The Extermination of the American Bison

by William T. Hornaday

“In sight of buffalo all the hunters are drawn up in line, the president, captains, and police being a few yards in advance, restraining the impatient hunters. ‘Not yet! Not yet!’ is the subdued whisper of the president. The approach to the herd is cautiously made. ‘Now!’ the president exclaims; and as the word leaves his lips the charge is made, and in a few minutes the excited half-breeds are amongst the bewildered buffalo.”

“After witnessing one buffalo hunt,” says Prof. John Macoun, “I can not blame the half-breed and the Indian for leaving the farm and wildly making for the plains when it is reported that buffalo have crossed the border.”

The “great fall hunt” was a regular event with about all the Indian tribes living within striking distance of the buffalo, in the course of which great numbers of buffalo were killed, great quantities of meat dried and made into pemmican, and all the skins taken were tanned in various ways to suit the many purposes they were called upon to serve.

Mr. Francis La Flesche informs me that during the presence of the buffalo in western Nebraska and until they were driven south by the Sioux, the fall hunt of the Omahas was sometimes participated in by three hundred lodges, or about 3,000 people all told, six hundred of whom were warriors, and each of whom generally killed about ten buffaloes. The laws of the hunt were very strict and inexorable. In order that all participants should have an equal chance, it was decreed that any hunter caught “still-hunting” should be soundly flogged. On one occasion an Indian was discovered in the act, but not caught. During the chase which was made to capture him many arrows were fired at him by the police, but being better mounted than his pursuers he escaped, and kept clear of the camp during the remainder of the hunt. On another occasion an Omaha, guilty of the same offense, was chased, and in his effort to escape his horse fell with him in a coulée and broke one of his legs. In spite of the sad plight of the Omaha, his pursuers came up and flogged him, just as if nothing had happened.

After the invention of the Colt’s revolver, and breech-loading rifles generally, the chase on horseback speedily became more fatal to the bison than it ever had been before. With such weapons, it was possible to gallop into the midst of a flying herd and, during the course of a run of 2 or 3 miles, discharge from twelve to forty shots at a range of only a few yards, or even a few feet. In this kind of hunting the heavy Navy revolver was the favorite weapon, because it could be held in one hand and fired with far greater precision than could a rifle held in both hands. Except in the hands of an expert, the use of the rifle was limited, and often attended with risk to the hunter; but the revolver was good for all directions; it could very often be used with deadly effect where a rifle could not have been used at all, and, moreover, it left the bridle-hand free. Many cavalrymen and hunters were able to use a revolver with either hand, or one in each hand. Gen. Lew. Wallace preferred the Smith and Wesson in 1867, which he declared to be “the best of revolvers” then.

It was his marvelous skill in shooting buffaloes with a rifle, from the back of a galloping horse, that earned for the Hon. W. F. Cody the sobriquet by which he is now familiarly known to the world—“Buffalo Bill.” To the average hunter on horseback the galloping of the horse makes it easy for him to aim at the heart of a buffalo and shoot clear over its back. No other shooting is so difficult, or requires such consummate dexterity as shooting with any kind of a gun, especially a rifle, from the back of a running horse. Let him who doubts this statement try it for himself and he will doubt no more. It was in the chase of the buffalo on horseback, armed with a rifle, that “Buffalo Bill” acquired the marvelous dexterity with the rifle which he has since exhibited in the presence of the people of two continents. I regret that circumstances have prevented my obtaining the exact figures of the great kill of buffaloes that Mr. Cody once made in a single run, in which he broke all previous records in that line, and fairly earned his title. In 1867 he entered into a contract with the Kansas Pacific Railway, then in course of construction through western Kansas, at a monthly salary of $500, to deliver all the buffalo meat that would be required by the army of laborers engaged in building the road. In eighteen mouths he killed 4,280 buffaloes.

3. Impounding or Killing in Pens.—At first thought it seems hard to believe that it was ever possible for Indians to build pens and drive wild buffaloes into them, as cowboys now corral their cattle, yet such wholesale catches were of common occurrence among the Plains Crees of the south Saskatchewan country, and the same general plan was pursued, with slight modifications, by the Indians of the Assinniboine, Blackfeet, and Gros Ventres, and other tribes of the Northwest. Like the keddah elephant-catching operations in India, this plan was feasible only in a partially wooded country, and where buffalo were so numerous that their presence could be counted upon to a certainty. The “pound” was simply a circular pen, having a single entrance; but being unable to construct a gate of heavy timbers, such as is made to drop and close the entrance to an elephant pen, the Indians very shrewdly got over the difficulty by making the opening at the edge of a perpendicular bank 10 or 12 feet high, easy enough for a buffalo to jump down, but impossible for him to scale afterward. It is hardly probable that Indians who were expert enough to attack and kill buffalo on foot would have been tempted to undertake the labor that building a pound always involved, had it not been for the wild excitement attending captures made in this way, and which were shared to the fullest possible extent by warriors, women, and children alike.

The best description of this method which has come under our notice is that of Professor Hind, who witnessed its practice by the Plains Crees, on the headwaters of the Qu’Appelle River, in 1858. He describes the pound he saw as a fence, constructed of the trunks of trees laced together with green withes, and braced on the outside by props, inclosing a circular space about 120 feet in diameter. It was placed in a pretty dell between sand-hills, and leading from it in two diverging rows (like the guiding wings of an elephant pen) were the two rows of bushes which the Indians designate “dead men,” which serve to guide the buffalo into the pound. The “dead men” extended a distance of 4 miles into the prairie. They were placed about 50 feet apart, and the two rows gradually diverged until at their extremities they were from 1½ to 2 miles apart.