10. Silver foxes: twenty to thirty. Sixty dollars are often paid for a single skin.
11. Minks (Mustela vison): 2,000.
12. Musk-rats (Ondathra): from 1,000 to 100,000.[358] According to Captain Back, half a million of these skins are annually imported into London, as this animal is found in equal abundance as far as the coasts of the Frozen Ocean.
13. Deer (Cervus Virginianus and macrotis): from 20,000 to 30,000.
Beyond Council Bluffs, scarcely any articles are bartered by the Indians—especially the Joways, Konzas, and the Osages—except the skins of the Cervus Virginianus, which is found in great abundance, but is said to have fallen off there likewise very considerably.
The elk (Cervus Canadensis, or major), is not properly comprehended in the trade, as its skin is too thick and heavy, and is, therefore, used for home consumption. The buffalo skin is taken, as before observed, from the cows only, as the leather of the bulls is too heavy. The wolf skins are not at all sought by the company, that is to say, they do not send out any hunters to procure them; but, if the Indians bring any, they are bought not to create any dissatisfaction, and then they are sold at about a dollar a-piece. The Indians, however, have frequently nothing to offer for barter but their dresses, and painted buffalo robes.
The support of so large an establishment as that at Fort Union requires frequent hunting excursions into the prairie; and Mr. Mc Kenzie, therefore, maintained here several experienced hunters of a mixed race, who made weekly excursions to the distance of twenty or more miles into the prairie, sought the buffalo herds, and, after they had killed a sufficient number, returned home with their mules well laden. The flesh of the cows is very good, especially the tongues, which are smoked in great numbers, and then sent down to St. Louis. The colossal marrow-bones are considered quite a delicacy by the hunters and by the Indians. The consumption of 191 this animal is immense in North America, and is as indispensable to the Indians as the reindeer is to the Laplanders, and the seal to the Esquimaux. It is difficult to obtain an exact estimate of the consumption of this animal, which is yearly decreasing and driven further inland. In a recent year, the Fur Company sent 42,000 of these hides down the river, which were sold, in the United States, at four dollars a-piece. Fort Union alone consumes about 600 to 800 buffaloes annually, and the other forts in proportion. The numerous Indian tribes subsist almost entirely on these animals, sell their skins after retaining a sufficient supply for their clothing, tents, &c., and the agents of the Company recklessly shoot down these noble animals for their own pleasure, often not making the least use of them, except taking out the tongue. Whole herds of them are often drowned in the Missouri; nay, I have been assured that, in some rivers, 1,800 and more of their dead bodies were found in one place. Complete dams are formed of the bodies of these animals in some of the morasses of the rivers; from this we may form some idea of the decrease of the buffaloes, which are now found on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, where they were not originally met with, but whither they have been driven.
Besides the buffalo, the hunters also shoot the elk, the deer, and, occasionally, the bighorn. The former especially are very numerous on the Yellow Stone River. All other provisions, such as pork, hams, flour, sugar, coffee, wine, and other articles of luxury for the tables of the chief officers and the clerks, are sent from St. Louis by the steamer. The maize is procured from the neighbouring Indian nations. Vegetables do not thrive at Fort Union, which Mr. Mc Kenzie ascribes to the long-continued drought and high winds.
The neighbourhood around Fort Union is, as I have observed, a wide, extended prairie, intersected, in a northerly direction, by a chain of rather high, round, clay-slate, and sand-stone hills, from the summits of which we had a wide-spreading view over the country on the other side of the Missouri, and of its junction with the Yellow Stone, of which Mr. Bodmer made a very faithful drawing.[359] We observed on the highest points, and at certain intervals of this mountain chain, singular stone signals, set up by the Assiniboins, of blocks of granite, or other large stones, on the top of which is placed a buffalo skull,[360] which we were told the Indians place there to attract the herds of buffaloes, and thereby to ensure a successful hunt. The strata of sand-stone occurring in the above-mentioned hills are filled, at least in part, with impressions of the leaves of phanerogamic plants, resembling the species still growing in the country.[361] A whitish-grey and reddish-yellow sand-stone are found here. In all these prairies of North America, as well as in the plains of northern Europe, those remarkable blocks or fragments of red granite, are everywhere scattered, which have afforded the geologist subject for many hypotheses. Major Long's Expedition to St. Peter's River[362] mentions blocks of granite in the prairies of Illinois; they are found in abundance in the north, about St. Peter's 192 River, in the State of Ohio, &c. Other boulders, however, of quartz, flint, slate, &c., evidently formed by water, are found everywhere in the prairies. The hills were partly bare, and very few flowers were in blossom; the whole country was covered with short, dry grass, among which there were numerous round spots with tufts of Cactus ferox, which was only partly in flower. Another cactus, resembling mammillaris, with dark red flowers, yellow on the inner side, was likewise abundant. Of the first kind it seems that two exactly similar varieties, probably species, are found everywhere here; both have fine, large, bright yellow flowers, sometimes a greenish-yellow, and, on their first expanding, are often whitish, and the outer side of the petals, with a reddish tinge; but in one species, the staminæ are bright yellow, like the flower itself, and, in the other, of a brownish blood red, with yellow anthers. The true flowering time of these plants begins at the end of June.