Buffalo Land / Authentic Account of the Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific and Sporting Party in the Wild West

by W. E. Webb

While crawling up on the herd, we took its census very carefully. I was a little surprised to find there were but twenty-five horses, all told. They were apparently a little larger than the wild ones of Texas, and had bushy manes and tails, and their step was remarkably firm and elastic. They were exceedingly timid creatures, raising their heads constantly, to gaze around. One very interesting circumstance connected with the herd was that among these wild horses we noticed two strangers; one, a feeble old buffalo bull, expelled from his tribe, and seeking their aid against the wolves, and the other, the black pacing stallion.

When we fired, the survivors were off on the instant, and the manner in which their clean hoofs struck the earth, and spurned it, was truly worth seeing. No heaves either, it was plain to see, had ever troubled those full chests. We caught sight of the herd awhile after, on a ridge four miles away, and they were still running at full speed. These were the only wild horses we saw on our trip. In fact, but two or three small droves are believed to exist on the plains, as the great mass of the shaggy-maned thousands, children of those old Spanish castaways, swarm nearer the Pacific.

So timid and fleet are these horses that none of them have ever been captured except during the early spring. They are then poor, and, by hard spurring, can be ridden down. At other times their bottom, and the advantage of having no weight to carry, insure their safety. It is quite probable, however, that a systematic pursuit, of the kind practiced in Texas, might prove successful at any season of the year.

I gazed at our two victims with less satisfaction than at any thing I had ever killed. Shooting horses, dear reader, is a good deal like shooting monkeys. They are both too intimately associated with man to be made food for his powder. One is a very true and faithful servant, and the other, if we may believe Mr. Darwin, was once his ancestor.

In examining the two handsome bodies lying there, I noticed one fact to which I should have liked to draw the attention of the whole learned fraternity of blacksmiths, who mutilate horses, the world over. The hoofs were as solid and as sound as ivory, without a crack or wrong growth of any sort. And why? Turning them up, the secret lay exposed; for there, filling the cavity within—a sponge of life-giving oil—was the frog entire, just as Nature made and kept it. Its business was to feed and moisten the hoof, and this it had done perfectly. No blacksmith had ever gouged it out with his knife, and robbed it anew at every shoeing.

It is noticeable that the equine race, in its wild state, has none of the ills of the species domesticated. The sorrows of horse-flesh are the fruits of civilization. By the study and imitation of Nature's methods, we could greatly increase the usefulness of these valuable servants, and remove temptation from the paths of many men who lead blameless lives, except in the single matter of horse-trades. It may well be queried, perhaps, whether even the patient man of Uz, had he been laid up by a runaway colt instead of boils, could have resisted the temptation to trade it off upon Bildad the Shuhite, when that individual came to condole with him.

As we journeyed onward, we found the soil ever the same, in depth and strength equal to an Illinois prairie. The old cretaceous ocean, and the great lakes, certainly left it rich in deposits. When its surface shall have been broken by the plow, and the water-fall absorbed instead of shed off, the plains will resemble, in appearance and products, any other prairie country. The amount of moisture annually passing over them, in storm-clouds that burst further east, is abundantly sufficient to make the tract very fertile. It is a well established fact in relation to climatic influences, that moisture attracts moisture; and in this region the dry ground, with its few shallow streams, has now no claim upon the summer clouds. The tough buffalo grass has put a lock-jaw on the plain. It can drink nothing from the floods of the rainy season. But pry open the hungry mouth with the plowshare, and the earth will drink greedily. The moisture then absorbed, given up through the agency of capillary attraction, will draw the showers of summer, as they are passing over. Already a marked change has taken place over a portion of the plains, and crops have been grown as far west as Fort Wallace.

The subject of spontaneous generation, I may remark in this connection, became a very interesting one to our party. Wherever the soil has been disturbed, wild sun-flowers spring suddenly into existence. The "grading camps" of the railroads were followed by belts of these self-asserting annuals. The first garden-patch cultivated at Fort Wallace had weeds and insects similar to those that infest gardens elsewhere. In some cases hundreds of miles of barren plain intervened between the spots where the seeds germinated, and the nearest points where other plants of the same variety grew. Neither birds or wind could have carried the seeds in such quantities. Is the theory true that germs fall down to us from other planets? Or, do not the plains offer a strong argument on behalf of spontaneous generation?

Another matter on which the plains appealed to us strongly, pertained to the wanton destruction of its wild cattle. During the year 1871, about fifty thousand buffalo were killed on the plains of Kansas and Colorado alone. Of this number, it will be correct to estimate that about one-third were shot for their robes, as many more for meat, and sixteen thousand or so for sport. Each buffalo could probably have furnished five hundred pounds of meat and tallow, the quantity of the latter being small. When killed for food, only the hind quarters and a small portion of the loin are saved, in all perhaps two hundred pounds. The hides of these are sacrificed, the skin being cut with the quarters, and left on them for their protection. The profits of this great slaughter would, therefore, be about 16,500 robes and 3,300,000 pounds of meat; the waste over 33,000 robes, and probably not less than 20,000,000 pounds of meat. In this computation, the vast herds which range further north are not included. There, however, the waste is comparatively small, as the red man is in the habit of saving the greater portion of the flesh and robes. Of the above twenty million pounds of meat left to rot in the sun, and taint the air of the plains, the greater proportion would furnish sweeter and more nourishing food to the poor classes of our cities than the beef which they are able to obtain.

Let this slaughter continue for ten years, and the bison of the American continent will become extinct. The number of valuable robes and pounds of meat which would thus be lost to us and posterity, will run too far into the millions to be easily calculated. All over the plains, lying in disgusting masses of putrefaction along valley and hill, are strewn immense carcasses of wantonly slain buffalo. They line the Kansas Pacific Railroad for two hundred miles.