“The whole rumor is false, and without any foundation. I saw it first in the —— newspaper, where I believe it originated.”
In these days of railroads and numberless hunting parties, there is not the remotest possibility of there being anywhere in the United States a herd of a hundred, or even fifty, buffaloes which has escaped observation. Of the eighty-five head still existing in a wild state it may safely be predicted that not even one will remain alive five years hence. A buffalo is now so great a prize, and by the ignorant it is considered so great an honor(!) to kill one, that extraordinary exertions will be made to find and shoot down without mercy the “last buffalo.”
There is no possible chance for the race to be perpetuated in a wild state, and in a few years more hardly a bone will remain above ground to mark the existence of the must prolific mammalian species that ever existed, so far as we know.
VI. Effects of the Extermination.
The buffalo supplied the Indian with food, clothing, shelter, bedding, saddles, ropes, shields, and innumerable smaller articles of use and ornament In the United States a paternal government takes the place of the buffalo in supplying all these wants of the red man, and it costs several millions of dollars annually to accomplish the task.
The following are the tribes which depended very largely—some almost wholly—upon the buffalo for the necessities, and many of the luxuries, of their savage life until the Government began to support them:
| Sioux | 30,561 |
| Crow | 3,226 |
| Piegan, Blood, and Blackfeet | 2,026 |
| Cheyenne | 3,477 |
| Gros Ventres | 856 |
| Arickaree | 517 |
| Mandan | 283 |
| Bannack and Shoshone | 2,001 |
| Nez Percé | 1,460 |
| Assinniboine | 1,688 |
| Kiowas and Comanches | 2,756 |
| Arapahoes | 1,217 |
| Apache | 332 |
| Ute | 978 |
| Omaha | 1,160 |
| Pawnee | 998 |
| Winnebago | 1,222 |
| Total | 54,758 |
This enumeration (from the census of 1886) leaves entirely out of consideration many thousands of Indians living in the Indian Territory and other portions of the Southwest, who drew an annual supply of meat and robes from the chase of the buffalo, notwithstanding the fact that their chief dependence was upon agriculture.
The Indians of what was once the buffalo country are not starving and freezing, for the reason that the United States Government supplies them regularly with beef and blankets in lieu of buffalo. Does any one imagine that the Government could not have regulated the killing of buffaloes, and thus maintained the supply, for far less money than it now costs to feed and clothe those 54,758 Indians!