The Little Buffalo Country.
Major Jarvis, accompanied by Mr. Thompson Seton and Mr. E. A. Preble, naturalists, made a third trip by canoe into the buffalo country from a point on Slave river below Fort Smith. A water and portage route of five and a half miles took them to the Little Buffalo, down which they paddled to its mouth. On this trip fresh signs of buffalo were seen, but no buffalo.
The Inspector writes in his report of this trip:—“We saw three bear, three beaver, and some duck along this part of the river, and all along we saw numerous signs, and fresh, of beaver, rat and mink. We also saw an exposure of limestone on the left bank during the afternoon. We found the river abounding with jackfish, Mr. Preble catching four with a troll in a very short time. During the night Buffalo river seemed to be alive with mink swimming forwards and backwards across it.”
As a result of Major Jarvis’s report more stringent regulations regarding the protection of the buffalo were put into force. A system of occasional patrols by selected non-commissioned officers and men of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police into the buffalo country was inaugurated, and some resident hunters were engaged as special constables.
A Band of Seventy-Five.
Corporal Mellor, Royal Northwest Mounted Police, on a patrol into the buffalo country southwest of Smith Landing in 1909, found buffalo tracks very numerous at Beaver lake and also on the “Big Salt prairie” at Hay lake and about Peace point. In the district last named Corporal Mellor was able to get within five yards of a band of about seventy-five buffalo, and obtained a good look at them. He says in his report:—“Owing to the fact that many of them were hidden from view in the bush, I was unable to count them correctly. Those nearest to view were nine large bulls, all splendid animals and rolling fat. I saw only four calves in the band, although there may have been more in the bush, but the guide, after examining the tracks, told me that there were no more. We tried to get around to see them all, but something alarmed them and off they went. This band was evidently composed of the different small bands whose tracks we had been following at times.”
In the summer of 1910 Sergeant Mellor, accompanied by Constable Johnson, ascended Big Buffalo river from Sulphur point on Great Slave lake to Buffalo lake. The main object was to determine as far as possible the northern boundary of the wood bison habitat. As a result of his exploration Sergeant Mellor concludes that the wood bison never range as far as Buffalo lake, nor across the Caribou hills, neither do they reach Great Slave lake at any point; on the other hand, they come close to Slave river from a point about fifty miles below Fort Smith right up to Peace river, and also reach Peace river, at any rate, as far as Jackfish river. Their habitat would therefore appear, he says, to be bounded on the west by Caribou mountains, on the south by Peace river, on the east by Slave river, and on the north by an imaginary line drawn from Caribou mountains on the west to Slave river on the east, touching the latter at about Point Ennuyeuse, and the former about fifty miles south of Buffalo lake. The buffalo have, as far as he could make out from careful inquiry, never been seen for many years north of these two points.
A Tremendous Animal.
Mr. H. A. Conroy of the Indian Department, in his evidence before the Senate committee of 1907, said that he believed that there were then approximately three hundred and fifty wood buffalo still roaming wild at that date. He obtained a specimen for the Department of Agriculture in 1906 to be mounted. The Indians got it for him. This herd are the only wild buffalo on the continent, he believed. They are very large, much larger than the plains buffalo. One old Indian told the witness that years ago they found a herd of buffalo between Liard and Hay rivers, and one time they got a herd of them at Fort Providence, and they slaughtered all that were in there. There had since been a close season for buffalo for a good many years. The skin of the buffalo that the witness procured for the department was a tremendous size, and he would say that the animal must have weighed fourteen or fifteen hundred pounds. Mr. Conroy in his evidence said:—“You do not require to enforce the law to protect the buffalo. The Indians will not kill them. They want to preserve them as much as any one else. They are the Wood Cree Indians in the country north, as far as the 60th parallel, and the Chipewyans north of latitude 60 degrees, until you come to the Aleutians or Esquimaux. The Indians think if the buffalo are gone they will have nothing left. The Wood Crees are benefiting by the errors of the Indians south of the Saskatchewan. They know that the buffalo are all gone, south of them, and they want to protect the wood buffalo.”
Sergeant R. W. Macleod, Royal Northwest Mounted Police, in the report of his long patrol across country in December 1910 from Fort Vermilion to the mouth of Hay river on Great Slave lake, corroborates the final statement of Mr. Conroy. The sergeant states:—“The Indians I met were familiar with the regulations for the protection of the buffalo and protested strongly against a white man being permitted to kill any. The Indians told me the extreme western range of the buffalo is thirty-five or forty miles east of Buffalo lake, and there is certainly no feed for them in any part of the country I passed over.”