THE PASSING OF THE BUFFALO.
To the old trapper and hunter of the palmy days of '68 and '70, I dedicate this chapter. That time is now faded into the past, and so far faded, indeed, that the present generation knows not its sympathy nor its sentiment.
The buffalo—as my thoughts turn to the past, the memory of their "age" (if I may so call it) crowds upon me. I remember when the eye could not measure their numbers. I saw a herd delay a railroad train from 9 o'clock in the morning until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. Countless millions, divided by its leaders and captains like an immense army! How many millions there were, none could guess. On each side of us, and as far as we could see—our vision was limited only by the extended horizon of the flat prairie—the whole vast area was black with the surging mass of affrighted animals, as they rushed onward to the south in a mad stampede.
At another time Gens. Sheridan, Custer, Sully, and myself rode through another and larger one, for three consecutive days. This was in the fall of 1868. It seems almost impossible to those who have seen them, as numerous apparently as the sands of the seashore, feeding on the illimitable natural pasturage of the Great Plains, that the buffalo should have become practically extinct. When I look back only twenty-five years and recall the fact that they swarmed in countless numbers even then as far east as Fort Harker, only 200 miles west from the Missouri river, I ask myself, "Have they all disappeared?" And yet, such is the fact. Two causes can be assigned for this great hecatomb: First, the demand for their hides, which brought about a great invasion of hunters into this region; and second, the crowds of thoughtless tourists who crossed the continent for the mere novelty and pleasure of the trip. This latter class heartlessly killed for the excitement of the new experience as they rode along in the cars at a low rate of speed, often never touching a particle of the flesh of their victims, or possessing themselves of a single robe.
The former, numbering hundreds of old frontiersmen, all expert shots, with thousands of novices, the pioneer settlers on the public domain, day after day for years made it a lucrative business to kill for the robes alone, a market for which had suddenly sprung up all over the country.
The beginning of the end was marked by the completion of the Kansas Pacific across the Plains to the foot-hills of the Rockies in 1868, this being the western limit of the buffalo range.
In 1872 a writer in "The Buffalo Land" said: