Yellowstone country this season. Two firms alone are negotiating for the transportation of twenty-five thousand hides each. * * * Most of our citizens saw the big load of buffalo hides that the C. K. Peck brought down last season, a load that hid everything about the boat below the roof of the hurricane deck. There were ten thousand hides in that load, and they were all brought out of the Yellowstone on one trip and transferred to the C. K. Peck. How such a load could have been piled on the little Terry not even the men on the boat appear to know. It hid every part of the boat, barring only the pilot-house and smoke-stacks. But such a load will not be attempted again. For such boats as ply the Yellowstone there are at least fifteen full loads of buffalo hides and other pelts. Reckoning one thousand hides to three car loads, and adding to this fifty cars for the other pelts, it will take at least three hundred and fifty box-cars to carry this stupendous bulk of peltry East to market. These figures are not guesses, but estimates made by men whose business it is to know about the amount of hides and furs awaiting shipment.
“Nothing like it has ever been known in the history of the fur trade. Last season the output of buffalo hides was above the average, and last year only about thirty thousand hides came out of the Yellowstone country, or less than a third of what is there now awaiting shipment The past severe winter caused the buffalo to bunch themselves in a few valleys where there was pasturage, and there the slaughter went on all winter. There was no sport about it, simply shooting down the famine-tamed animals as cattle might be shot down in a barn-yard. To the credit of the Indians it can be said that they killed no more than they could save the meat from. The greater part of the slaughter was done by white hunters, or butchers rather, who followed the business of killing and skinning buffalo by the mouth, leaving the carcasses to rot.”
At the time of the great division made by the Union Pacific Railway the northern body of buffalo extended from the valley of the Platte River northward to the southern shore of Great Slave Lake, eastward almost to Minnesota, and westward to an elevation of 8,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains. The herds were most numerous along the central portion of this region (see map), and from the Platte Valley to Great Slave Lake the range was continuous. The buffalo population of the southern half of this great range was, according to all accounts, nearly three times as great as that of the northern half. At that time, or, let us say, 1870, there were about four million buffaloes south of the Platte River, and probably about one million and a half north of it. I am aware that the estimate of the number of buffaloes in the great northern herd is usually much higher than this, but I can see no good grounds for making it so. To my mind, the evidence is conclusive that, although the northern herd ranged over such an immense area, it was numerically less than half the size of the overwhelming multitude which actually crowded the southern range, and at times so completely consumed the herbage of the plains that detachments of the United States Army found it difficult to find sufficient grass for their mules and horses.[67]
The various influences which ultimately led to the complete blotting out of the great northern herd were exerted about as follows:
In the British Possessions, where the country was immense and game of all kinds except buffalo very scarce indeed; where, in the language of Professor Kenaston, the explorer, “there was a great deal of country around every wild animal,” the buffalo constituted the main dependence of the Indians, who would not cultivate the soil at all, and of the half-breeds, who would not so long as they could find buffalo. Under such circumstances the buffaloes of the British Possessions were hunted much more vigorously and persistently than those of the United States, where there was such an abundant supply of deer, elk, antelope, and other game for the Indians to feed upon, and a paternal government to support them with annuities besides. Quite contrary to the prevailing idea of the people of the United States, viz., that there were great herds of buffaloes in existence in the Saskatchewan country long after ours had all been destroyed, the herds of British America had been almost totally exterminated by the time the final slaughter of our northern herd was inaugurated by the opening of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1880. The Canadian Pacific Railway played no part whatever in the extermination of the bison in the British Possessions, for it had already taken place. The half-breeds of Manitoba, the Plains Crees of Qu’Appelle, and the Blackfeet of the South Saskatchewan country swept bare a great belt of country stretching east and west between the Rocky Mountains and Manitoba. The Canadian Pacific Railway found only bleaching bones in the country through which it passed. The buffalo had disappeared from that entire region before 1879 and left the Blackfeet Indians on the verge of starvation. A few thousand buffaloes still remained in the country around the headwaters of the Battle River, between the North and South Saskatchewan, but they were surrounded and attacked from all sides, and their numbers diminished very rapidly until all were killed.
The latest information I have been able to obtain in regard to the disappearance of this northern band has been kindly furnished by Prof. C. A. Kenaston, who in 1881, and also in 1883, made a thorough exploration of the country between Winnipeg and Fort Edmonton for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company. His four routes between the two points named covered a vast scope of country, several hundred miles in width. In 1881, at Moose Jaw, 75 miles southeast of The Elbow of the South Saskatchewan, he saw a party of Cree Indians, who had just arrived from the northwest with several carts laden with fresh buffalo meat. At Fort Saskatchewan, on the North Saskatchewan River, just above Edmonton, he saw a party of English sportsmen who had recently been hunting on the Battle and Red Deer Rivers, between Edmonton and Fort Kalgary, where they had found buffaloes, and killed as many as they cared to slaughter. In one afternoon they killed fourteen, and could have killed more had they been more blood-thirsty. In 1883 Professor Kenaston found the fresh trail of a band of twenty-five or thirty buffaloes at The Elbow of the South Saskatchewan. Excepting in the above instances he saw no further traces of buffalo, nor did he hear of the existence of any in all the country he explored. In 1881 he saw many Cree Indians at Fort Qu’Appelle in a starving condition, and there was no pemmican or buffalo meat at the fort. In 1883, however, a little pemmican found its way to Winnipeg, where it sold at 15 cents per pound; an exceedingly high price. It had been made that year, evidently in the mouth of April, as he purchased it in May for his journey.
The first really alarming impression made on our northern herd was by the Sioux Indians, who very speedily exterminated that portion of it which had previously covered the country lying between the North Platte and a line drawn from the center of Wyoming to the center of Dakota. All along the Missouri River from Bismarck to Fort Benton, and along the Yellowstone to the head of navigation, the slaughter went bravely on. All the Indian tribes of that vast region—Sioux, Cheyennes, Crows, Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, Assinniboines, Gros Ventres, and Shoshones—found their most profitable business and greatest pleasure (next to scalping white settlers) in hunting the buffalo. It took from eight to twelve buffalo hides to make a covering for one ordinary teepee, and sometimes a single teepee of extra size required from twenty to twenty-five hides.
The Indians of our northwestern Territories marketed about seventy-five thousand buffalo robes every year so long as the northern herd was large enough to afford the supply. If we allow that for every skin sold to white traders four others were used in supplying their own wants, which must be considered a very moderate estimate, the total number of buffaloes slaughtered annually by those tribes must have been about three hundred and seventy-five thousand.
The end which so many observers had for years been predicting really began (with the northern herd) in 1876, two years after the great annihilation which had taken place in the South, although it was not until four years later that the slaughter became universal over the entire range. It is very clearly indicated in the figures given in a letter from Messrs. I. G. Baker & Co., of Fort Benton, Montana, to the writer, dated October 6, 1887, which reads as follows:
“There were sent East from the year 1876 from this point about seventy-five thousand buffalo robes. In 1880 it had fallen to about twenty thousand, in 1883 not more than five thousand, and in 1884 none whatever. We are sorry we can not give you a better record, but the collection of hides which exterminated the buffalo was from the Yellowstone country on the Northern Pacific, instead of northern Montana.”
The beginning of the final slaughter of our northern herd may be dated about 1880, by which time the annual robe crop of the Indians had diminished three-fourths, and when summer killing for hairless hides began on a large scale. The range of this herd was surrounded on three sides by tribes of Indians, armed with breech-loading rifles and abundantly supplied with fixed ammunition. Up to the year 1880 the Indians of the tribes previously mentioned killed probably three times as many buffaloes as did the white hunters, and had there not been a white hunter in the whole Northwest the buffalo would have been exterminated there just as surely, though not so quickly by perhaps ten years, as actually occurred. Along the north, from the Missouri River to the British line, and from the reservation in northwestern Dakota to the main divide of the Rocky Mountains, a distance of 550 miles as the crow flies, the country was one continuous Indian reservation, inhabited by eight tribes, who slaughtered buffalo in season and out of season, in winter for robes and in summer for hides and meat to dry. In the Southeast was the great body of Sioux, and on the Southwest the Crows and Northern Cheyennes, all engaged in the same relentless warfare. It would have required a body of armed men larger than the whole United States Army to have withstood this continuous hostile pressure without ultimate annihilation.
Let it be remembered, therefore, that the American Indian is as much responsible for the extermination of our northern herd of bison as the American citizen. I have yet to learn of an instance wherein an Indian refrained from excessive slaughter of game through motives of economy, or care for the future, or prejudice against wastefulness. From all accounts the quantity of game killed by an Indian has always been limited by two conditions only—lack of energy to kill more, or lack of more game to be killed. White men delight in the chase, and kill for the “sport” it yields, regardless of the effort involved. Indeed, to a genuine sportsman, nothing in hunting is “sport” which is not obtained at the cost of great labor. An Indian does not view the matter in that light, and when he has killed enough to supply his wants, he stops, because he sees no reason why he should exert himself any further. This has given rise to the statement, so often repeated, that the Indian killed only enough buffaloes to supply his wants. If an Indian ever attempted, or even showed any inclination, to husband the resources of nature in any way, and restrain wastefulness on the part of Indians, it would be gratifying to know of it.
The building of the Northern Pacific Railway across Dakota and Montana hastened the end that was fast approaching; but it was only an incident in the annihilation of the northern herd. Without it the final result would have been just the same, but the end would probably not have been reached until about 1888.
The Northern Pacific Railway reached Bismarck, Dakota, on the Missouri River, in the year 1876, and from that date onward received for transportation eastward all the buffalo robes and hides that came down the two rivers, Missouri and Yellowstone.
Unfortunately the Northern Pacific Railway Company kept no separate account of its buffalo product business, and is unable to furnish a statement of the number of hides and robes it handled. It is therefore impossible to even make an estimate of the total number of buffaloes killed on the northern range during the six years which ended with the annihilation of that herd.
In regard to the business done by the Northern Pacific Railway, and the precise points from whence the bulk of the robes were shipped, the following letter from Mr. J. M. Hannaford, traffic manager of the Northern Pacific Railroad, under date of September 3, 1887, is of interest.
“Your communication, addressed to President Harris, has been referred to me for the information desired.
“I regret that our accounts are not so kept as to enable me to furnish you accurate data; but I have been able to obtain the following general information, which may prove of some value to you:
“From the years 1876 and 1880 our line did not extend beyond Bismarck, which was the extreme easterly shipping point for buffalo robes and hides, they being brought down the Missouri River from the north for shipment from that point. In the years 1876, 1877, 1878, and 1879 there were handled at that point yearly from three to four thousand bales of robes, about one-half the bales containing ten robes and the other half twelve robes each. During these years practically no hides were shipped. In 1880 the shipment of hides, dry and untanned, commenced,[68] and in 1881 and 1882 our line was extended west, and the shipping points increased, reaching as far west as Terry and Sully Springs, in Montana. During these years, 1880, 1881, and 1882, which practically finished the shipments of hides and robes, it is impossible for me to give you any just idea of the number shipped. The only figures obtainable are those of 1881, when over seventy-five thousand dry and untanned buffalo hides came down the river for shipment from Bismarck. Some robes were also shipped from this point that year, and a considerable number of robes and hides were shipped from several other shipping points.
“The number of pounds of buffalo meat shipped over our line has never cut any figure, the bulk of the meat having been left on the prairie, as not being of sufficient value to pay the cost of transportation.
“The names of the extreme eastern and western stations from which shipments were made are as follows: In 1880, Bismarck was the only shipping point. In 1881, Glendive, Bismarck, and Beaver Creek. In 1882, Terry and Sully Springs, Montana, were the chief shipping points, and in the order named, so far as numbers and amount of shipments are concerned. Bismarck on the east and Forsyth on the west were the two extremities.
“Up to the year 1880, so long as buffalo were killed only for robes, the bands did not decrease very materially; but beginning with that year, when they were killed for their hides as well, a most indiscriminate slaughter commenced, and from that time on they disappeared very rapidly. Up to the year 1881 there were two large bands, one south of the Yellowstone and the other north of that river. In the year mentioned those south of the river were driven north and never returned, having joined the northern band, and become practically extinguished.
“Since 1882 there have, of course, been occasional shipments both of hides and robes, but in such small quantities and so seldom that they cut practically no figure, the bulk of them coming probably from north Missouri points down the river to Bismarck.”
In 1880 the northern buffalo range embraced the following streams; The Missouri and all its tributaries, from Port Shaw, Montana, to Fort Bennett, Dakota, and the Yellowstone and all its tributaries. Of this region, Miles City, Montana, was the geographical center. The grass was good over the whole of it, and the various divisions of the great herd were continually shifting from one locality to another, often making journeys several hundred miles at a time. Over the whole of this vast area their bleaching bones lie scattered (where they have not as yet been gathered up for sale) from the Upper Marias and Milk Rivers, near the British boundary, to the Platte, and from the James River, in central Dakota, to an elevation of 8,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains. Indeed, as late as October, 1887, I gathered up on the open common, within half a mile of the Northern Pacific Railway depot at the city of Helena, the skull, horns, and numerous odd bones of a large bull buffalo which had been killed there.
Where the Millions Have Gone. From a painting by J. H. Moser in the National Museum.
Over many portions of the northern range the traveler may even now ride for days together without once being out of sight of buffalo carcasses, or bones. Such was the case in 1886 in the country lying between the Missouri and the Yellowstone, northwest of Miles City. Go wherever we might, on divides, into bad lands, creek bottoms, or on the highest plateaus, we always found the inevitable and omnipresent grim and ghastly skeleton, with hairy head, dried-up and shriveled nostrils, half-skinned legs stretched helplessly upon the gray turf, and the bones of the body bleached white as chalk.
The year 1881 witnessed the same kind of a stampede for the northern buffalo range that occurred just ten years previously in the south. At that time robes were worth from two to three times as much as they ever had been in the south, the market was very active, and the successful hunter was sure to reap a rich reward as long as the buffaloes lasted. At that time the hunters and hide-buyers estimated that there were five hundred thousand buffaloes within a radius of 150 miles of Miles City, and that there were still in the entire northern herd not far from one million head. The subsequent slaughter proved that these estimates were probably not far from the truth. In that year Fort Custer was so nearly overwhelmed by a passing herd that a detachment of soldiers was ordered out to turn the herd away from the post. In 1882 an immense herd appeared on the high, level plateau on the north side of the Yellowstone which overlooks Miles City and Fort Keogh in the valley below. A squad of soldiers from the Fifth Infantry was sent up on the bluff, and in less than an hour had killed enough buffaloes to load six four-mule teams with meat. In 1886 there were still about twenty bleaching skeletons lying in a group on the edge of this plateau at the point where the road from the ferry reaches the level, but all the rest had been gathered up.
In 1882 there were, so it is estimated by men who were in the country, no fewer than five thousand white hunters and skinners on the northern range. Lieut. J. M. T. Partello declares that “a cordon of camps, from the Upper Missouri, where it bends to the west, stretched toward the setting sun as far as the dividing line of Idaho, completely blocking in the great ranges of the Milk River, the Musselshell, Yellowstone, and the Marias, and rendering it impossible for scarcely a single bison to escape through the chain of sentinel camps to the Canadian northwest. Hunters of Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado drove the poor hunted animals north, directly into the muzzles of the thousands of repeaters ready to receive them. * * * Only a few short years ago, as late as 1883, a herd of about seventy-five thousand crossed the Yellowstone River a few miles south of here [Fort Keogh], scores of Indians, pot-hunters, and white butchers on their heels, bound for the Canadian dominions, where they hoped to find a haven of safety. Alas! not five thousand of that mighty mass ever lived to reach the British border line.”
It is difficult to say (at least to the satisfaction of old hunters) which were the most famous hunting grounds on the northern range. Lieutenant Partello states that when he hunted in the great triangle bounded by the three rivers, Missouri, Musselshell, and Yellowstone, it contained, to the best of his knowledge and belief, two hundred and fifty thousand buffaloes. Unquestionably that region yielded an immense number of buffalo robes, and since the slaughter thousands of tons of bones have been gathered up there. Another favorite locality was the country lying between the Powder River and the Little Missouri, particularly the valleys of Beaver and O’Fallon Creeks. Thither went scores of “outfits” and hundreds of hunters and skinners from the Northern Pacific Railway towns from Miles City to Glendive. The hunters from the towns between Glendive and Bismarck mostly went south to Cedar Creek and the Grand and Moreau Rivers. But this territory was also the hunting ground of the Sioux Indians from the great reservation farther south.
Thousands upon thousands of buffaloes were killed on the Milk and Marias Rivers, in the Judith Basin, and in northern Wyoming.
The method of slaughter has already been fully described under the head of “the still-hunt,” and need not be recapitulated. It is some gratification to know that the shocking and criminal wastefulness which was so marked a feature of the southern butchery was almost wholly unknown in the north. Robes were worth from $1.50 to $3.50, according to size and quality, and were removed and preserved with great care. Every one hundred robes marketed represented not more than one hundred and ten dead buffaloes, and even this small percentage of loss was due to the escape of wounded animals which afterward died and were devoured by the wolves. After the skin was taken off the hunter or skinner stretched it carefully upon the ground, inside uppermost, cut his initials in the adherent subcutaneous muscle, and left it until the season for hauling in the robes, which was always done in the early spring, immediately following the hunt.
As was the case in the south, it was the ability of a single hunter to destroy an entire bunch of buffalo in a single day that completely annihilated the remaining thousands of the northern herd before the people of the United States even learned what was going on. For example, one hunter of my acquaintance, Vic. Smith, the most famous hunter in Montana, killed one hundred and seven buffaloes in one “stand,” in about one hour’s time, and without shifting his point of attack. This occurred in the Red Water country, about 100 miles northeast of Miles City, in the winter of 1881-’82. During the same season another hunter, named “Doc.” Aughl, killed eighty-five buffaloes at one “stand,” and John Edwards killed seventy-five. The total number that Smith claims to have killed that season is “about five thousand.” Where buffaloes were at all plentiful, every man who called himself a hunter was expected to kill between one and two thousand during the hunting season—from November to February—and when the buffaloes were to be found it was a comparatively easy thing to do.
During the year 1882 the thousands of bison that still remained alive on the range indicated above, and also marked out on the accompanying map, were distributed over that entire area very generally. In February of that year a Fort Benton correspondent of Forest and Stream wrote as follows: “It is truly wonderful how many buffalo are still left. Thousands of Indians and hundreds of white men depend on them for a living. At present nearly all the buffalo in Montana are between Milk River and Bear Paw Mountains. There are only a few small bands between the Missouri and the Yellowstone.” There were plenty of buffalo on the Upper Marias River in October, 1882. In November and December there were thousands between the Missouri and the Yellowstone Rivers. South of the Northern Pacific Railway the range during the hunting season of 1882-’83 was thus defined by a hunter who has since written out the “Confessions of a Buffalo Butcher” for Forest and Stream (vol. xxiv, p. 489): “Then [October, 1882] the western limit was defined in a general way by Powder River, and extending eastward well toward the Missouri and south to within 60 or 70 miles of the Black Hills. It embraces the valleys of all tributaries to Powder River from the east, all of the valleys of Beaver Creek, O’Fallon Creek, and the Little Missouri and Moreau Rivers, and both forks of the Cannon Ball for almost half their length. This immense territory, lying almost equally in Montana and Dakota, had been occupied during the winters by many thousands of buffaloes from time immemorial, and many of the cows remained during the summer and brought forth their young undisturbed.”
The three hunters composing the party whose record is narrated in the interesting sketch referred to, went out from Miles City on October 23, 1882, due east to the bad lands between the Powder River and O’Fallon Creek, and were on the range all winter. They found comparatively few buffaloes, and secured only two hundred and eighty-six robes, which they sold at an average price of $2.20 each. They saved and marketed a large quantity of meat, for which they obtained 3 cents per pound. They found the whole region in which they hunted fairly infested with Indians and half-breeds, all hunting buffalo.
The hunting season which began in October, 1882, and ended in February, 1883, finished the annihilation of the great northern herd, and left but a few small bauds of stragglers, numbering only a very few thousand individuals all told. A noted event of the season was the retreat northward across the Yellowstone of the immense herd mentioned by Lieutenant Partello as containing seventy-five thousand head; others estimated the number at fifty thousand; and the event is often spoken of to-day by frontiersmen who were in that region at the time. Many think that the whole great body went north into British territory, and that there is still a goodly remnant of it in some remote region between the Peace River and the Saskatchewan, or somewhere there, which will yet return to the United States. Nothing could be more illusory than this belief. In the first place, the herd never reached the British line, and, if it had, it would have been promptly annihilated by the hungry Blackfeet and Cree Indians, who were declared to be in a half-starved condition, through the disappearance of the buffalo, as early as 1879.
The great herd that “went north” was utterly extinguished by the white hunters along the Missouri River and the Indians living north of it. The only vestige of it that remained was a band of about two hundred individuals that took refuge in the labyrinth of ravines and creek bottoms that lie west of the Musselshell between Flat Willow and Box Elder Creeks, and another band of about seventy-five which settled in the bad lands between the head of the Big Dry and Big Porcupine Creeks, where a few survivors were found by the writer in 1886.
South of the Northern Pacific Railway, a band of about three hundred settled permanently in and around the Yellowstone National Park, but in a very short time every animal outside of the protected limits of the park was killed, and whenever any of the park buffaloes strayed beyond the boundary they too were promptly killed for their heads and hides. At present the number remaining in the park is believed by Captain Harris, the superintendent, to be about two hundred; about one-third of which is due to breeding in the protected territory.
In the southeast the fate of that portion of the herd is well known. The herd which at the beginning of the hunting season of 1883 was known to contain about ten thousand head, and ranged in western Dakota, about half way between the Black Hills and Bismarck, between the Moreau and Grand Rivers, was speedily reduced to about one thousand head. Vic. Smith, who was “in at the death,” says there were eleven hundred, others say twelve hundred. Just at this juncture (October, 1883) Sitting Bull and his whole band of nearly one thousand braves arrived from the Standing Sock Agency, and in two days’ time slaughtered the entire herd. Vic. Smith and a host of white hunters took part in the killing of this last ten thousand, and he declares that “when we got through the hunt there was not a hoof left. That wound up the buffalo in the Far West, only a stray bull being seen here and there afterwards.”
Curiously enough, not even the buffalo hunters themselves were at the time aware of the fact that the end of the hunting season of 1882-’83 was also the end of the buffalo, at least as an inhabitant of the plains and a source of revenue. In the autumn of 1883 they nearly all outfitted as usual, often at an expense of many hundreds of dollars, and blithely sought “the range” that had up to that time been so prolific in robes. The end was in nearly every case the same—total failure and bankruptcy. It was indeed hard to believe that not only the millions, but also the thousands, had actually gone, and forever.
I have found it impossible to ascertain definitely the number of robes and hides shipped from the northern range during the last years of the slaughter, and the only reliable estimate I have obtained was made for me, alter much consideration and reflection, by Mr. J. N. Davis, of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Mr. Davis was for many years a buyer of furs, robes, and hides on a large scale throughout our Northwestern Territories, and was actively engaged in buying up buffalo robes as long as there were any to buy. In reply to a letter asking for statistics, he wrote me as follows, on September 27, 1887:
“It is impossible to give the exact number of robes and hides shipped out of Dakota and Montana from 1876 to 1883, or the exact number of buffalo in the northern herd; but I will give you as correct an account as any one can. In 1876 it was estimated that there were half a million buffaloes within a radius of 150 miles of Miles City. In 1881 the Northern Pacific Railroad was built as far west as Glendive and Miles City. At that time the whole country was a howling wilderness, and Indians and wild buffalo were too numerous to mention. The first shipment of buffalo robes, killed by white men, was made that year, and the stations on the Northern Pacific Railroad between Miles City and Mandan sent out about fifty thousand hides and robes. In 1882 the number of hides and robes bought and shipped was about two hundred thousand, and in 1883 forty thousand. In 1884 I shipped from Dickinson, Dakota Territory, the only car load of robes that went East that year, and it was the last shipment ever made.”
For a long time the majority of the ex-hunters cherished the fond delusion that the great herd had only “gone north” into the British Possessions, and would eventually return in great force. Scores of rumors of the finding of herds floated about, all of which were eagerly believed at first. But after a year or two had gone by without the appearance of a single buffalo, and likewise without any reliable information of the existence of a herd of any size, even in British territory, the butchers of the buffalo either hung up their old Sharps rifles, or sold them for nothing to the gun-dealers, and sought other means of livelihood. Some took to gathering up buffalo bones and selling them by the ton, and others became cowboys.
IV. Congressional Legislation for the Protection of the Bison.
The slaughter of the buffalo down to the very point of extermination has been so very generally condemned, and the general Government has been so unsparingly blamed for allowing such a massacre to take place on the public domain, it is important that the public should know all the facts in the case. To the credit of Congress it must be said that several very determined efforts were made between the years 1871 and 1876 looking toward the protection of the buffalo. The failure of all those well-meant efforts was due to our republican form of Government. Had this Government been a monarchy the buffalo would have been protected; but unfortunately in this case (perhaps the only one on record wherein a king could have accomplished more than the representatives of the people) the necessary act of Congress was so hedged in and beset by obstacles that it never became an accomplished fact. Even when both houses of Congress succeeded in passing a suitable act (June 23, 1874) it went to the President in the last days of the session only to be pigeon-holed, and die a natural death.
The following is a complete history of Congressional legislation in regard to the protection of the buffalo from wanton slaughter and ultimate extinction. The first step taken in behalf of this persecuted animal was on March 13, 1871, when Mr. McCormick, of Arizona, introduced a bill (H. R. 157), which was ordered to be printed. Nothing further was done with it. It read as follows:
Be it enacted, etc., That, excepting for the purpose of using the meat for food or preserving the akin, it shall be unlawful for any person to kill the bison, or buffalo, found anywhere upon the public lands of the United States; and for the violation of this law the offender shall, upon conviction before any court of competent jurisdiction, be liable to a fine of $100 for each animal killed, one-half of which sum shall, upon its collection, be paid to the informer.
On February 14, 1872, Mr. Cole, of California, introduced in the Senate the following resolution, which was considered by unanimous consent and agreed to:
Resolved, That the Committee on Territories be directed to inquire into the expediency of enacting a law for the protection of the buffalo, elk, antelope, and other useful animals running wild in the Territories of the United States against indiscriminate slaughter and extermination, and that they report by bill or otherwise.
On February 16, 1872, Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, introduced a bill in the Senate (S. 655) restricting the killing of the buffalo upon the public lauds; which was read twice by its title and referred to the Committee on Territories.
On April 5, 1872, Mr. B. C. McCormick, of Arizona, made a speech in the House of Representatives, while it was in Committee of the Whole, on the restriction of the killing of buffalo.
He mentioned a then recent number of Harper’s Weekly, in which were illustrations of the slaughter of buffalo, and also read a partly historical extract in regard to the same. He related how, when he was once snow-bound upon the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the buffalo furnished food for himself and fellow-passengers. Then he read the bill introduced by him March 13, 1871, and also copies of letters furnished him by Henry Bergh, president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which were sent to the latter by General W. B. Hazen, Lieut. Col. A. G. Brackett, and E. W. Wynkoop. He also read a statement by General Hazen to the effect that he knew of a man who killed ninety-nine buffaloes with his own hand in one day. He also spoke on the subject of cross-breeding the buffalo with common cattle, and read an extract in regard to it from the San Francisco Post.[69]
On April 6, 1872, Mr. McCormick asked leave to have printed in the Globe some remarks he had prepared regarding restricting the killing of buffalo, which was granted.[70]
On January 5, 1874, Mr. Fort, of Illinois, introduced a bill (H. R. 921) to prevent the useless slaughter of buffalo within the Territories of the United States; which was read and referred to the Committee on the Territories.[71]
On March 10, 1874, this bill was reported to the House from the Committee on the Territories, with a recommendation that it be passed.[72]
The first section of the bill provided that it shall be unlawful for any person, who is not an Indian, to kill, wound, or in any way destroy any female buffalo of any age, found at large within the boundaries of any of the Territories of the United States.
The second section provided that it shall be, in like manner, unlawful for any such person to kill, wound, or destroy in said Territories any greater number of male buffaloes than are needed for food by such person, or than can be used, cured, or preserved for the food of other persons, or for the market. It shall in like manner be unlawful for any such person, or persons, to assist, or be in any manner engaged or concerned in or about such unlawful killing, wounding, or destroying of any such buffaloes; that any person who shall violate the provisions of the act shall, on conviction, forfeit and pay to the United States the sum of $100 for each offense (and each buffalo so unlawfully killed, wounded, or destroyed shall be and constitute a separate offense), and on a conviction of a second offense may be committed to prison for a period not exceeding thirty days; and that all United States judges, justices, courts, and legal tribunals in said Territories shall have jurisdiction in cases of the violation of the law.
Mr. Cox said he had been told by old hunters that it was impossible to tell the sex of a running buffalo; and he also stated that the bill gave preference to the Indians.
Mr. Fort said the object was to prevent early extermination; that thousands were annually slaughtered for skins alone, and thousands for their tongues alone; that perhaps hundreds of thousands are killed every year in utter wantonness, with no object for such destruction. He had been told that the sexes could be distinguished while they were running.[73]
This bill does not prohibit any person joining in a reasonable chase and hunt of the buffalo.
Said Mr. Fort, “So far as I am advised, gentlemen upon this floor representing all the Territories are favorable to the passage of this bill.”
Mr. Cox wanted the clause excepting the Indians from the operations of the bill stricken out, and stated that the Secretary of the Interior had already said to the House that the civilization of the Indian was Impossible while the buffalo remained on the plains.
The Clerk read for Mr. McCormick the following extract from the New Mexican, a paper published in Santa Fé:
The buffalo slaughter, which has been going on the past few years on the plains, and which increases every year, is wantonly wicked, and should be stopped by the most stringent enactments and most vigilant enforcements of the law. Killing these noble animals for their hides simply, or to gratify the pleasure of some Russian duke or English lord, is a species of vandalism which can not too quickly be checked. United States surveying parties report that there are two thousand hunters on the plains killing these animals for their hides. One party of sixteen hunters report having killed twenty-eight thousand buffaloes during the past summer. It seems to us there is quite as much reason why the Government should protect the buffaloes as the Indians.
Mr. McCormick considered the subject important, and had not a doubt of the fearful slaughter. He read the following extract from a letter that he had received from General Hazen:
I know a man who killed with his own hand ninety-nine buffaloes in one day, without taking a pound of the meat. The buffalo for food has an intrinsic value about equal to an average Texas beef, or say $20. There are probably not less than a million of these animals on the western plains. If the Government owned a herd of a million oxen they would at least take steps to prevent this wanton slaughter. The railroads have made the buffalo so accessible as to present a case not dissimilar.
He agreed with Mr. Cox that some features of the bill would probably be impracticable, and moved to amend it. He did not believe any bill would entirely accomplish the purpose, but he desired that such wanton slaughter should be stopped.
Said he, “It would have been well both for the Indians and the white men if an enactment of this kind had been placed on our statute-books years ago. * * * I know of no one act that would gratify the red men more.”
Mr. Holman expressed surprise that Mr. Cox should make any objection to parts of the measure. The former regarded the bill as “an effort in a most commendable direction,” and trusted that it would pass.
Mr. Cox said he would not have objected to the bill but from the fact that it was partial in its provisions. He wanted a bill that would impose a penalty on every man, red, white, or black, who may wantonly kill these buffaloes.
Mr. Potter desired to know whether more buffaloes were slaughtered by the Indians than by white men.
Mr. Fort thought the white men were doing the greatest amount of killing.
Mr. Eldridge thought there would be just as much propriety in killing the fish in our rivers as in destroying the buffalo in order to compel the Indians to become civilized.
Mr. Conger said: “As a matter of fact, every man knows the range of the buffalo has grown more and more confined year after year; that they have been driven westward before advancing civilization.” But he opposed the bill!
Mr. Hawley, of Connecticut, said: “I am glad to see this bill. I am in favor of this law, and hope it will pass.”
Mr. Lowe favored the bill, and thought that the buffalo ought to be protected for proper utility.
Mr. Cobb thought they ought to be protected for the settlers, who depended partly on them for food.
Mr. Parker, of Missouri, intimated that the policy of the Secretary of the Interior was a sound one, and that the buffaloes ought to be exterminated, to prevent difficulties in civilizing the Indians.
Said Mr. Conger, “I do not think the measure will tend at all to protect the buffalo.”
Mr. McCormick replied: “This bill will not prevent the killing of buffaloes for any useful purpose, but only their wanton destruction.”
Mr. Kasson said: “I wish to say one word in support of this bill, because I have had some experience as to the manner in which these buffaloes are treated by hunters. The buffalo is a creature of vast utility, * * *. This animal ought to be protected; * * *.”
The question being taken on the passage of the bill, there were—ayes 132, noes not counted.
So the bill was passed.
On June 23, 1874, this bill (H. R. 921) came up in the Senate.[74]
Mr. Harvey moved, as an amendment, to strike out the words “who is not an Indian.”
Said Mr. Hitchcock, “That will defeat the bill.”
Mr. Frelinghuysen said: “That would prevent the Indians from killing the buffalo on their own ground. I object to the bill.”
Mr. Sargent said: “I think we can pass the bill in the right shape without objection. Let us take it up. It is a very important one.”
Mr. Frelinghuysen withdrew his objection.
Mr. Harvey thought it was a very important bill, and withdrew his amendment.
The bill was reported to the Senate, ordered to a third reading, read the third time, and passed. It went to President Grant for signature, and expired in his hands at the adjournment of that session of Congress.
On February 2, 1874, Mr. Fort introduced a bill (H. R. 1689) to tax buffalo hides; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means.
On June 10, 1874, Mr. Dawes, from the Committee on Ways and Means, reported back the bill adversely, and moved that it be laid on the table.
Mr. Fort asked to have the bill referred to the Committee of the Whole, and it was so referred.
On February 2, 1874, Mr. R. C. McCormick, of Arizona, introduced in the House a bill (H. R. 1728) restricting the killing of the bison, or buffalo, on the public lands; which was referred to the Committee on the Public Lands, and never heard of more.
On January 31, 1876, Mr. Fort introduced a bill (H. R. 1719) to prevent the useless slaughter of buffaloes within the Territories of the United States, which was referred to the Committee on the Territories.[75]
The Committee on the Territories reported back the bill without amendment on February 23, 1876.[76] Its provisions were in every respect identical with those of the bill introduced by Mr. Fort in 1874, and which passed both houses.
In support of it Mr. Fort said: “The intention and object of this bill is to preserve them [the buffaloes] for the use of the Indians, whose homes are upon the public domain, and to the frontiersmen, who may properly use them for food. * * * They have been and are now being slaughtered in large numbers. * * * Thousands of these noble brutes are annually slaughtered out of mere wontonness. * * * This bill, just as it is now presented, passed the last Congress. It was not vetoed, but fell, as I understand, merely for want of time to consider it after having passed both houses.” He also intimated that the Government was using a great deal of money for cattle to furnish the Indians, while the buffalo was being wantonly destroyed, whereas they might be turned to their good.
Mr. Crounse wanted the words “who is not an Indian” struck out, so as to make the bill general. He thought Indians were to blame for the wanton destruction.
Mr. Fort thought the amendment unnecessary, and stated that he was informed that the Indians did not destroy the buffaloes wantonly.
Mr. Dunnell thought the bill one of great importance.
The Clerk read for him a letter from A. G. Brackett, lieutenant-colonel, Second United States Cavalry, stationed at Omaha Barracks, in which was a very urgent request to have Congress interfere to prevent the wholesale slaughter then going on.
Mr. Reagan thought the bill proper and right. He knew from personal experience how the wanton slaughtering was going on, and also that the Indians were not the ones who did it.
Mr. Townsend, of New York, saw no reason why a white man should not be allowed to kill a female buffalo as well as an Indian. He said it would be impracticable to have a separate law for each.
Mr. Maginnis did not agree with him. He thought the bill ought to pass as it stood.
Mr. Throckmorton thought that while the intention of the bill was a good one, yet it was mischievous and difficult to enforce, and would also work hardship to a large portion of our frontier people. He had several objections. He also thought a cow buffalo could not be distinguished at a distance.
Mr. Hancock, of Texas, thought the bill an impolicy, and that the sooner the buffalo was exterminated the better.
Mr. Fort replied by asking him why all the game—deer, antelope, etc.—was not slaughtered also. Then he went on to state that to exterminate the buffalo would be to starve innocent children of the red man, and to make the latter more wild and savage than he was already.
Mr. Baker, of Indiana, offered the following amendment as a substitute for the one already offered:
Provided, That any white person who shall employ, hire, or procure, directly or indirectly, any Indian to kill any buffalo forbidden to be killed by this act, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and punished in the manner provided in this act.
Mr. Fort stated that a certain clause in his bill covered the object of the amendment.
Mr. Jenks offered the following amendment:
Strike out in the fourth line of the second section the word “can” and insert “shall;” and in the second line of the same section insert the word “wantonly” before “kill;” so that the clause will read:
“That it shall be in like manner unlawful for any such person to wantonly kill, wound, or destroy in the said Territories any greater number of male buffaloes than are needed for food by such person, or than shall be used, cured, or preserved for the food of other persons, or for the market.”
Mr. Conger said: “I think the whole bill is unwise. I think it is a useless measure.”
Mr. Hancock said: “I move that the bill and amendment be laid on the table.”
The motion to lay the bill upon the table was defeated, and the amendment was rejected.
Mr. Conger called for a division on the passage of the bill. The House divided, and there were—ayes 93, noes 48. He then demanded tellers, and they reported—ayes 104, noes 36. So the bill was passed.
On February 25, 1876, the bill was reported to the Senate, and referred to the Committee on Territories, from whence it never returned.
On March 20, 1876, Mr. Fort introduced a bill (H. R. 2767) to tax buffalo hides; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and never heard of afterward.
This was the last move made in Congress in behalf of the buffalo. The philanthropic friends of the frontiersman, the Indian, and of the buffalo himself, despaired of accomplishing the worthy object for which they had so earnestly and persistently labored, and finally gave up the fight. At the very time the effort in behalf of buffalo protection was abandoned the northern herd still flourished, and might have been preserved from extirpation.
At various times the legislatures of a few of the Western States and Territories enacted laws vaguely and feebly intended to provide some sort of protection to the fast disappearing animals. One of the first was the game law of Colorado, passed in 1872, which declared that the killers of game should not leave any flesh to spoil. The western game laws of those days amounted to about as much as they do now; practically nothing at all. I have never been able to learn of a single instance, save in the Yellowstone Park, wherein a western hunter was prevented by so simple and innocuous a thing as a game law from killing game. Laws were enacted, but they were always left to enforce themselves. The idea of the frontiersman (the average, at least) has always been to kill as much game as possible before some other fellow gets a chance at it, and before it is all killed off! So he goes at the game, and as a general thing kills all he can while it lasts, and with it feeds himself and family, his dogs, and even his hogs, to repletion. I knew one Montana man north of Miles City who killed for his own use twenty-six black-tail deer in one season, and had so much more venison than he could consume or give away that a great pile of carcasses lay in his yard until spring and spoiled.
During the existence of the buffalo it was declared by many an impossibility to stop or prevent the slaughter. Such an accusation of weakness and imbecility on the part of the General Government is an insult to our strength and resources. The protection of game is now and always has been simply a question of money. A proper code of game laws and a reasonable number of salaried game-wardens, sworn to enforce them and punish all offenses against them, would have afforded the buffalo as much protection as would have been necessary to his continual existence. To be sure, many buffaloes would have been killed on the sly in spite of laws to the contrary, but it was wholesale slaughter that wrought the extermination, and that could easily have been prevented. A tax of 50 cents each on buffalo robes would have maintained a sufficient number of game-wardens to have reasonably regulated the killing, and maintained for an indefinite period a bountiful source of supply of food, and also raiment for both the white man of the plains and the Indian. By judicious management the buffalo could have been made to yield an annual revenue equal to that we now receive from the fur-seals—$100,000 per year.
During the two great periods of slaughter—1870-’75 and 1880-’84—the principal killing grounds were as well known as the stock-yards of Chicago. Had proper laws been enacted, and had either the general or territorial governments entered with determination upon the task of restricting the killing of buffaloes to proper limits, their enforcement would have been, in the main, as simple and easy as the collection of taxes. Of course the solitary hunter in a remote locality would have bowled over his half dozen buffaloes in secure defiance of the law; but such desultory killing could not have made much impression on the great mass for many years. The business-like, wholesale slaughter, wherein one hunter would openly kill five thousand buffaloes and market perhaps two thousand hides, could easily have been stopped forever. Buffalo hides could not have been dealt in clandestinely, for many reasons, and had there been no sale for ill-gotten spoils the still-hunter would have gathered no spoils to sell. It was an undertaking of considerable magnitude, and involving a cash outlay of several hundred dollars to make up an “outfit” of wagons, horses, arms and ammunition, food, etc., for a trip to “the range” after buffaloes. It was these wholesale hunters, both in the North and the South, who exterminated the species, and to say that all such undertakings could not have been effectually prevented by law is to accuse our law-makers and law-officers of imbecility to a degree hitherto unknown. There is nowhere in this country, nor in any of the waters adjacent to it, a living species of any kind which the United States Government can not fully and perpetually protect from destruction by human agencies if it chooses to do so. The destruction of the buffalo was a loss of wealth perhaps twenty times greater than the sum it would have cost to conserve it, and this stupendous waste of valuable food and other products was committed by one class of the American people and permitted by another with a prodigality and wastefulness which even in the lowest savages would be inexcusable.
V. Completeness of the Extermination.
(May 1, 1889.)
Although the existence of a few widely-scattered individuals enables us to say that the bison is not yet absolutely extinct in a wild state, there is no reason to hope that a single wild and unprotected individual will remain alive ten years hence. The nearer the species approaches to complete extermination, the more eagerly are the wretched fugitives pursued to the death whenever found. Western hunters are striving for the honor (?) of killing the last buffalo, which, it is to be noted, has already been slain about a score of times by that number of hunters.
The buffaloes still alive in a wild state are so very few, and have been so carefully “marked down” by hunters, it is possible to make a very close estimate of the total number remaining. In this enumeration the small herd in the Yellowstone National Park is classed with other herds in captivity and under protection, for the reason that, had it not been for the protection afforded by the law and the officers of the Park, not one of these buffaloes would be living to-day. Were the restrictions of the law removed now, every one of those animals would be killed within three months. Their heads alone are worth from $25 to $50 each to taxidermists, and for this reason every buffalo is a prize worth the hunter’s winning. Had it not been for stringent laws, and a rigid enforcement of them by Captain Harris, the last of the Park buffaloes would have been shot years ago by Vic. Smith, the Rea Brothers, and other hunters, of whom there is always an able contingent around the Park.
In the United States the death of a buffalo is now such an event that it is immediately chronicled by the Associated Press and telegraphed all over the country. By reason of this, and from information already in hand, we are able to arrive at a very fair understanding of the present condition of the species in a wild state.
In December, 1886, the Smithsonian expedition left about fifteen buffaloes alive in the bad lands of the Missouri-Yellowstone divide, at the head of Big Porcupine Creek. In 1887 three of these were killed by cowboys, and in 1888 two more, the last death recorded being that of an old bull killed near Billings. There are probably eight or ten stragglers still remaining in that region, hiding in the wildest and most broken tracts of the bad lands, as far as possible from the cattle ranches, and where even cowboys seldom go save on a round-up. From the fact that no other buffaloes, at least so far as can be learned, have been killed in Montana during the last two years, I am convinced that the bunch referred to are the last representatives of the species remaining in Montana.
In the spring of 1886 Mr. B. C. Winston, while on a hunting trip about 75 miles west of Grand Rapids, Dakota, saw seven buffaloes—five adult animals and two calves; of which he killed one, a large bull, and caught a calf alive. On September 11, 1888, a solitary bull was killed 3 miles from the town of Oakes, in Dickey County. There are still three individuals in the unsettled country lying between that point and the Missouri, which are undoubtedly the only wild representatives of the race east of the Missouri River.
On April 28, 1887, Dr. William Stephenson, of the United States Army, wrote me as follows from Pilot Butte, about 30 miles north of Rock Springs, Wyoming:
“There are undoubtedly buffalo within 50 or 60 miles of here, two having been killed out of a band of eighteen some ten days since by cowboys, and another band of four seen near there. I hear from cattlemen of their being seen every year north and northeast of here.”
This band was seen once in 1888. In February, 1889, Hon. Joseph M. Carey, member of Congress from Wyoming, received a letter informing him that this band of buffaloes, consisting of twenty-six head, had been seen grazing in the Red Desert of Wyoming, and that the Indians were preparing to attack it. At Judge Carey’s request the Indian Bureau issued orders which it was hoped would prevent the slaughter. So, until further developments, we have the pleasure of recording the presence of twenty-six wild buffaloes in southern Wyoming.
There are no buffaloes whatever in the vicinity of the Yellowstone Park, either in Wyoming, Montana, or Idaho, save what wander out of that reservation, and when any do, they are speedily killed.
There is a rumor that there are ten or twelve mountain buffaloes still on foot in Colorado, in a region called Lost Park, and, while it lacks confirmation, we gladly accept it as a fact. In 1888 Mr. C. B. Cory, of Boston, saw in Denver, Colorado, eight fresh buffalo skins, which it was said had come from the region named above. In 1885 there was a herd of about forty “mountain buffalo” near South Park, and although some of the number may still survive, the indications are that the total number of wild buffaloes in Colorado does not exceed twenty individuals.
In Texas a miserable remnant of the great southern herd still remains in the “Pan-handle country,” between the two forks of the Canadian River. In 1886 about two hundred head survived, which number by the summer of 1887 had been reduced to one hundred, or less. In the hunting season of 1887-’88 a ranchman named Lee Howard fitted out and led a strong party into the haunts of the survivors, and killed fifty-two of them. In May, 1888, Mr. C. J. Jones again visited this region for the purpose of capturing buffaloes alive. His party found, from first to last, thirty-seven buffaloes, of which they captured eighteen head, eleven adult cows and seven calves; the greatest feat ever accomplished in buffalo-hunting. It is highly probable that Mr. Jones and his men saw about all the buffaloes now living in the Pan-handle country, and it therefore seems quite certain that not over twenty-five individuals remain. These are so few, so remote, and so difficult to reach, it is to be hoped no one will consider them worth going after, and that they will be left to take care of themselves. It is greatly to be regretted that the State of Texas does not feel disposed to make a special effort for their protection and preservation.
In regard to the existence of wild buffaloes in the British Possessions, the statements of different authorities are at variance, by far the larger number holding the opinion that there are in all the Northwest Territory only a few almost solitary stragglers. But there is still good reason for the hope, and also the belief, that there still remain in Athabasca, between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers, at least a few hundred “wood buffalo.” In a very interesting and well-considered article in the London Field of November 10, 1888, Mr. Miller Christy quotes all the available positive evidence bearing on this point, and I gladly avail myself of the opportunity to reproduce it here:
“The Hon. Dr. Schulz, in the recent debate on the Mackenzie River basin, in the Canadian senate, quoted Senator Hardisty, of Edmonton, of the Hudson’s Bay Company, to the effect that the wood buffalo still existed in the region in question. ‘It was,’ he said, ‘difficult to estimate how many; but probably five or six hundred still remain in scattered bands.’ There had been no appreciable difference in their numbers, he thought, during the last fifteen years, as they could not be hunted on horseback, on account of the wooded character of the country, and were, therefore, very little molested. They are larger than the buffalo of the great plains, weighing at least 150 pounds more. They are also coarser haired and straighter horned.
“The doctor also quoted Mr. Frank Oliver, of Edmonton, to the effect that the wood buffalo still exists in small numbers between the Lower Peace and Great Slave Rivers, extending westward from the latter to the Salt River in latitude 60 degrees, and also between the Peace and Athabasca Rivers. He states that ‘they are larger than the prairie buffalo, and the fur is darker, but practically they are the same animal.’ ...Some buffalo meat is brought in every winter to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s posts nearest the buffalo ranges.
“Dr. Schulz further stated that he had received the following testimony from Mr. Donald Ross, of Edmonton: The wood buffalo still exists in the localities named. About 1870 one was killed as far west on Peace River as Port Dunvegan. They are quite different from the prairie buffalo, being nearly double the size, as they will dress fully 700 pounds.”
It will be apparent to most observers, I think, that Mr. Ross’s statement in regard to the size of the wood buffalo is a random shot.
In a private letter to the writer, under date of October 22, 1887, Mr. Harrison S. Young, of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s post at Edmonton, writes as follows:
“The buffalo are not yet extinct in the Northwest. There are still some stray ones on the prairies away to the south of this, but they must be very few. I am unable to find any one who has personal knowledge of the killing of one during the last two years, though I have since the receipt of your letter questioned a good many half-breeds on the subject. In our district of Athabasca, along the Salt River, there are still a few wood buffalo killed every year, but they are fast diminishing in numbers and are also becoming very shy.”
In his “Manitoba and the Great Northwest” Prof. John Macoun has this to say regarding the presence of the wood buffalo in the region referred to:
“The wood buffalo, when I was on the Peace River in 1875, were confined to the country lying between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers north of latitude 57° 30', or chiefly in the Birch Hills. They were also said to be in some abundance on the Salt and Hay Rivers, running into the Save River north of Peace River. The herds thirteen years ago [now nineteen] were supposed to number about one thousand, all told. I believe many still exist, as the Indians of that region eat fish, which are much easier procured than either buffalo or moose, and the country is much too difficult for white men.”
All this evidence, when carefully considered, resolves itself into simply this and no more: The only evidence in favor of the existence of any live buffaloes between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers is in the form of very old rumors, most of them nearly fifteen years old; time enough for the Indians to have procured fire-arms in abundance and killed all those buffaloes two or three times over.
Mr. Miller Christy takes “the mean of the estimates,” and assumes that there are now about five hundred and fifty buffaloes in the region named. If we are to believe in the existence there of any stragglers his estimate is a fair one, and we will gladly accept it. The total is therefore as follows:
Number of American bison running wild and unprotected on January 1, 1889.
| In the Pan-handle of Texas | 25 |
| In Colorado | 20 |
| In southern Wyoming | 26 |
| In the Musselshell country, Montana | 10 |
| In western Dakota | 4 |
| Total number in the United States | 85 |
| In Athabasca, Northwest Territory (estimated) | 550 |
| Total in all North America | 635 |
Add to the above the total number already recorded in captivity (256) and those under Government protection in the Yellowstone Park (200), and the whole number of individuals of Bison americanus now living is 1,091.
From this time it is probable that many rumors of the sudden appearance of herds of buffaloes will become current. Already there have been three or four that almost deserve special mention. The first appeared in March, 1887, when various Western newspapers published a circumstantial account of how a herd of about three hundred buffaloes swam the Missouri River about 10 miles above Bismarck, near the town of Painted Woods, and ran on in a southwesterly direction. A letter of inquiry, addressed to Mr. S. A. Peterson, postmaster at Painted Woods, elicited the following reply:
“The whole rumor is false, and without any foundation. I saw it first in the —— newspaper, where I believe it originated.”
In these days of railroads and numberless hunting parties, there is not the remotest possibility of there being anywhere in the United States a herd of a hundred, or even fifty, buffaloes which has escaped observation. Of the eighty-five head still existing in a wild state it may safely be predicted that not even one will remain alive five years hence. A buffalo is now so great a prize, and by the ignorant it is considered so great an honor(!) to kill one, that extraordinary exertions will be made to find and shoot down without mercy the “last buffalo.”
There is no possible chance for the race to be perpetuated in a wild state, and in a few years more hardly a bone will remain above ground to mark the existence of the must prolific mammalian species that ever existed, so far as we know.
VI. Effects of the Extermination.
The buffalo supplied the Indian with food, clothing, shelter, bedding, saddles, ropes, shields, and innumerable smaller articles of use and ornament In the United States a paternal government takes the place of the buffalo in supplying all these wants of the red man, and it costs several millions of dollars annually to accomplish the task.
The following are the tribes which depended very largely—some almost wholly—upon the buffalo for the necessities, and many of the luxuries, of their savage life until the Government began to support them:
| Sioux | 30,561 |
| Crow | 3,226 |
| Piegan, Blood, and Blackfeet | 2,026 |
| Cheyenne | 3,477 |
| Gros Ventres | 856 |
| Arickaree | 517 |
| Mandan | 283 |
| Bannack and Shoshone | 2,001 |
| Nez Percé | 1,460 |
| Assinniboine | 1,688 |
| Kiowas and Comanches | 2,756 |
| Arapahoes | 1,217 |
| Apache | 332 |
| Ute | 978 |
| Omaha | 1,160 |
| Pawnee | 998 |
| Winnebago | 1,222 |
| Total | 54,758 |
This enumeration (from the census of 1886) leaves entirely out of consideration many thousands of Indians living in the Indian Territory and other portions of the Southwest, who drew an annual supply of meat and robes from the chase of the buffalo, notwithstanding the fact that their chief dependence was upon agriculture.
The Indians of what was once the buffalo country are not starving and freezing, for the reason that the United States Government supplies them regularly with beef and blankets in lieu of buffalo. Does any one imagine that the Government could not have regulated the killing of buffaloes, and thus maintained the supply, for far less money than it now costs to feed and clothe those 54,758 Indians!
How is it with the Indians of the British Possessions to-day?
Prof. John Maconn writes as follows in his “Manitoba and the Great Northwest,” page 342:
“During the last three years [prior to 1883] the great herds have been kept south of our boundary, and, as the result of this, our Indians have been on the verge of starvation. When the hills were covered with countless thousands [of buffaloes] in 1877, the Blackfeet were dying of starvation in 1879.”
During the winter of 1886-’87, destitution and actual starvation prevailed to an alarming extent among certain tribes of Indians in the Northwest Territory who once lived bountifully on the buffalo. A terrible tale of suffering in the Athabasca and Peace River country has recently (1888) come to the minister of the interior of the Canadian government, in the form of a petition signed by the bishop of that diocese, six clergymen and missionaries, and several justices of the peace. It sets forth that “owing to the destruction of game, the Indians, both last winter and last summer, have been in a state of starvation. They are now in a complete state of destitution, and are utterly unable to provide themselves with clothing, shelter, ammunition, or food for the coming winter.” The petition declares that on account of starvation, and consequent cannibalism, a party of twenty-nine Cree Indians was reduced to three in the winter of 1886.[77] Of the Fort Chippewyan Indians, between twenty and thirty starved to death last winter, and the death of many more was hastened by want of food and by famine diseases. Many other Indians—Crees, Beavers, and Chippewyans—at almost all points where there are missions or trading posts, would certainly have starved to death but for the help given them by the traders and missionaries at those places. It is now declared by the signers of the memorial that scores of families, having lost their heads by starvation, are now perfectly helpless, and during the coming winter must either starve to death or eat one another unless help comes. Heart-rending stories of suffering and cannibalism continue to come in from what was once the buffalo plains.
If ever thoughtless people were punished for their reckless improvidence, the Indians and half-breeds of the Northwest Territory are now paying the penalty for the wasteful slaughter of the buffalo a few short years ago. The buffalo is his own avenger, to an extent his remorseless slayers little dreamed he ever could be.
VII. Preservation of the Species from Absolute Extinction.
There is reason to fear that unless the United States Government takes the matter in hand and makes a special effort to prevent it, the pure-blood bison will be lost irretrievably through mixture with domestic breeds and through in-and-in breeding.
The fate of the Yellowstone Park herd is, to say the least, highly uncertain. A distinguished Senator, who is deeply interested in legislation for the protection of the National Park reservation, has declared that the pressure from railway corporations, which are seeking a foot-hold in the park, has become so great and so aggressive that he fears the park will “eventually be broken up.” In any such event, the destruction of the herd of park buffaloes would be one of the very first results. If the park is properly maintained, however, it is to be hoped that the buffaloes now in it will remain there and increase indefinitely.
As yet there are only two captive buffaloes in the possession of the Government, viz, those in the Department of Living Animals of the National Museum, presented by Hon. E. G. Blackford, of New York. The buffaloes now in the Zoological Gardens of the country are but few in number, and unless special pains be taken to prevent it, by means of judicious exchanges, from time to time, these will rapidly deteriorate in size, and within a comparatively short time run out entirely, through continued in-and-in breeding. It is said that even the wild aurochs in the forests of Lithuania are decreasing in size and, in number from this cause.
With private owners of captive buffaloes, the temptations to produce cross-breeds will be so great that it is more than likely the breeding of pure-blood buffaloes will be neglected. Indeed, unless some stockman like Mr. C. J. Jones takes particular pains to protect his full blood buffaloes, and keep the breed absolutely pure, in twenty years there will not be a pure-blood animal of that species on any stock farm in this country. Under existing conditions, the constant tendency of the numerous domestic forms is to absorb and utterly obliterate the few wild ones.
If we may judge from the examples set as by European governments, it is clearly the duty of our Government to act in this matter, and act promptly, with a degree of liberality and promptness which can not be otherwise than highly gratifying to every American citizen and every friend of science throughout the world. The Fiftieth Congress, at its last session, responded to the call made upon it, and voted $200,000 for the establishment of a National Zoological Park in the District of Columbia on a grand scale. One of the leading purposes it is destined to serve is the preservation and breeding in comfortable, and so far as space is concerned, luxurious captivity of a number of fine specimens of every species of American quadruped now threatened with extermination.[78]
At least eight or ten buffaloes of pure breed should be secured very soon by the Zoological Park Commission, by gift if possible, and cared for with special reference to keeping the breed absolutely pure, and keeping the herd from deteriorating and dying out through in-and-in breeding.
The total expense would be trifling in comparison with the importance of the end to be gained, and in that way we might, in a small measure, atone for our neglect of the means which would have protected the great herds from extinction. In this way, by proper management, it will be not only possible but easy to preserve fine living representatives of this important species for centuries to come.
The result of continuing in-breeding is certain extinction. Its progress may be so slow as to make no impression upon the mind of a herd-owner, but the end is only a question of time. The fate of a majority of the herds of British wild cattle (Bos urus) warn us what to expect with the American bison under similar circumstances. Of the fourteen herds of wild cattle which were in existence in England and Scotland during the early part of the present century, direct descendants of the wild herds found in Great Britain, nine have become totally extinct through in breeding.
The five herds remaining are those at Somerford Park, Blickling Hall, Woodbastwick, Chartley, and Chillingham.
PART III.—THE SMITHSONIAN EXPEDITION FOR MUSEUM SPECIMENS.
I. The Exploration.
During the first three months of the year 1886 it was ascertained by the writer, then chief taxidermist of the National Museum, that the extermination of the American bison had made most alarming progress. By extensive correspondence it was learned that the destruction of all the large herds, both North and South, was already an accomplished fact. While it was generally supposed that at least a few thousand individuals still inhabited the more remote and inaccessible regions of what once constituted the great northern buffalo range, it was found that the actual number remaining in the whole United States was probably less than three hundred.
By some authorities who were consulted it was considered an impossibility to procure a large series of specimens anywhere in this country, while others asserted positively that there were no wild buffaloes south of the British possessions save those in the Yellowstone National Park. Canadian authorities asserted with equal positiveness that none remained in their territory.
A careful inventory of the specimens in the collection of the National Museum revealed the fact that, with the exception of one mounted female skin, another unmounted, and one mounted skeleton of a male buffalo, the Museum was actually without presentable specimens of this most important and interesting mammal.
Besides those mentioned above, the collection contained only two old, badly mounted, and dilapidated skins, (one of which had been taken in summer, and therefore was not representative), an incomplete skeleton, some fragmentary skulls of no value, and two mounted heads. Thus it appeared that the Museum was unable to show a series of specimens, good or bad, or even one presentable male of good size.
In view of this alarming state of affairs, coupled with the already declared extinction of Bison americanus, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Prof. Spencer F. Baird, determined to send a party into the field at once to find wild buffalo, if any were still living, and in case any were found to collect a number of specimens. Since it seemed highly uncertain whether any other institution, or any private individual, would have the opportunity to collect a large supply of specimens before it became too late, it was decided by the Secretary that the Smithsonian Institution should undertake the task of providing for the future as liberally as possible. For the benefit of the smaller scientific museums of the country, and for others which will come into existence during the next half century, it was resolved to collect at all hazards, in case buffalo could be found, between eighty and one hundred specimens of various kinds, of which from twenty to thirty should be skins, an equal number should be complete skeletons, and of skulls at least fifty.
In view of the great scarcity of buffalo and the general belief that it might be a work of some months to find any specimens, even if it were possible to find any at all, it was determined not to risk the success of the undertaking by delaying it until the regular autumn hunting season, but to send a party into the field at once to prosecute a search. It was resolved to discover at all hazards the whereabouts of any buffalo that might still remain in this country in a wild state, and, if possible, to reach them before the shedding of their winter pelage. It very soon became apparent, however, that the latter would prove an utter impossibility.
Late in the month of April a letter was received from Dr. J. C. Merrill, United States Army, dated at Huntley, Montana, giving information of reports that buffalo were still to be found in three localities in the Northwest, viz: on the headwaters of the Powder River, Wyoming; in Judith Basin, Montana; and on Big Dry Creek, also in Montana. The reports in regard to the first two localities proved to be erroneous. It was ascertained to a reasonable certainty that there still existed in southwestern Dakota a small band of six or eight wild buffaloes, while from the Pan-handle of Texas there came reports of the existence there, in small scattered hands, of about two hundred head. The buffalo known to be in Dakota were far too few in number to justify a long and expensive search, while those in Texas, on the Canadian River, were too difficult to reach to make it advisable to hunt them save as a last resort. It was therefore decided to investigate the localities named in the Northwest.
Through the courtesy of the Secretary of War, an order was sent to the officer commanding the Department of Dakota, requesting him to furnish the party, through the officers in command at Forts Keogh, Maginnis, and McKinney, such field transportation, escort, and camp equipage as might be necessary, and also to sell to the party such commissary stores as might be required, at cost price, plus 10 per cent. The Secretary of the Interior also favored the party with an order, directing all Indian agents, scouts, and others in the service of the Department to render assistance as far as possible when called upon.
In view of the public interest attaching to the results of the expedition, the railway transportation of the party to and from Montana was furnished entirely without cost to the Smithsonian Institution. For these valuable courtesies we gratefully acknowledge our obligations to Mr. Frank Thomson, of the Pennsylvania Railroad; Mr. Roswell Miller, of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul; and Mr. Robert Harris, of the Northern Pacific.
Under orders from the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the writer left Washington on May 6, accompanied by A. H. Forney, assistant in the department of taxidermy, and George H. Hedley, of Medina, New York. It had been decided that Miles City, Montana, might properly be taken as the first objective point, and that town was reached on May 9.
Diligent inquiry in Miles City and at Fort Keogh, 2 miles distant, revealed the fact that no one knew of the presence of any wild buffalo anywhere in the Northwest, save within the protected limits of the Yellowstone Park. All inquiries elicited the same reply: “There are no buffalo any more, and you can’t get any anywhere.” Many persons who were considered good authority declared most positively that there was not a live buffalo in the vicinity of Big Dry Creek, nor anywhere between the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers. An army officer from Fort Maginnis testified to the total absence of buffalo in the Judith Basin, and ranchmen from Wyoming asserted that none remained in the Powder River country.
Just at this time it was again reported to us, and most opportunely confirmed by Mr. Henry E. Phillips, owner of the LU-bar ranch on Little Dry Creek, that there still remained a chance to find a few buffalo in the country lying south of the Big Dry. On the other hand, other persons who seemed to be fully informed regarding that very region and the animal life it contained, assured us that not a single buffalo remained there, and that a search in that direction would prove fruitless. But the balance of evidence, however, seemed to lie in favor of the Big Dry country, and we resolved to hunt through it with all possible dispatch.
On the afternoon of May 13 we crossed the Yellowstone and started northwest up the trail which leads along Sunday Creek. Our entire party consisted of the two assistants already mentioned, a non-commissioned officer, Sergeant Garone, and four men from the Fifth Infantry acting as escort; Private Jones, also from the Fifth Infantry, detailed to act as our cook, and a teamster. Our conveyance consisted of a six-mule team, which, like the escort, was ordered out for twenty days only, and provided accordingly. Before leaving Miles City we purchased two saddle-horses for use in hunting, the equipments for which were furnished by the ordnance department at Fort Keogh.
During the first two days’ travel through the bad lands north of the Yellowstone no mammals were seen save prairie-dogs and rabbits. On the third day a few antelope were seen, but none killed. It is to be borne in mind that this entire region is absolutely treeless everywhere save along the margins of the largest streams. Bushes are also entirely absent, with the exception of sage-brush, and even that does not occur to any extent on the divides.
On the third day two young buck antelopes were shot at the Red Buttes. One had already commenced to shed his hair, but the other had not quite reached that point. We prepared the skin of the first specimen and the skeleton of the other. This was the only good antelope skin we obtained in the spring, those of all the other specimens taken being quite worthless on account of the looseness of the hair. During the latter part of May, and from that time on until the long winter hair is completely shed, it falls off in handfuls at the slightest pressure, leaving the skin clad only with a thin growth of new, mouse-colored hair an eighth of an inch long.
After reaching Little Dry Creek and hunting through the country on the west side of it nearly to its confluence with the Big Dry we turned southwest, and finally went into permanent camp on Phillips Creek, 8 miles above the LU-bar ranch and 4 miles from the Little Dry. At that point we were about 80 miles from Miles City.
From information furnished us by Mr. Phillips and the cowboys in his employ, we were assured that about thirty-five head of buffalo ranged in the bad lands between Phillips Creek and the Musselshell River and south of the Big Dry. This tract of country was about 40 miles long from east to west by 25 miles wide, and therefore of about 1,000 square miles in area. Excepting two temporary cowboy camps it was totally uninhabited by man, treeless, without any running streams, save in winter and spring, and was mostly very hilly and broken.
In this desolate and inhospitable country the thirty-five buffaloes alluded to had been seen, first on Sand Creek, then at the head of the Big Porcupine, again near the Musselshell, and latest near the head of the Little Dry. As these points were all from 15 to 30 miles distant from each other, the difficulty of finding such a small herd becomes apparent.
Although Phillips Creek was really the eastern boundary of the buffalo country, it was impossible for a six-mule wagon to proceed beyond it, at least at that point. Having established a permanent camp, the Government wagon and its escort returned to Fort Keogh, and we proceeded to hunt through the country between Sand Creek and the Little Dry. The absence of nearly all the cowboys on the spring round-up, which began May 20, threatened to be a serious drawback to us, as we greatly needed the services of a man who was acquainted with the country. We had with us as a scout and guide a Cheyenne Indian, named Dog, but it soon became apparent that he knew no more about the country than we did. Fortunately, however, we succeeded in occasionally securing the services of a cowboy, which was of great advantage to us.
It was our custom to ride over the country daily, each day making a circuit through a new locality, and covering as much ground as it was possible to ride over in a day. It was also our custom to take trips of from two to four days in length, during which we carried our blankets and rations upon our horses and camped wherever night overtook us, provided water could be found.
Our first success consisted in the capture of a buffalo calf, which from excessive running had become unable to keep up with its mother, and had been left behind. The calf was caught alive without any difficulty, and while two of the members of our party carried it to camp across a horse, the other two made a vigorous effort to discover the band of adult animals. The effort was unsuccessful, for, besides the calf, no other buffaloes were seen.
Ten days after the above event two bull buffaloes were met with on the Little Dry, 15 miles above the LU-bar ranch, one of which was overtaken and killed, but the other got safely away. The shedding of the winter coat was in full progress. On the head, neck, and shoulders the old hair had been entirely replaced by the new, although the two coats were so matted together that the old hair clung in tangled masses to the other. The old hair was brown and weather-beaten, but the new, which was from 3 to 6 inches long, had a peculiar bluish-gray appearance. On the head the new hair was quite black, and contrasted oddly with the lighter color. On the body and hind quarters there were large patches of skin which were perfectly bare, between which lay large patches of old, woolly, brown hair. This curious condition gave the animal a very unkempt and “seedy” appearance, the effect of which was heightened by the long, shaggy locks of old, weather beaten hair which clung to the new coat of the neck and shoulders like tattered signals of distress, ready to be blown away by the first gust of wind.
This specimen was a large one, measuring 5 feet 4 inches in height. Inasmuch as the skin was not in condition to mount, we took only the skeleton, entire, and the skin of the head and neck.
The capture of the calf and the death of this bull proved conclusively that there were buffaloes in that region, and also that they were breeding in comparative security. The extent of the country they had to range over made it reasonably certain that their number would not be diminished to any serious extent by the cowboys on the spring round-up, although it was absolutely certain that in a few months the members of that band would all be killed. The report of the existence of a herd of thirty-five head was confirmed later by cowboys, who had actually seen the animals, and killed two of them merely for sport, as usual. They saved a few pounds of hump meat, and all the rest became food for the wolves and foxes.
It was therefore resolved to leave the buffaloes entirely unmolested until autumn, and then, when the robes would be in the finest condition, return for a hunt on a liberal scale. Accordingly, it was decided to return to Washington without delay, and a courier was dispatched with a request for transportation to carry our party back to Fort Keogh.
While awaiting the arrival of the wagons, a cowboy in the employ of the Phillips Land and Cattle Company killed a solitary bull buffalo about 15 miles west of our camp, near Sand Creek. This animal had completely shed the hair on his body and hind quarters. In addition to the preservation of his entire skeleton, we prepared the skin also, as an example of the condition of the buffalo immediately after shedding.
On June 6 the teams from Fort Keogh arrived, and we immediately returned to Miles City, taking with us our live buffalo calf, two fresh buffalo skeletons, three bleached skeletons, seven skulls, one skin entire, and one head skin, in addition to a miscellaneous collection of skins and skeletons of smaller mammals and birds. On reaching Miles City we hastily packed and shipped our collection, and, taking the calf with us, returned at once to Washington.
II. The Hunt.
On September 24 I arrived at Miles City a second time, fully equipped for a protracted hunt for buffalo; this time accompanied only by W. Harvey Brown, a student of the University of Kansas, as field assistant, having previously engaged three cowboys as guides and hunters—Irwin Boyd, James McNaney, and L. S. Russell. Messrs. Boyd and Russell were in Miles City awaiting my arrival, and Mr. McNaney joined us in the field a few days later. Mr. Boyd acted as my foreman during the entire hunt, a position which he filled to my entire satisfaction.
Thanks to the energy and good-will of the officers at Fort Keogh, of which Lieutenant-Colonel Cochran was then in command, our transportation, camp equipage, and stores were furnished without an hour’s delay. We purchased two months’ supplies of commissary stores, a team, and two saddle-horses, and hired three more horses, a light wagon, and a set of double harness. Each of the cowboys furnished one horse; so that in our outfit we had ten head, a team, and two good saddle-horses for each hunter. The worst feature of the whole question of subsistence was the absolute necessity of hauling a supply of grain from Miles City into the heart of the buffalo country for our ten horses. For such work as they had to encounter it was necessary to feed them constantly and liberally with oats in order to keep them in condition to do their work. We took with us 2,000 pounds of oats, and by the beginning of November as much more had to be hauled up to us.
Thirty six hours after our arrival in Miles City our outfit was complete, and we crossed the Yellowstone and started up the Sunday Creek trail. We had from Fort Keogh a six-mule team, an escort of four men, in charge of Sergeant Bayliss, and an old veteran of more than twenty years’ service, from the Fifth Infantry, Private Patrick McCanna, who was detailed to act as cook and camp-guard for our party during our stay in the field.
On September 29 we reached Tow’s ranch, the HV, on Big Dry Creek (erroneously called Big Timber Creek on most maps of Montana), at the mouth of Sand Creek, which here flows into it from the southwest. This point is said to be 90 miles from Miles City. Here we received our freight from the six-mule wagon, loaded it with bleached skeletons and skulls of buffalo, and started it back to the post. One member of the escort, Private C. S. West, who was then on two months’ furlough, elected to join our party for the hunt, and accordingly remained with us to its close. Leaving half of our freight stored at the HV ranch, we loaded the remainder upon our own wagon, and started up Sand Creek.
