 Part 2, Section 1 of the Extermination of the American Bison. This is a LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Matthew Hinman at VoicesofTexas.com. The Extermination of the American Bison by William T. Hornaday. Part 2, The Extermination. Section 1, Causes of the Extermination. The causes which led to the practical extinction in a wild state at least, of the most economically valuable wild animal that ever inhabited the American continent, are by no means obscure. It is well that we should know precisely what they were, and by the sad fate of the buffalo, be warned in time against allowing similar causes to produce the same results with our elk, antelope, deer, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, mountain goat, walrus, and other animals. It will be doubly deplorable if the remorseless slaughter we have witnessed during the last twenty years carries with it no lessons for the future. A continuation of the record we have lately made as wholesale game butchers will justify posterity in dating us back with the mound builders and cave dwellers. When man's only known function was to slay and eat. The primary cause of the buffalo's extermination, and the one which embraced all others, was the descent of civilization with all its elements of destructiveness upon the whole of the country inhabited by that animal. From the great slave lake to the Rio Grande, the home of the buffalo is everywhere overrun by the man with a gun. And as has ever been the case, the wild creatures were gradually swept away, the largest and most conspicuous forms being the first to go. The secondary causes of the extermination of the buffalo may be cataloged as follows. One, man's reckless greed, his wanton destructiveness, and improvidence in not husbanding such resources as come to him from the hand of nature ready made. Two, the total and utterly inexcusable absence of protective measures and agencies in the part of the national government and of the west states and territories. Three, the fatal preference on the part of the hunters generally, both white and red, for the robe and flesh of the cow over that furnished by the bull. Four, the phenomenal stupidity of the animals themselves and their indifference to man. Five, the perfection of modern breach loading rifles and other sporting firearms in general. Each of these causes acted against the buffalo with its fall force to offset which there was not even one restraining or preserving influence and it is not to be wondered at that the species went down before them. Had any one of these conditions been eliminated, the result would have been reached far less quickly. Had the buffalo, for example, possessed one half the fighting qualities of the grizzly bear, he would have fared very differently. But his inoffensiveness and lack of courage almost leads one to doubt the wisdom of the economy of nature so far as it relates to him. End of part two, section one. Section sixteen of the extermination of the American bison. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Maria Casper. The extermination of the American bison by William T. Hornaday. Part two, chapter two. Methods of slaughter. One. The still hunt. Of all the deadly methods of buffalo slaughter, the still hunt was the deadliest. Of all the methods that were unsportsmanlike, unfair, ignoble, and utterly reprehensible, this was in every respect the lowest and the worst. Destitute of nearly every element of the buoyant excitement and spice of danger that accompanied genuine buffalo hunting on horseback, the still hunt was mere butchery of the tamest and yet most cruel kind. About it there was none of the true excitement of the chase, but there was plenty of greedy eagerness to down as many head as possible every day, just as there is in every slaughter house where the killers are paid so much per head. Judging from all accounts it was about as exciting and dangerous work as it would be to go out now and shoot cattle on the Texas or Montana ranges. The probabilities are, however, that shooting Texas cattle would be the most dangerous, for instead of running from a man on foot as the buffalo used to do, range cattle usually charged down upon him, from motives of curiosity perhaps, and not infrequently place his life in considerable jeopardy. The buffalo owes his extermination very largely to his own unparalleled stupidity, for nothing else could by any possibility have enabled the still hunters to accomplish what they did in such an incredibly short time. So long as the chase on horseback was the order of the day, it ordinarily required the united efforts of from fifteen to twenty-five hunters to kill a thousand buffalo in a single season. But a single still hunter, with a long-range breechloader, who knew how to make a sneak and get a stand on a bunch, often succeeded in killing from one to three thousand in one season by his own unaided efforts. Captain Jack Bridges of Kansas, who was one of the first to begin the final slaughter of the southern herd, killed by contract one thousand one hundred and forty-two buffaloes in six weeks. So long as the buffalo remained in large herds, their numbers gave each individual a feeling of dependence upon his fellows, and of general security from harm, even in the presence of strange phenomena which he could not understand. When he heard a loud report and saw a little cloud of white smoke rising from a gully, a clump of sagebrush, or the top of a ridge two hundred yards away, he wondered what it meant and held himself in readiness to follow his leader in case she should run away. But when the leader of the herd, usually the oldest cow, fell bleeding upon the ground, and no other buffalo promptly assumed the leadership of the herd, instead of acting independently and fleeing from the alarm, he merely did as he saw the others do and waited his turn to be shot. Laterally, however, when the herds were totally broken up, when the few survivors were scattered in every direction, and it became a case of every buffalo for himself, they became wild and wary, ever ready to start off at the slightest alarm and run indefinitely. Had they shown the same wariness, seventeen years ago, that the survivors have manifested during the last three or four years, there would now be a hundred thousand head alive instead of only about three hundred in a wild and unprotected state. Notwithstanding the merciless war that had been waged against the buffalo for over a century by both whites and Indians, and the steady decrease of its numbers as well as its range, there were several million head on foot, not only up to the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, but as late as the year 1870. Up to that time the killing done by white men had been chiefly for the sake of meat, the demand for robes was moderate, and the Indians took annually less than one hundred thousand for trading. Although half a million buffaloes were killed by Indians, half-breeds and whites, the natural increase was so very considerable as to make it seem that the evil day of extermination was yet far distant. But by a coincidence which was fatal to the buffalo, with the building of three lines of railway through the most populous buffalo country, there came a demand for robes and hides, backed up by an unlimited supply of new and marvelously accurate breach-loading rifles and fixed ammunition, and then followed a wild rush of hunters to the buffalo country, eager to destroy as many head as possible in the shortest time. For those greedy ones the chase on horseback was too slow and too unfruitful. That was a retail method of killing, whereas they wanted to kill by wholesale. From their point of view, the still-hunt or sneak-hunt was the method par excellence. If they could have obtained gatling guns with which to mow down a whole herd at a time, beyond a doubt they would gladly have used them. The still-hunt was seen at its very worst in the years 1871, 1872, and 1873. On the southern buffalo range, and ten years later, at its best in Montana, on the northern, let us first consider it at its best, which in principle was bad enough. The great rise in the price of robes, which followed the blotting out of the great southern herd, at once put buffalo hunting on a much more comfortable and respectable basis in the north than it had ever occupied in the south, where prices had all along been phenomenally low. In Montana it was no uncommon thing for a hunter to invest from one thousand to two thousand dollars in his outfit of horses, wagons, weapons, ammunition, provisions, and sundries. One of the men who accompanied the Smithsonian expedition for buffalo, Mr. James McNamey of Miles City, Montana, was an ex-buffalo banter who had spent three seasons on the northern range killing buffalo for their robes, and his standing as a hunter was of the best. A brief description of his outfit and its work, during its last season on the range, 1882, 1883, may fairly be taken as a typical illustration of the life and work of the still hunter at its best. The only thing against it was the extermination of the buffalo. During the winters of 1880 and 1881 Mr. McNamey served in Maxwell's outfit as a hunter, working by the month, but his success in killing was such that he decided to work the third year on his own account. Although at that time only seventeen years of age he took an elder brother as a partner and purchased an outfit in Miles City, of which the following were the principal items. Two wagons, two four-horse teams, two saddle horses, two wall tents, one cook stove with pipe, one forty-ninety sharps rifle breech loading, one forty-five seventy sharps rifle breech loading, one forty-five one twenty sharps rifle breech loading, fifty pounds gunpowder, five hundred and fifty pounds lead, four thousand five hundred primers, six hundred brass shells, four sheets patch paper, sixty Wilson skinning knives, three butcher's steels, one portable grindstone, flour, bacon, baking powder, coffee, sugar, molasses, dried apples, canned vegetables, etc., in quantity. The entire cost of the outfit was about fourteen hundred dollars. Two men were hired for the season at fifty dollars per month and the party started from Miles City on November tenth, which was considered a very late start. The usual time of setting out for the range was about October first. The outfit went by rail, northeastward to Terry, and from thence across country, south and east, about a hundred miles, around the head of O'Fallon Creek to the head of Beaver Creek, a tributary of the Little Missouri. A good range was selected without encroachment upon the domains of the hunters already in the field, and the camp was made near the bank of the creek, close to a supply of wood and water, and screened from distant observation by a circle of hills and ridges. The two rectangular wall tents were set up end to end with the cook stove in the middle where the ends came together. In one tent the cooking and eating was done and the other contained the beds. It was planned that the various members of the party should cook turn about a week at a time, but one of them soon developed such a rare and conspicuous talent for bread-making and general cookery that he was elected by acclamation to cook during the entire season, to the other three members fell the hunting. Each man hunted separately from the others and skinned all the animals that his rifle brought down. There were buffalo on the range when the hunters arrived and the killing began at once. At daylight the still hunter sallied forth on foot, carrying in his hand his huge sharps rifle, laying from sixteen to nineteen pounds, with from seventy-five to one hundred loaded cartridges in his two belts or his pockets. At his side, depending from his belt, hung his hunter s companion, a flat leather scabbard containing a ripping knife, a skinning knife, and a butcher s steel upon which to sharpen them. The total weight carried was very considerable, seldom less than thirty-six pounds and often more. In as much as it was highly important to move camp as seldom as possible in the course of a season s work, the hunter exercised the greatest precaution in killing his game, and had ever before his mind the necessity of doing his killing without frightening away the survivors. With ten thousand buffaloes on their range it was considered the height of good luck to find a bunch of fifty head in a secluded draw or hollow where it was possible to make a kill without disturbing the big herd. The still hunter usually went on foot for when buffaloes became so scarce as to make it necessary for him to ride his occupation was practically gone. At the time I speak of, the hunter seldom had to walk more than three miles camp to find buffalo, in case there were any at all on his range, and it was usually an advantage to be without a horse. From the top of a ridge or high butte the country was carefully scanned, and if several small herds were in sight the one easiest to approach was selected as the one to attack. It was far better to find a herd lying down or quietly grazing or sheltering from a cold wind than to find it traveling. For while a hard run of a mile or two often enabled the hunter to head off a moving herd and kill a certain number of animals out of it the net results were never half so satisfactory as with herds absolutely at rest. Having decided upon an attack the hunter gets to leeward of his game and approaches it according to the nature of the ground. If it is in a hollow he secures a position at the top of the nearest ridge as close as he can get. If it is in a level flat he looks for a gully up which he can skulk until within good rifle shot. If there is no gully he may be obliged to crawl half a mile on his hands and knees often through snow or amongst beds of prickly pear taking advantage of even such scanty cover as sagebrush affords. Some Montana still hunters adopted the method of drawing a gunny sack over the entire upper half of the body with holes cut for the eyes and arms which simple but unpicturesque arrangement often enabled the hunter to approach his game much more easily and more closely than would otherwise have been possible. Having secured a position within from one hundred to two hundred and fifty yards of his game often the distance was much greater the hunter secures a comfortable rest for his huge rifle all the time keeping his own person thoroughly hidden from view estimates the distance, carefully adjusts his sights and begins business. If the herd is moving the animal in the lead is the first one shot close behind the foreleg and about a foot above the brisket which sends the ball through the lungs if the herd is at rest the oldest cow is always supposed to be the leader and she is the one to kill first the noise startles the buffaloes they stare at the little cloud of white smoke and feel inclined to run but seeing their leader hesitate they wait for her she when struck gives a violent start forward but soon stops and the blood begins to run from her nostrils in two bright crimson streams in a couple of minutes her body sways unsteadily she staggers tries hard to keep her feet but soon gives a lurch sidewise and falls some of the other members of the herd come around and stare and sniff in wide-eyed wonder and one of the more wary starts to lead the herd away but before she takes half a dozen steps bang goes the hidden rifle again and her leadership is ended forever her fall only increases the bewilderment of the survivors over a proceeding which to them is strange and unaccountable because the danger is not visible they cluster around the fallen ones sniff at the warm blood ball allowed in wonderment and do everything but run away the policy of the hunter is not to fire too rapidly but to attend closely to business and every time a buffalo attempts to make off shoot it down one shot per minute was a moderate rate of firing but under pressure of circumstances two per minute could be discharged with deliberate precision with the most accurate hunting rifle ever made a dead rest and a large mark practically motionless it was no wonder that nearly every shot meant a dead buffalo the vital spot on a buffalo which stands with its side to the hunter is about a foot in diameter and on a full-grown bull is considerably more under such conditions as the above which was called getting a stand the hunter nurses his victims just as an angler plays a big fish with light tackle and in the most methodical manner murders them one by one either until the last one falls his cartridges are all expended or the stupid brutes come to their senses and run away occasionally the poor fellow was troubled by having his rifle get too hot to use but if a snowbank was at hand he would thrust the weapon into it without ceremony to cool it off a success in getting a stand meant the slaughter of a good-sized herd a hunter whom I met in Montana, Mr. Harry Andrews told me that he once fired 115 shots from one spot and killed 63 buffalo in less than an hour the highest number Mr. McNamee ever knew of being killed in one stand was 91 head but Colonel Dodge once counted 112 carcasses of buffalo inside of a semi-circle of 200 yards radius all of which were killed by one man from the same spot and in less than three-quarters of an hour the kill being completed the hunter then addressed himself to the task of skinning his victims the northern hunters were seldom guilty of the reckless carelessness and lack of enterprise in the treatment of robes which at one time was so prominent a feature of work on the southern range by the time white men began to hunt for robes on the northern range buffalo were becoming comparatively scarce and robes were worth from two dollars to four dollars each the fur buyers had taught the hunters with the potent argument of hard cash that a robe carefully and neatly taken off, stretched and kept reasonably free from blood and dirt was worth more money in the market than one taken off in a slovenly manner and contrary to the nicer demands of the trade after 1880 buffalo on the northern range were skinned with considerable care and amongst the robe hunters not one was allowed to become a loss when it was possible to prevent it every full-sized cow robe was considered equal to three dollars and fifty cents in hard cash and treated accordingly the hunter or skinner always stretched every robe out on the ground to its fullest extent while it was yet warm and cut the initials of his employer in the thin subcutaneous muscle which always adhered to the inside of the skin a warm skin is very elastic and when stretched upon the ground the hair holds it in shape until it either dries or freezes and so retains its full size on the northern range skins were so valuable that many a dispute arose between rival outfits over the ownership of a dead buffalo some of which produced serious results End of Section 16 Section 17 of the Extermination of the American Bison This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maria Casper The Extermination of the American Bison by William T. Hornaday Part 2, Chapter 2 Methods of Slaughter Continued 2. The Chason Horseback or Running Buffalo Next to the still hunt the method called Running Buffalo was the most fatal to the race and the one most universally practiced To all hunters, save greedy white men, the Chason Horseback yielded spoil sufficient for every need and it also furnished sport of a superior kind, manly, exhilarating and well spiced with danger even the horses shared the excitement and eagerness of their riders So long as the weapons of the Indian consisted only of the bow and arrow and the spear was obliged to kill at close quarters or not at all and even when firearms were first placed in his hands their caliber was so small, the charge so light and the Indian himself so poor a marksman at long range that his best course was still to gallop alongside the herd on his favorite buffalo horse and kill at the shortest possible range In all accounts the Red River half-breeds who hunted almost exclusively with firearms never dreamed of the deadly still hunt but always killed their game by running it In former times even the white men of the plains did most of their buffalo hunting on horseback using the largest sized colts revolver sometimes one in each hand until the repeating rifle made its appearance in a great measure displaced the revolver in running buffalo but about that time began the mad warfare for robes and hides and the only fair and sportsman like method of hunting was declared too slow for the greedy buffalo skinners then came the cold-blooded butchery of the still hunt from that time on the buffalo as a game animal steadily lost caste it soon came to be universally considered that there was no sport in hunting buffalo true enough of still hunting where the hunter sneaks up and shoots them down one by one at such long range the report of his big rifle does not even frighten them away so far as sportsman like fairness is concerned that method was not one whit more elevated than killing game by poison but the chase on horseback was a different thing its successful prosecution demanded a good horse a bold rider a firm seat and perfect familiarity with weapons the excitement of it was intense the dangers not to be despised and above all the buffalo had a fair show for his life or partially so at least the mode of attack is easily described whenever the hunters discovered a herd of buffalo they usually got to lured of it and quietly rode forward in a body or stretched out in a regular skirmish line behind the shelter of a knoll perhaps until they had approached the herd as closely as could be done without alarming it usually the unsuspecting animals with a confidence do more to their great numbers than anything else would allow a party of horsemen to approach within from two hundred to four hundred yards of their flankers and then they would start off on a slow trot the hunters then put spurs to their horses and dashed forward to overtake the herd as quickly as possible once up with it each hunter chooses the best animal within his reach chases him until his flying steed carries him close alongside and then the arrow or the bullet is sent into his vitals the fatal spot is from twelve to eighteen inches in circumference and lies immediately back of the foreleg with its lowest point on a line with the elbow this the true chase of the buffalo was not only exciting but dangerous it often happened that the hunter found himself surrounded by the flying herd and in a cloud of dust so that neither man nor horse could see the ground before them under such circumstances fatal accidents to both men and horses were numerous it was not an uncommon thing for half-breeds to shoot each other in the excitement of the chase and while now and then a wounded bull suddenly turned upon his pursuer and overthrew him the greatest number of casualties were from falls of the dangers involved in running buffalo Colonel Dodge writes as follows the danger is not so much from the buffalo which rarely makes an effort to injure his pursuer as from the fact that neither man nor horse can see the ground which may be rough and broken or perforated with prairie dog and gopher holes this danger is so imminent that a man who runs into a herd of buffalo may be said to take his life in his hand I have never known a man hurt by a buffalo in such a chase I have known of at least six killed and a very great many more or less injured some very severely by their horses falling with them on this point Catlin declares that to engage in running buffalo is at the hazard of every bone in one's body to feel the fine and thrilling acceleration of the chase for a moment and then as often to up braid and blame himself for his folly and imprudence previous to my first experience in running buffalo I had entertained a mortal dread of ever being called upon to ride a chase across a prairie dog town the mouth of a prairie dog's burrow is amply large to receive the hoof of a horse and the angle at which the hole descends into the earth makes it just right for the leg of a running horse to plunge into up to the knee and bring down both horse and rider instantly the former with a broken leg to say the least of it if the rider sits loosely and promptly resigns his seat he will go flying forward as if thrown from a catapult for twenty feet or so perhaps to escape with a few broken bones and perhaps to have his neck broken or his skull fractured on the hard earth if he sticks tightly to his saddle his horse is almost certain to fall upon him and perhaps kill him judge then my feelings when the first bunch of buffalo we started headed straight across the largest prairie dog town I had ever seen up to that time and not only was the ground honeycombed with gaping round holes but it was also crossed here and there by treacherous ditch-like gullies cut straight down into the earth to an uncertain depth and so narrow as to be invisible until it was almost time to leap across them but at such a time with the game thundering along a few rods in advance the hunter thinks of little else except getting up to it he looks as far ahead as possible and helps his horse to avoid dangers but to a great extent the horse must guide himself the rider applies his spurs and looks eagerly forward almost feverish with excitement and eagerness and at the same time if he is wise he expects a fall and holds himself in readiness to take the ground with as little damage as he can Mr. Catlin gives a most graphic description of a hunting accident which may fairly be quoted in full as a type of mini-such I must say that I fully sympathize with Monsieur Chardon in his estimate of the hardness of the ground he fell upon for I have a painful recollection of a fall I had from which I arose with the settled conviction that the ground in Montana is the hardest in the world it seemed more like falling upon cast iron than prairie turf I dashed along through the thundering mass as they swept away over the plain scarcely able to tell whether I was on a buffalo's back or my horse hit and hooked and jostled about till at length I found myself alongside my game when I gave him a shot as I passed him I saw guns flash about me in several directions but I heard them not amidst the trampling throng Monsieur Chardon had wounded a stately bull and at this moment was passing him with his piece leveled for another shot they were both at full speed and I also within the reach of the muzzle of my gun when the bull instantly turned receiving the horse upon his horns and the ground received poor Chardon who made a frog's leap of some twenty feet or more over the bull's back and almost under my horse's heels I wheeled my horse as soon as possible and rode back where lay poor Chardon gasping to start his breath again and within a few paces of him his huge victim with his heels high in the air and the horse lying across him I dismounted instantly but Chardon was raising himself on his hands with his eyes and mouth full of dirt and feeling for his gun which lay about thirty feet in advance of him heaven spare you are you hurt Chardon? hick hick hick hick no hick no no I believe not oh this is not much Monsieur Cataline this is nothing new but this is a damned hard piece of ground here hick oh hick at this the poor fellow fainted but in a few moments a rose picked up his gun took his horse by the bit which then opened its eyes and with a hick and a uh uh sprang upon its feet shook off the dirt and here we were all upon our legs again saved the bull whose fate had been more sad than that of either the following passage from Mr. Alexander Ross's graphic description of a great hunt in which about four hundred hunters made an onslaught upon a herd affords a good illustration of the dangers in running buffalo on this occasion the surface was rocky and full of badger holes twenty-three horses and riders were at one moment all sprawling on the ground one horse gored by a bull was killed on the spot two more were disabled by the fall one rider broke his shoulder blade another burst his gun and lost three of his fingers by the accident and a third was struck on the knee by an exhausted ball these accidents will not be thought over numerous considering the result for in the evening no less than thirteen hundred and seventy-five tongues were brought into camp it really seems as if the horses of the plains entered willfully and knowingly into the war on the doomed herds but for the willingness and even genuine eagerness with which the buffalo horses of both white men and Indians entered into the chase hunting on horseback would have been attended with almost insurmountable difficulties and the results would have been much less fatal to the species according to all accounts the horses of the Indians and half breeds were far better trained than those of their white rivals no doubt owing to the fact that the use of the bow which required the free use of both hands was only possible when the horse took the right course of his own free will or else could be guided by the pressure of the knees if we may believe the historians of that period and there is not the slightest reason to doubt them the buffalo horses of the Indians displayed almost as much intelligence and eagerness in the chase as did their human riders indeed in running buffalo with only the bow and arrow nothing but the willing cooperation of the horse could have possibly made this mode of hunting either satisfactory or successful in Lewis and Clark's travels volume 2 page 387 appears the following record he sergeant prior had found it almost impossible with two men to drive on the remaining horses for as soon as they discovered a herd of buffaloes the loose horses immediately set off in pursuit of them and surrounded the buffalo herd with almost as much skill as their riders could have done at last he was obliged to send one horseman forward and drive all the buffaloes from the route the honorable H. H. Sibley who once accompanied the Red River half breeds on their annual hunt relates the following one of the hunters fell from his saddle and was unable to overtake his horse which continued the chase as if he of himself could accomplish great things so much to these animals become imbued with a passion for this sport on another occasion a half-breed left his favorite steed at the camp to enable him to recruit his strength enjoining upon his wife the necessity of properly securing the animal which was not done not relishing the idea of being left behind he started after us and soon was alongside and thus he continued to keep pace with the hunters in the pursuit of the buffalo seeming to await with impatience the fall of some of them to the earth the chase ended he came neighing to his master whom he soon singled out although the men were dispersed here and there for a distance of miles Colonel R. I. Dodge in his Plains of the Great West page 129 describes a meeting with two Mexican buffalo hunters whose horses were so fleet and so well trained that whenever a herd of buffalo came in sight instead of shooting their game wherever they came up with it the one having the best horse would dash into the herd cut out a fat two-year-old and with the help of his partner then actually drive it to their camp before shooting it down they had a fine lot of meat and a goodly pile of skins and they said that every buffalo had been driven into camp and killed as the one I saw it saves a heap of trouble packing the meat to camp said one of them naively probably never before in the history of the world until civilized man came in contact with the buffalo did whole armies of men march out in true military style with officers flags chaplains and rules of war to make war on wild animals no wonder the buffalo has been exterminated so long as they existed north of the Missouri in any considerable number the half-breeds and Indians of the Manitoba Red River settlement used to gather each year in a great army and go with carts to the buffalo range on these great hunts which took place every year from about the fifteenth of June to the first of September vast numbers of buffalo were killed and the supply was finally exhausted as if heaven had decreed the extirpation of the species the half-breed hunters like their white robe hunting rivals farther south always killed cows in preference to bulls so long as a choice was possible the very course best calculated to exterminate any species in the shortest possible time the army of half-breeds and Indians which annually went forth from the Red River settlement to make war on the buffalo was often far larger than the army with which Cortez subdued a great empire as early as 1846 it had become so great that it was necessary to divide it into two divisions one of which the White Horse Plain Division was accustomed to go west by the Assiniboine River to the Rapids Crossing Place and from there in a southwesterly direction the Red River Division went south to Pembina and did most of their hunting in Dakota the two divisions sometimes met says Professor Hind but not intentionally in 1849 a Mr. Flett took a census of the White Horse Plain Division in Dakota Territory and found that it contained 603 carts, 700 half-breeds, 200 Indians, 600 horses, 200 oxen, 400 dogs, and one cat in his Red River settlement Mr. Alexander Ross gives the following census of the number of carts assembled in camp for the buffalo hunt at five different periods number of carts assembled for the first trip in 1820 540 in 1825 680 in 1830 820 in 1835 970 in 1840 1210 the expedition which was accompanied by Reverend Mr. Belcourt a Catholic priest whose account is set forth in the Honourable Mr. Sibley's paper on the buffalo was a comparatively small one which started from Pembina and very generously took pains not to spoil the prospects of the Great Red River Division which was expected to take the field at the same time this therefore was a small party like others which had already reached the range but it contained 213 carts, 55 hunters and their families making 60 lodges in all this party killed 1,776 cows bulls not counted many of which were killed though not even a tongue was taken which yielded 228 bags of Pemekin, 1,213 bales of dried meat, 166 sacks of tallow and 556 bladders full of marrow but this was very moderate slaughter being about 33 buffalo to each family even as late as 1872 when buffalo were getting scarce Mr. Grant met a half-breed family on the Capel consisting of man, wife and seven children whose six carts were laden with the meat and robes yielded by sixty buffaloes that number representing this one hunter's share of the spoils of the hunt to afford an idea of the truly military character of these Red River expeditions I have only to quote a page from Professor Henry Yule Hind after the start from the settlement has been well made and all stragglers or tardy hunters have arrived a great council is held and a president elected a number of captains are nominated by the president and people jointly the captains then proceed to appoint their own policemen the number assigned to each not exceeding ten their duties are to see that the laws of the hunt are strictly carried out in 1840 if a man ran a buffalo without permission before the general hunt began his saddle and bridle were cut to pieces for the first offense for the second offense his clothes were cut off his back at the present day these punishments are changed to a fine of twenty shillings for the first offense no gun is permitted to be fired when in the Buffalo country before the race begins a priest sometimes goes with the hunt and masses then celebrated in the open prairies at night the carts are placed in the form of a circle with the horses and cattle inside the ring and it is the duty of the captains and their policemen to see that this is rightly done all laws are proclaimed in camp and relate to the hunt alone all camping orders are given by signal a flag being carried by the guides who are appointed by election each guide has his turn of one day and no man can pass a guide on duty without subjecting himself to a fine of five shillings no hunter can leave the camp to return home without permission and no one is permitted to stir until any animal or property of value which be lost is recovered the policemen at the order of their captains can seize any cart at nightfall and place it where they choose for the public safety but on the following morning they are compelled to bring it back to the spot from which they moved at the previous evening this power is very necessary in order that the horses may not be stampeded by night attacks of the Sioux or other Indian tribes at war with the half-breeds a heavy fine is imposed in case of neglect in extinguishing fires when the camp is broken up in the morning 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 Professor John McCoon I cannot blame the half-breed and the Indian for leaving the farm and wildly making for the planes 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 Pemekin and all the skins taken were tanned in various ways to suit the many purposes they were called upon to serve Mr. Francis La Flesh 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 Omaha's was sometimes participated in by three hundred lodges or about three thousand people all told six hundred of whom were warriors and each of whom generally killed about ten Buffalo's 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 Cooley 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 Colts revolver and breach loading rifles generally the chase on horseback speedily became more fatal to the bison than it had ever 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 two or three 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 a 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 General Lou 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 honorable W. F. Cody the sobriquette 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 at 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 the 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 18 months he killed 4,280 buffaloes End of Section 17 Section 18 of The Extermination of the American Bison This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Maria Casper The Extermination of the American Bison by William T. Hornaday Part 2, Chapter 2, Methods of Slaughter, Continued 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 Asiniboine, Blackfeet and Grovant and other tribes of the northwest. Like the Kedah 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, ten or twelve 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 labour 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 Capell River in 1858. He describes the pound he saw as a fence constructed of the trunks of trees laced together with green widths and braced on the outside by props, enclosing a circular space about one hundred and twenty 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 served to guide the buffalo into the pound. The dead men extended a distance of four miles into the prairie. They were placed about fifty feet apart, and the two rows gradually diverged until at their extremities they were from one and a half to two miles apart. When the skilled hunters are about to bring in a herd of buffalo from the prairie, says Professor Hind, they direct the course of the gallop of the alarmed animals by Confederates stationed in hollows or small depressions, who, when the buffalo appear inclined to take a direction leading from the space marked out by the dead men, show themselves for a moment and wave their robes, immediately hiding again. This serves to turn the buffalo slightly in another direction, and when the animals, having arrived between the rows of dead men, endeavour to pass through them, Indians stationed here and there behind a dead man, go through the same operation, and thus keep the animals within the narrowing limits of the converging lines. At the entrance to the pound there is a strong trunk of a tree placed about a foot from the ground, and on the inner side an excavation is made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back once in the pound. As soon as the animals have taken the fatal spring they begin to gallop round and round the ring fence, looking for a chance to escape, but with the utmost silence women and children on the outside hold their robes before every orifice until the whole herd is brought in. Then they climb to the top of the fence, and with the hunters who have followed closely in the rear of the buffalo, spear or shoot with bows and arrows or firearms at the bewildered animals rapidly becoming frantic with rage and terror within the narrow limits of the pound. A dreadful scene of confusion and slaughter then begins. The oldest and strongest animals crush and toss the weaker. The shouts and screams of the excited Indians rise above the roaring of the bulls, the bellowing of the cows, and the piteous moaning of the calves. The dying struggles of so many huge and powerful animals crowded together create a revolting and terrible scene, dreadful from the excess of its cruelty and waste of life, but with occasional displays of wonderful brute strength and rage, while man in his savage, untutored and heathen state shows both indeed an expression how little he is superior to the noble beasts he so wantonly and cruelly destroys. The last scene of the bloody tragedy is thus set forth a week later. Within the circular fence lay tossed in every conceivable position over two hundred dead buffalo—the exact number was two hundred and forty—from old bulls to calves of three months old animals of every age were huddled together in all the forced attitudes of violent death. Some lay on their backs, with eyes starting from their heads and tongue thrust out through clotted gore. Others were impaled on the horns of the old and strong bulls. Others again, which had been tossed, were lying with broken backs two and three deep. One little calf hung suspended on the horns of a bull which had impaled it in the wild race round and round the pound. The Indians looked upon the dreadful and sickening sight, with evident delight, and told how such and such a bull or cow had exhibited feats of wonderful strength in the death struggle. The flesh of many of the cows had been taken from them and was drying in the sun on stages near the tents. It is needless to say that the odor was overpowering, and millions of large blue flesh flies humming and buzzing over the putrifying bodies was not the least disgusting part of the spectacle. It is some satisfaction to know that when the first run was made, ten days previous, the herd of two hundred buffaloes was no sooner driven into the pound than a wary old bull aspired a weak spot in the fence, charged it at full speed, and burst through to freedom and the prairie, followed by the entire herd. Strange as it may seem today, this wholesale method of destroying buffalo was once practiced in Montana. In his memoir on the American bison, Mr. J. A. Allen states that as late as 1873, while journeying through that territory in charge of the Yellowstone expedition, he several times met with the remains of these pounds and their converging fences in the region above the mouth of the Big Horn River. Mr. Thomas Simpson states that in 1840 there were three camps of Asiniboine Indians in the vicinity of Carlton House, each of which had its buffalo pound into which they drove forty or fifty animals daily. 4. The Surround During the last forty years, the final extermination of the buffalo has been confidently predicted by not only the observing white man of the west, but also nearly all the Indians and half-breeds who formerly depended upon this animal for most of the necessities as well as luxuries of life. They have seen the great herds driven westward farther and farther, until the plains were left tenantless, and hunger took the place of feasting on the choice tidbits of the chase. And is it not singular that during this period the Indian tribes were not moved by a common impulse to kill sparingly, and by the exercise of a reasonable economy in the chase to make the buffalo last as long as possible? But apparently no such thoughts ever entered their minds so far as they themselves were concerned. They looked with jealous eyes upon the white hunter and considered him as much of a robber as if they had a brand on every buffalo. It has been claimed by some authors that the Indians killed with more judgment and more care for the future than did the white man. But I fail to find any evidence that such was ever the fact. They all killed wastefully, wantonly, and always about five times as many head as were really necessary for food. It was always the same old story. Whenever a gang of Indians needed meat, a whole herd was slaughtered, the choicest portions of the finest animals were taken, and about seventy-five percent of the whole was left to putrify and fatten the wolves. And now, as we read of the appalling slaughter, one can scarcely repress the feeling of grim satisfaction that arises when we also read that many of the ex-slaughterers are almost starving for the millions of pounds of fat and juicy buffalo meat they wasted a few years ago. Verily the buffalo is in a great measure avenged already. The following extract from Mr. Catlin's North American Indians, Volume 1, Page 199-200, serves well to illustrate not only a very common and very deadly Indian method of wholesale slaughter, the Surround, but also to show the senseless destructiveness of Indians even when in a state of semi-starvation which was brought upon them by similar acts of improvidence and wastefulness. The minotares, as well as the mandans, had suffered for some months past for want of meat, and had indulged in the most alarming fears that the herds of buffalo were emigrating so far off from them that there was great danger of their actual starvation when it was suddenly announced through the village one morning at an early hour that a herd of buffaloes was in sight. A hundred or more young men mounted their horses with weapons in hand and steered their course to the prairies. The plan of attack, which in this country is familiarly called a Surround, was explicitly agreed upon, and the buffalo hunters, who were all mounted on their buffalo horses and armed with bows and arrows or long lances, divided into two columns taking opposite directions, and drew themselves gradually around the herd at a mile or more distance from them, thus forming a circle of horsemen at equal distances apart, who gradually closed in upon them with a moderate pace at a signal given. The unsuspecting herd at length got the wind of the approaching enemy and fled in a mass in the greatest confusion. To the point where they were aiming to cross the line, the horsemen were seen at full speed gathering and forming in a column, brandishing their weapons and yelling in the most frightful manner, by which they turned the black and rushing mass, which moved off in an opposite direction, where they were again met and foiled in a similar manner, and wheeled back in utter confusion, by which time the horsemen had closed in from all directions, forming a continuous line around them, whilst the poor, affrighted animals were eddying about in a crowded and confused mass, hooking and climbing upon each other when the work of death commenced. I had rowed up in the rear and occupied an elevated position at a few rods' distance, from which I could, like the general of a battlefield, survey from my horse's back the nature and progress of the grand melee, but unlike him, without the power of issuing a command or in any way directing its issue. In this grand turmoil a cloud of dust was soon raised, which in parts obscured the throng where the hunters were galloping their horses around, and driving the whizzing arrows or their long lances to the hearts of these noble animals, which in many instances, becoming infuriated with deadly wounds in their sides, erected their shaggy mains over their bloodshot eyes and furiously plunged forward at the sides of their assailants' horses, sometimes goring them to death at a lunge, and putting their dismounted riders to flight for their lives. Sometimes their dense crowd was opened and the blinded horsemen, too intent on their prey amidst the cloud of dust, were hemmed and wedged in amidst the crowding beasts, over whose backs they were obliged to leap for security, leaving their horses to the fate that might await them in the results of this wild and desperate war. Many were the bulls that turned upon their assailants and met them with desperate resistance, and many were the warriors who were dismounted and saved themselves by the superior muscles of their legs. Some who were closely pursued by the bulls, wheeled suddenly around, and snatching the part of a buffalo robe from around their waists, threw it over the horns and eyes of the infuriated beast, and darting by its side drove the arrow or the lance to its heart. Others suddenly dashed off upon the prairie by the side of the affrighted animals which had escaped from the throng, and closely escorting them for a few rods, brought down their heart's blood in streams and their huge carcasses upon the green and enameled turf. In this way the grand hunt soon resolved itself into a desperate battle, and in the space of fifteen minutes resulted in the total destruction of the whole herd, which in all their strength and fury were doomed like every beast and living thing else to fall before the destroying hands of mighty man. I had sat in trembling silence upon my horse and witnessed this extraordinary scene, which allowed not one of these animals to escape out of my sight. Many plunged off upon the prairie for a distance, but were overtaken and killed, and although I could not distinctly estimate the number that were slain, yet I am sure that some hundreds of these noble animals fell in this grand melee. Amongst the poor affrighted creatures that had occasionally dashed through the ranks of their enemy and sought safety in flight upon the prairie, and in some instances had undoubtedly gained it, I saw them stand awhile looking back when they turned, and as if bent on their own destruction retrace their steps and mingled themselves and their deaths with those of the dying throng. Others had fled to a distance on the prairies, and for want of company, of friends, or of foes, had stood and gazed on till the battle scene was over, seemingly taking pains to stay and hold their lives in readiness for their destroyers until the general destruction was over, when they fell easy victims to their weapons, making the slaughter complete. It is to be noticed that every animal of this entire herd of several hundred was slain on the spot, and there is no room to doubt that at least half, possibly much more, of the meat thus taken was allowed to become a loss. People who are so utterly senseless as to wantonly destroy their own source of food, as the Indians have done, certainly deserve to starve. This surround method of wholesale slaughter was also practiced by the Cheyennes, Arapahos, Sioux, Ponies, Ornabas, and probably many other tribes. 5. Decoying and Driving Another method of slaughtering by wholesale is thus described by Lewis and Clark, Volume 1, Page 235. The locality indicated was the Missouri River in Montana, just above the mouth of the Judith River. On the north we passed a precipice, about a hundred and twenty feet high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred carcasses of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the lower part of the hill must have carried off many of the dead. These buffaloes had been chased down a precipice in a way very common on the Missouri, and by which vast herds are destroyed in a moment. The mode of hunting is to select one of the most active and fleet young men, who is disguised by a buffalo skin round his body. The skin of the head with the ears and horns fastened on his own head in such a way as to deceive the buffaloes. Thus dressed, he fixes himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffaloes and any of the river precipices which sometimes extend for some miles. His companions in the meantime get in the rear and side of the herd, and at a given signal show themselves and advance toward the buffaloes. They instantly take alarm, and finding the hunters beside them they run toward the disguised Indian or Decoy, who leads them on at full speed toward the river. When suddenly securing himself in some crevice of the cliff which he had previously fixed upon, the herd is left on the brink of the precipice. It is then in vain for the foremost to retreat or even to stop, for they are pressed on by the hindmost rank, who, seeing no danger but from the hunters, go down those before them till the whole are precipitated and the shore is strewed with their dead bodies. Sometimes in this perilous seduction the Indian is himself either trodden underfoot by the rapid movements of the buffaloes, or missing his footing on the cliff is urged down the precipice by the falling herd. The Indians then select as much meat as they wish, and the rest is abandoned to the wolves and creates a most dreadful stench. Harper's Magazine, vol. 38, p. 147, contains the following from the pen of Theodore E. Davis in an article entitled The Buffalo Range. As I have previously stated, the best hunting on the range is to be found between the Platte and Arkansas rivers. Here I have seen the Indians have recourse to another method of slaughtering buffalo, in a very easy but to me a cruel way, for where one buffalo is killed several are sure to be painfully injured, but these two are soon killed by the Indians who make haste to lance or shoot the cripples. The mode of hunting is somewhat as follows. A herd is discovered grazing on the table-lands. Being thoroughly acquainted with the country, the Indians are aware of the location of the nearest point where the table-land is broken abruptly by a precipice, which descends a hundred or more feet. Toward this devil-jump, the Indians head the herd, which is at once driven pel-mel to and over the precipice. Meanwhile a number of Indians have taken their way by means of roots known to them, and succeed in reaching the canyon through which the crippled buffalo are running in all directions. These are quickly killed, so that out of a very considerable band of buffalo, but few escape, many having been killed by the fall, and others dispatched while limping off. This mode of hunting is sometimes indulged in by Haram-Skaram white men, but it is done more for deviltry than anything else. I have never known of its practice by army officers, or persons who profess to hunt buffalo as a sport. 6. Hunting on Snowshoes In the dead of the winters, says Mr. Catlin, which are very long and severely cold in this country, where horses cannot be brought into the chase with any avail, the Indian runs upon the surface of the snow by aid of his snowshoes which buoy him up, while the great weight of the buffaloes sinks them down to the middle of their sides, and completely stopping their progress ensures them certain and easy victims to the bow or lance of their pursuers. The snow in these regions often lies during the winter to the depth of three and four feet, being blown away from the tops and sides of the hills in many places, which are left bare for the buffaloes to graze upon, whilst it is drifted in the hollows and ravines to a very great depth, and rendered almost entirely impassable to these huge animals, which, when closely pursued by their enemies, endeavour to plunge through it, but are soon wedged in and almost unable to move, where they fall in easy prey to the Indian, who runs up lightly upon his snowshoes and drives his lance to their hearts. The skins are then stripped off to be sold to the fur traders, and the carcasses left to be devoured by the wolves. Owing to the fact that the winter's supply of meat was procured and dried in the summer and fall months, the flesh of all buffalo killed in winter was allowed to become a total loss. This is the season in which the greatest number of these animals are destroyed for their robes. They are most easily killed at this time, and their hair or fur being longer and more abundant gives greater value to the robe. End of Section 18 The Extermination of the American Bison by William T. Hornaday Part II. CHAPTER III. PROGRESS OF THE EXTERMINATION Section A. The Period of Desultory Destruction from 1730 to 1830 The disappearance of the buffalo from all the country east of the Mississippi was one of the inevitable results of the advance of civilization. To the early pioneers who went forth into the wilderness to wrestle with nature for the necessities of life, this valuable animal might well have seemed a gift direct from the hand of Providence. During the first few years of the early settler's life in a new country, the few domestic animals he had brought with him were far too valuable to be killed for food, and for a long period he looked to the wild animals of the forest and the prairie for his daily supply of meat. The time was when no one stopped to think of the important part our game animals played in the settlement of this country, and even now no one has attempted to calculate the lessened degree of rapidity with which the Star of Empire would have taken its westward way without the bison, deer, elk, and antelope. The western states and territories pay little heed to the wanton slaughter of deer and elk now going on in their forests. But the time will soon come when the Grangers will enter those regions and find the absence of game a very serious matter. Although the bison was the first wild species to disappear before the advance of civilization, he served a good purpose at a highly critical period. His huge bulk of toothsome flesh fed many a hungry family, and his ample robe did good service in the settler's cabin and sleigh in winter weather. By the time game animals had become scarce, domestic herds and flocks had taken their place, and hunting became a pastime instead of a necessity. As might be expected from the time the bison was first seen by white men, he has always been a conspicuous prize, and being the largest of the land quadrupeds was naturally the first to disappear. Every man's hand has been against him. While his disappearance from the eastern United States was in the main due to the settler who killed game as a means of subsistence, there were a few who made the killing of those animals a regular business. This occurred almost exclusively in the immediate vicinity of Salt Springs, around which the bison congregated in great numbers and made their wholesale slaughter of easy accomplishment. Mr. Thomas Ash has recorded some very interesting facts and observations on this point. In speaking of an old man who in the latter part of the last century built a log house for himself on the immediate borders of a Salt Spring, in western Pennsylvania, for the purpose of killing buffaloes out of the immense droves which frequented that spot, Mr. Ash says, In the first and second years this old man with some companions killed from six to seven hundred of these noble creatures, merely for the sake of their skins, which to them were worth only two shillings each, and after this work of death they were obliged to leave the place till the following season, or till the wolves, bears, panthers, eagles, rooks, ravens, etc., had devoured the carcasses and abandoned the place for other prey. In the two following years the same persons killed great numbers out of the first droves that arrived, skinned them, and left their bodies exposed to the sun and air. But they soon had reason to repent of this, for the remaining droves as they came up in succession, stopped, gazed on the mangled and putrid bodies, sorefully moaned or furiously loathe aloud, and returned instantly to the wilderness in an unusual run without tasting their favorite spring or licking the impregnated earth, which was also once their most agreeable occupation. Nor did they or any of their race ever revisit the neighborhood. The simple history of this spring is that of every other in the settled parts of this western world. The carnage of beasts was everywhere the same. I met with a man who had killed two thousand buffaloes with his own hand, and others no doubt have done the same thing. In consequence of such proceedings not one buffalo is at this time to be found east of the Mississippi, except a few domesticated by the curious or carried through the country on a public show. But fortunately there is no evidence that such slaughter as that described by Mr. Ash was at all common, and there is reason for the belief that until within the last forty years the buffalo was sacrificed in ways conducive to the greatest good of the greatest number. From Coronado to General Fremont there has hardly been an explorer of United States territory who has not had occasion to bless the bison, and its great value to mankind can hardly be overestimated, although by many it can readily be forgotten. The disappearance of the bison from the eastern United States was due to its consumption as food. It was very gradual, like the march of civilization, and under the circumstances absolutely inevitable. In a country so thickly peopled as this region speedily became, the mastodon could have survived extinction about as easily as the bison. Except when the latter became the victim of wholesale slaughter, there was little reason to bemoan his fate, save upon grounds that may be regarded purely sentimental. He served a most excellent purpose in the development of the country. Even as late as 1875 the farmers of eastern Kansas were in the habit of making trips every fall into the western part of that state for wagon loads of buffalo meat as a supply for the succeeding winter. The farmers of Texas, Nebraska, Dakota, and Minnesota also drew largely upon the buffalo as long as the supply lasted. The extirpation of the bison west of the Rocky Mountains was due to legitimate hunting for food and clothing, rather than for marketable peltries. In no part of that whole region was the species ever numerous. Although in the mountains themselves, notably in Colorado, with an easy reach of the great prairies on the east, vast numbers were seen by the early explorers and pioneers, and their total destruction in that region was a matter of easy accomplishment. According to Professor J. A. Allen, the complete disappearance of the bison west of the Rocky Mountains took place between 1838 and 1840. End of Section A. Section 20 of the Extermination of the American Bison. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Extermination of the American Bison by William T. Hornaday. Part 2, Chapter 3. Progress of the Extermination Continued. Section B. The Period of Systematic Slaughter from 1830 to 1838. We come now to a history which I would gladly leave unwritten. Its record is a disgrace to the American people in general, and the territorial state and general government in particular. It will cause succeeding generations to regard us as being possessed of the leading characteristics of the savage and the beast of prey, cruelty, and greed. We will be likened to the bloodthirsty tiger of the Indian jungle, who slaughters a dozen bullocks at once when he knows he can eat only one. In one respect, at least, the white men who engaged in the systematic slaughter of the bison were savages just as much as the Piegan Indians, who would drive a whole herd over a precipice to secure a weak's rations of meat for a single village. The men who killed buffaloes for their tongues and those who shot them from the railway trains for sport were murderers. In no way does civilized man so quickly revert to his former state, as when he is alone with the beasts of the field. Give him a gun and something which he may kill without getting himself in trouble, and presto. He is instantly a savage again, finding exquisite delight in bloodshed, slaughter, and death. If not for gain, then solely for the joy and happiness of it. There was no kind of warfare against game animals too unfair, too disreputable, or too mean for white men to engage in if they can only do so with safety to their own precious carcasses. They will shoot buffalo and antelope from running railway trains, drive deer into water with hounds and cut their throats in cold blood, kill doze with fawns a week old, kill fawns by the score for their spotted skins, slaughter deer, moose, and caribou in the snow at a pitiful disadvantage, just as the wolves do, exterminate the wild ducks on the whole Atlantic seaboard with punt guns for the metropolitan markets, kill off the rocky mountain goats for hides worth only fifty cents apiece, destroy wagonloads of trout with dynamite, and so on to the end of the chapter. Perhaps the most gigantic task ever undertaken on this continent in the line of game-slaughter was the extermination of the bison in the great pasture region by the hide-hunters. Probably the brilliant rapidity and success with which that lofty undertaking was accomplished was a matter of surprise even to those who participated in it. The story of the slaughter is by no means a long one. The period of systematic slaughter of the bison naturally begins with the first organized efforts in that direction, in a business-like wholesale way. Although the species had been steadily driven westward for a hundred years by the advancing settlements, and had during all that time been hunted for the meat and robes it yielded, its extermination did not begin in earnest until 1820 or thereabouts. As before stated, various persons had previous to that time made buffalo-killing a business in order to sell their skins, but such instances were very exceptional. By that time the bison was totally extinct in all the region lying east of the Mississippi River, except a portion of Wisconsin where it survived until about 1830. In 1820 the first organized buffalo hunting expedition on a grand scale was made from the Red River Settlement, Manitoba, in which 540 carts proceeded to the range. Previous to that time the buffaloes were found near enough to the settlements around Fort Gary that every settler could hunt independently, but as the herds were driven farther and farther away it required an organized effort and a long journey to reach them. The American Fur Company established trading posts along the Missouri River, one at the mouth of the Teton River and another at the mouth of the Yellowstone. In 1826 a post was established at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains at the head of the Arkansas River, and in 1832 another was located in a corresponding situation at the head of the South Fork of the Plat, close to where Denver now stands. Both the latter were on what was then the western border of the Buffalo Range. Elsewhere throughout the Buffalo Country there were numerous other posts always situated as near as possible to the best hunting ground, and at the same time where they would be most accessible to the hunters both white and red. As might be supposed the Indians were encouraged to kill buffaloes for their robes, and this is what Mr. George Catlin wrote at the mouth of the Teton River, Piat County, Dakota, in 1832 concerning this trade. Note 63. North American Indians, one, page 263. Quote, It seems hard and cruel, does it not, that we civilized people with all the luxuries and comforts of the world about us, should be drawing from the backs of these useful animals the skins for our luxury, leaving their carcasses to be devoured by the wolves, that we should draw from that country some one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand of their robes annually, the greater part of which are taken from animals that are killed expressly for the robe at a season when the meat is not cured and preserved, and for each of which skins the Indian has received but a pint of whiskey. Such is the fact. And that number, or near it, are annually destroyed in addition to the number that is necessarily killed for the subsistence of three hundred thousand Indians who live chiefly upon them. End quote. The author further declared that the fur trade in those great western realms was then limited chiefly to the purchase of buffalo robes. The Red River Half-Breads In June, 1840, when the Red River Half-Breads assembled at Pembina for their annual expedition against the buffalo, they mustered as follows. Carts, one thousand two hundred ten. Hunters, six hundred twenty. Women, between six hundred fifty and one thousand six hundred thirty. Boys and girls, three hundred sixty. Horses, buffalo runners. Four hundred three. Dogs, five hundred forty two. Cart horses, six hundred fifty five. Draft oxen, five hundred eighty six. Skinning knives, one thousand two hundred forty. The total value of the property employed in this expedition and the working time occupied by it, two months, amounted to the enormous sum of twenty four thousand pounds. Although the bison formally ranged to Fort Gary near Winnipeg, they had been steadily killed off and driven back and in 1840 none were found by the expedition until it was two hundred fifty miles from Pembina, which is situated on the Red River at the International Boundary. At that time the extinction of the species from the Red River to the Cheyenne was practically complete. The Red River settlers, aided of course by the Indians of that region, are responsible for the extermination of the bison throughout northeastern Dakota as far as the Cheyenne River, northern Minnesota, and the whole of what is now the province of Manitoba. More than that, as the game grew scarce and retired farther and farther, the half-breeds, who despised agriculture as long as there was a buffalo to kill, extended their hunting operations westward along the Capel until they encroached upon the hunting grounds of the plain Crees, who lived in the Saskatchewan country. Thus was an immense inroad made in the northern half of the herd which had previously covered the entire pasture region from the Great Slave Lake to Central Texas. This was the first visible impression of the systematic killing which began in 1820. Up to 1840 it is reasonably certain, as will be seen by figures given elsewhere, that by this business-like method of the half-breeds, at least 652,000 buffaloes were destroyed by them alone. Even as early as 1840 the Red River hunt was prosecuted through Dakota southwestwardly to the Missouri River and a short distance beyond it. Here it touched the wide strip of territory bordering that stream which was even then being regularly drained of its animal resources by the Indian hunters who made the river their base of operations and whose robes were shipped on its steamboats. It is certain that these annual Red River expeditions into Dakota were kept up as late as 1847 and as long thereafter as buffaloes were to be found in any number between the Cheyenne and the Missouri. At the same time the White Horse Plains Division which hunted westward from Fort Gary did its work of destruction quite as rapidly and as thoroughly as the rival expedition to the United States. In 1857 the Plains Crees, inhabiting the country around the headwaters of the Capell River, 250 miles due west from Winnipeg, assembled in council and, quote, determined that in consequence of promises often made and broken by the white men and half-breeds, and the rapid destruction by them of the buffalo they fed on, they would not permit either white men or half-breeds to hunt in their country or travel through it except for the purpose of trading for their dried meat, pemekin, skins, and robes. End quote. In 1858 the Crees reported that between the two branches of the Saskatchewan buffalo were very scarce. Professor Hines' expedition saw only one buffalo in the whole course of their journey from Winnipeg until they reached Sand Hill Lake at the head of the Capell near the south branch of the Saskatchewan where the first herd was encountered. Although the species was not totally extinct on the Capell at that time, it was practically so. Part 2 The Country of the Sioux The next territory completely depopulated of buffaloes by systematic hunting was very nearly the entire southern half of Dakota, southwestern Minnesota, and northern Nebraska as far as the North Platte. This vast region, once the favorite range for hundreds of thousands of buffaloes, had for many years been the favorite hunting ground of the Sioux Indians of the Missouri, the Pawnees, Omaha's, and all other tribes of that region. The settlement of Iowa and Minnesota presently forced into this region the entire body of Mississippi Sioux from the country west of Prairie Duchamp and around Fort Snelling and materially hastened the extermination of all the game animals which were once so abundant there. It is absolutely certain that if the Indians had been uninfluenced by the white traders, or in other words had not been induced to take and prepare a large number of robes every year for the market, the species would have survived very much longer than it did, but the demand quickly proved to be far greater than the supply. The Indians, of course, found it necessary to slaughter annually a great number of buffaloes for their own wants, for meat, robes, leather, TPs, etc. When it came to supplementing this necessary slaughter by an additional fifty thousand or more every year for marketable robes, it is no wonder that the improvident savages soon found, when too late, that the supply of buffaloes was not inexhaustible. Naturally enough they attributed their disappearance to the white man, who was therefore a robber and a proper subject for the scalping knife. Apparently it never occurred to the minds of the Sioux that they themselves were equally to blame. It was always the paleface who killed the buffaloes, and it was always Sioux buffaloes that they killed. The Sioux seemed to feel that they held a chattel mortgage on all the buffaloes north of the plat, and it required more than one pitched battle to convince them otherwise. Up to the time when the Great Sioux Reservation was established in Dakota, 1875-777, when 33,739 square miles of country, or nearly the whole southwest quarter of the territory, was set aside for the exclusive occupancy of the Sioux, buffaloes were very numerous throughout that entire region. East of the Missouri River, which is the eastern boundary of the Sioux Reservation, from Bismarck all the way down, the species was practically extinct as early as 1870. But at the time when it became unlawful for white hunters to enter the territory of the Sioux Nation, there were tens of thousands of buffaloes upon it. And their subsequent slaughter is chargeable to the Indians alone, save as to those which migrated into the hunting grounds of the whites. Western Railways and their part in the extermination of the buffalo. The building of a railroad means the speedy extermination of all the big game along its line. In its eagerness to attract the public and build up a big business, every new line which traverses a country containing game does its utmost by means of advertisements and posters to attract the man with a gun. Its game resorts are all laid bare, and the market hunters and sportsmen swarm in immediately, slaying and to slay. Within the last year, the last real retreat for our finest game, the only remaining stronghold for the mountain sheep, goat, caribou, elk, and deer, northwestern Montana, northern Ohio, and thence westward, has been laid open to the very heart by the building of the St. Paul Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway, which runs up the valley of the Milk River to Fort Assiniboine and crosses the Rocky Mountains through two medicine paths. Here too for that region has been so difficult to reach that the game it contains has been measurably secure from General Slaughter, but now it also must go. The marking out of the great overland trail by the Argonauts of 49 in their rush for the gold fields of California was the foreshadowing of the great east and west breach in the universal herd, which was made twenty years later by the first transcontinental railway. The pioneers who crossed the plains in those days killed buffaloes for food whenever they could, and the constant harrying of those animals, experienced along the line of travel, soon led them to retire from the proximity of such continual danger. It was undoubtedly due to this cause that the number seen by parties who crossed the plains in 1849 and subsequently was surprisingly small, but fortunately for the buffaloes, the pioneers who would gladly have halted and turned aside now and then for the excitement of the chase were compelled to hurry on and accomplish the long journey while good weather lasted. It was owing to this fact and the scarcity of good horses that the buffaloes found it necessary to retire only a few miles from the wagon route to get beyond the reach of those who would have gladly hunted them. Mr. Ellen Varner of Indianola, Illinois, has kindly furnished me with the following facts in regard to the presence of the buffalo, as observed by him during his journey westward over what was then known as the Oregon Trail. Quote, the old Oregon Trail ran from Independence, Missouri to Old Fort Laramie through the south pass of the Rocky Mountains. And thence up to Salt Lake City, we left Independence on May C. 1849 and struck the Platte River at Grand Island. The trail had been traveled but very little previous to that year. We saw no buffaloes, whatever, until we reached the forks of the Platte on May 20th or thereabouts. There we saw seventeen head. From that time on we saw small bunches now and then, never more than forty or fifty together. We saw no great herds anywhere, and I should say we did not see over five hundred head all told. The most western point at which we saw buffaloes was about due north of Laramie Peak, and it must have been about the twentieth of June. We killed several head for meat during our trip and found them all rather thin in flesh. Plainsmen who claimed to know said that all the buffaloes we saw had wintered in that locality and had not had time to get fat. The annual migration from the south had not yet begun or rather had not yet brought any of the southern buffaloes that far north. In a few years the tide of overland travel became so great that the buffaloes learned to keep away from the dangers of the trail and many a pioneer has crossed the plains without ever seeing a live buffalo.