“During the three years 1872–73–74, at least five millions of buffaloes were slaughtered for their hides.
“This slaughter was all in violation of law, and in contravention of solemn treaties made with the Indians, but it was the duty of no special person to put a stop to it. The Indian Bureau made a feeble effort to keep the white hunters out of Indian Territory, but soon gave it up, and these parties spread all over the country, slaughtering the buffalo under the very noses of the Indians.
“Ten years ago the Plains Indians had an ample supply of food, and could support life comfortably without the assistance of the Government. Now everything is gone, and they are reduced to the condition of paupers, without food, shelter, clothing, or any of those necessaries of life which came from the buffalo; and without friends, except the harpies, who, under the guise of friendship, feed upon them.”
The first trains on the Union Pacific Railway were frequently compelled to stop for one or two days until these immense herds had crossed the tracks. The Missouri River has been known to be filled with buffalo swimming across; a boat descending or ascending the river was compelled to wait a day or two for the herds to pass. Unnumbered thousands were drowned at the time of these crossings. Prairie fires must have destroyed multitudes of these animals.
The American bison was very easily approached and killed, and a careful reading of the accounts of buffalo-hunts indicates that there was about as much real sport in the slaughter of these animals as in killing domesticated cattle. In fact, the long-horned Texas steer such as used to range the Southwest forty years ago, would probably afford more sport to men engaged in a “running hunt,” than the buffalo. The latter were heavy, ponderous animals and save when stampeded, could be shot down from ambush. An “oldtimer”, long on the Plains, told me that he frequently killed from fifty to seventy-five buffalo from one stand. He would secret himself on a little bluff, overlooking a ravine where the grass was exceptionally good, and from this vantage-point, using a heavy Sharpes rifle, he shot down one after another. He stated that the bulls would walk up to a fallen animal, smell of the blood, paw the dirt, and perhaps bellow a little, but until the animals got scent of him, they would not move away. Professor William T. Hornaday in the United States National Museum Reports for 1887 and 1889 has given an extended account of the buffalo and its destruction. Catlin has presented us, in earlier years, of a stirring account of a buffalo-hunt. Coming down to later times, General Custer, Colonel William F. Cody and others have pictured the excitement of the buffalo-chase. Colonel Cody, in fifteen months, according to his own admission, slaughtered 4280.[[55]] He thus obtained the name “Buffalo Bill.”
UNITED STATES CAVALRY ATTACKING BLACK KETTLE’S VILLAGE ON THE WASHITA, NOVEMBER 27, 1868
Black Kettle was killed in the fight. Reproduced from Col. Dodge’s “Our Wild Indians”
The senseless slaughter of this magnificent creature by thousands of hunters, frontiersmen, Bills and Dicks, and others between 1850 and 1880, soon brought about the near extinction of the species. A few were saved by Messrs. Allard and Conrad of Montana, the Canadian Government, our own Government, Colonel W. A. Jones (Buffalo Jones) and others. The late Senator Corbin secured a number of animals and shipped them to New Hampshire where a tract of several thousand acres was set aside as a park. All of these herds increased, and at the present time in the United States and Canada there must be nearly, if not quite, 1500 head. Thus the species is preserved. The Government had great difficulty in preventing poachers in Yellowstone Park from slaughtering the animals, and in the early nineties there were very few animals left alive. Public opinion has been aroused to the necessity of preserving this typically American animal, and it is now certain that the species will not become extinct.
Buffalo Bill, not content with his records of “big killings”, took numbers of bison East during the ’80’s. Of these, twenty fine specimens died of pleuro-pneumonia while his show was at Madison Square Garden, New York City, during the winter of 1886–’87. The last survivors of this magnificent creature were hauled about the country and exhibited before gaping crowds. At Newark, Ohio, in the early ’80’s, when a boy I attended Buffalo Bill’s “Wild West Show”. I shall ever remember my sensations when witnessing the “grand buffalo hunt”. Three or four poor, old, scarred bison were driven into the fair-ground enclosure by some whooping cow-punchers. Buffalo Bill himself dashed up alongside the lumbering animals and from a Winchester repeater discharged numerous “blanks” into the already powder-burned sides of the helpless creatures. The crowd roared with appreciation, and as the cow-punchers pursued, and rounded up the hapless bison before the grandstand, Buffalo Bill reined in his steed, and spurring the horse (so he would prance), bowed right and left.
Professor Hornady’s report, together with other information, indicates that enough buffalo were carted about the East to have formed a very respectable herd—had they been permitted to remain in some favored spot in the buffalo country.