As a last heading of my subject I shall touch on the protection of the game. This was never seriously attempted until Major Harris came to the Park, in 1886; but he attacked it with an earnestness and a fearlessness that has left a lasting impress. It is not probable that the Park is the natural home of bison, elk or deer, yet the last remnant of the first and great numbers of the last two are found here. The high altitude, great cold and extreme depth of snow make it a forbidding habitat for the ruminants. They remain here simply because they are protected. Protection was given by a system of scouting extended over the best game ranges, and throughout the season of probable game destruction. A good many captures were made; the poachers were turned loose and their property confiscated; this was all the law allowed. The depredating element of the community soon came to care very little for this menace to their business, for they entered the Park with an equipment that was hardly worth packing in to the post, and, if taken from them, occasioned but small loss.
A HUNTING DAY.
The accumulation of this sort of property had become great, and, as I had no proper storage room for it, I began my work by making a bonfire of it. A first requisite to successful work was to become acquainted with the names, the haunts and the habits of those whom it was necessary to watch or to capture. Ed. Wilson was thoroughly familiar with all this, and many is the lesson I patiently took from him. He described to me the leaders among the poachers from the several regions—Cooke, Henry's Lake, Jackson's Lake and Gardiner. To begin with the Cooke City parties, he named to me three as particularly active and dangerous: these were Van Dyck, Pendleton and Howell. Van Dyck, he told me, was at that time trapping beaver near Soda Butte, but he had not been able to definitely locate him. He made two trips there through cold and storm, but to no purpose. Finally, on his third expedition, he caught him, as already stated, sleeping in his bed. His property was destroyed, and he was held in the guard house awaiting the instructions of the Secretary of the Interior, which for some reason were very slow in coming. At last he was released, and ordered never again to cross the Park boundary without permission.
The next year Pendleton made a trip in the Park in early May, and got out with two young bison calves, which he was carrying on pack animals in beer boxes. Of course, they died before he got them to a place where he could raise them in safety, and he soon started back to renew his evil work. He was arrested and confined, and his case took exactly the same course as Van Dyck's had taken.
The last of the trio was Ed. Howell. Knowing of him and his habits, I kept him as well under watch as possible. During a trip I made to the east side of the Park in October, 1893, I saw many old signs of bison in several localities. Howell having disappeared from public view for a month or two, I sent Burgess out in January, 1894, with orders to carefully scout this country. I indicated to him exactly where I expected him to find signs of the marauder. He encountered very severe weather, and was not able to make a full tour of the places indicated; but he did report having found, in the exact locality I had designated to him, tracks of a man on skis drawing a toboggan. These tracks were old and could not be followed, but they formed a valuable clue. I next sent to the Soda Butte station and had a thorough search made near that place. It was found that the same tracks had passed over the hill behind the station, going toward Cooke. Careful inquiry developed the fact that Howell had come in for provisions with his equipment, but that he had not brought any trophies with him. Calculating the time when he should be due again in the bison country, I gave Burgess an order to repeat his trip there, and stay until he brought back results. He left the Lake Hotel in a severe storm on March 11th, and camped the night of the 12th where he had seen the tracks on his previous visit. Next morning, when scarcely out of camp, he found a cache of six bison scalps suspended in a tree. The ski tracks near by were old, and he was not able to follow them. He possessed himself of the spoils and started down Astringent Creek toward Pelican. When near the latter stream, he found a lodge, evidently occupied at the time, and the tracks near it, fresh and distinct, pointing to the southward. Soon he heard shots, and far off in the distance he espied the culprit in the act of killing more of the game. The problem then arose as to how he was to make the capture. With him was only a single soldier, and the two had for arms only a .38 caliber revolver. It was certain that this was Howell, and it was known that he was a desperate character.
In giving Burgess his orders, I had told him that I did not send him to his death—that I did not want him to take risks or serious chances; I impressed upon him the fact that, as far as Howell was concerned, even if times were hard, the wages of sin had not been reduced. All this he knew well, but there was a desperate criminal armed with a rifle; as for himself, he might as well have been unarmed. However, fortune favored him, and soon Howell became so occupied in removing the scalp from one of his bison that Burgess, by a swift and silent run, approached within four or five yards of him undiscovered. It would have been easy enough to kill him then, but it was too much like cold-blooded murder to do so at that range; at 200 or 300 yards it would have seemed entirely different. Howell's rifle was leaning against a buffalo's carcass a few yards from him. He made a step toward it, when Burgess told him to stop or he would shoot. Howell then turned back and said, "All right, but you would never have got me if I had seen you sooner." He was found surrounded by the bodies of seven bison freshly killed, and, to illustrate more fully the wanton nature of the man, of the eight scalps brought in to the post, six were cows and one of the others was a yearling calf.
His case went through the same course as the others, and finally toward the last of April he was turned loose, with orders to quit the Park and never return. He, however, is cast in a different mold from some of the previous captures, and some time in July he reappeared with the most brazen and shameless effrontery. He was reincarcerated, tried, and sentenced for disobedience of the order of expulsion. His sentence was thirty days in jail and fifty dollars fine, and this he now has under appeal. Insufficient as is Howell's punishment, his crime has been of more service to the Park than any other event in its history; it created the greatest interest throughout the country, and led to the passage of the Park Protection Act, which was signed by the President on May 7th. A strange coincidence in the cases of Van Dyck and Howell is that both were accompanied by their faithful watchdogs, and neither dog gave a sign of the approach of the enemy, and both men swore vengeance on their faithless protectors.
The preservation of elk, deer, antelope and the carnivora is assured. Their numbers elsewhere, their wide distribution within the Park, their relatively small commercial value, added to the danger attendant on killing them within the Park, is a sufficient protection. Moose and mountain sheep will probably increase for similar reasons, although they are less generally distributed and are of greater value to head hunters. With the bison it is different. They have entirely disappeared from all other parts of the country, and they are of sufficient money value to tempt the cupidity of the hunters and trappers who surround the Park on all sides. It is told that a fine bison head has been sold, delivered in London, for £200—nearly $1,000 in our money. A taxidermist would probably be willing to pay $200 to $500 for such a scalp. Many a hardy frontiersman, who has no sentiment for their preservation and no respect for the law, will take his chances of capture for such a sum.