# The Extermination of the American Bison/Part 1 - Life history of the bison

Contents
THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON.
By William T. Hornaday,
Superintendent of the National Zoological Park.
PART I. — LIFE HISTORY OF THE BISON.
I. Discovery of the species.
The discovery of the American bison, as first made by Europeans, occurred in the menagerie of a heathen king.
In the year 1521, when Cortez reached Anahuac, the American bison was seen for the first time by civilized Europeans, if we may be permitted to thus characterize the horde of blood-thirsty plunder seekers who fought their way to the Aztec capital. With a degree of enterprise that marked him as an enlightened monarch, Montezuma maintained, for the instruction of his people, a well-appointed menagerie, of which the historian De Solis wrote as follows (1724):
"In the second Square of the same House were the Wild Beasts, which were either presents to Montezuma, or taken by his Hunters, in strong Cages of Timber, rang'd in good Order, and under Cover: Lions, Tygers, Bears, and all others of the savage Kind which New-Spain produced; among which the greatest Rarity was the Mexican Bull; a wonderful composition of divers Animals. It has crooked Shoulders, with a Bunch on its Back like a Camel; its Flanks dry, its Tail large, and its Neck covered with Hair like a Lion. It is cloven footed, its Head armed like that of a Bull, which it resembles in Fierceness, with no less strength and Agility."
Thus was the first seen buffalo described. The nearest locality from whence it could have come was the State of Coahuila, in northern Mexico, between 400 and 500 miles away, and at that time vehicles were unknown to the Aztecs. But for the destruction of the whole mass of the written literature of the Aztecs by the priests of the Spanish Conquest, we might now be reveling in historical accounts of the bison which would make the oldest of our present records seem of comparatively recent date.
Nine years after the event referred to above, or in 1530, another Spanish explorer, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza, afterwards called Cabeza de Vaca — or, in other words "Cattle Cabeza," the prototype of our own distinguished "Buffalo Bill" — was wrecked on the Gulf coast, west of ​the delta of the Mississippi, from whence he wandered westward through what is now the State of Texas. In southeastern Texas he discovered tbe American bison on his native heath. So far as can be ascertained, this was the earliest discovery of the bison in a wild state, and the description of the species as recorded by the explorer is of historical interest. It is brief and superficial. The unfortunate explorer took very little interest in animated nature, except as it contributed to the sum of his daily food, which was then the all-important subject of his thoughts. He almost starved. This is all he has to say:
"Cattle come as far as this. I hare seen them three times, and eaten of their meat. I think they are about the size of those in Spain. They have small horns like those of Morocco, and the hair long and flocky, like that of the merino. Some are light brown (pardillas) and others black. To my judgment the flesh is finer and sweeter than that of this country (Spain). The Indians make blankets of those that are not full grown, and of the larger they wake shoes and bucklers. They come as far as the sea-coast of Florida (now Texas), and in a direction from the north, and range over a district of more than 400 leagues. In the whole extent of plain over which they roam, the people who live bordering upon it descend and kill them for food, and thus a great wany skins are scattered throughout the country."
Coronado was the next explorer who penetrated the country of the buffalo, which he accomplished from the west, by way of Arizona and New Mexico. He crossed the southern part of the "Panhandle" of Texas, to the edge of what is now the Indian Territory, and returned through the same region. It was in the year 1542 that he reached the buffalo country, and traversed the plains that were "full of crooke-backed oxen, as the mountaine Serena in Spaine is of sheepe." This is the description of the animal as recorded by one of his followers, Castañeda, and translated by W. W.Davis:
"The first time we encountered the buffalo, all the horses took to flight on seeing them, for they are horrible to the sight."
"They have a broad and short face, eyes two palms from each other, and projecting in such a manner sideways that they can see a pursuer. Their beard is like that of goats, and so long that it drags the ground when they lower the head. They have, on the anterior portion of the body, a frizzled hair like sheep's wool; it is very fine upon the croup, and sleek like a lion's mane. Their horns are very short and thick, and can scarcely be seen through the hair. They always change their hair in May, and at this season they really resemble lions. To make it drop more quickly, for they change it as adders do their skins, they roll among the brush-wood which they find in the ravines.
"Their tail is very short, and terminates in a great tuft. When they run they carry it in the air like scorpions. When quite young they are ​tawny, and resemble our calves; but as age increases they change color and form.
"Another thing which struck us was that all the old buffaloes that we killed had the left ear cloven, while it was entire in the young; we could never discover the reason of this.
"Their wool is so fine that handsome clothes would certainly be made of it, but it can not be dyed for it is tawny red. We were much surprised at sometimes meeting innumerable herds of bulls without a single cow, and other herds of cows without bulls."
Neither De Soto, Ponce de Leon, Vasquez de Ayllon, nor Pamphilo de Narvaez ever saw a buffalo, for the reason that all their explorations were made south of what was then the habitat of that animal. At the time De Soto made his great exploration from Florida north westward to the Mississippi and into Arkansas (1539-41) he did indeed pass through country in northern Mississippi and Louisiana that was after. ward inhabited by the buffalo, but at that time not one was to be found there. Some of his soldiers, however, who were sent into the northern part of Arkansas, reported having seen buffalo skins in the possession of the Indians, and were told that live buffaloes were to be found 5 or 6 leagues north of their farthest point.
The earliest discovery of the bison in Eastern North America, or indeed anywhere north of Coronado's route, was made somewhere near Washington, District of Columbia, in 1612, by an English navigator named Samuell.Argoll, and narrated as follows:
"As soon as I had unladen this corne, I set my men to the felling of Timber, for the building of a Frigat, which I had left half finished at Point Comfort, the 19. of March: and returned myself with the ship into Pembrook (Potomac] River, and so discovered to the head of it, which is about 65. leagues into the Land, and navigable for any ship. And then marching into the Countrie, I found great store of Cattle as big as Kine, of which the Indians that were my guides killed a couple, which we found to be very good and wholesome meate, and are very easie to be killed, in regard they are heavy, slow, and not so wild as other beasts of the wildernesse."
It is to be regretted that the narrative of the explorer affords no clew to the precise locality of this interesting discovery, but since it is doubtful that the mariner journeyed very far on foot from the head of navigation of the Potomac, it seems highly probable that the first American bison seen by Europeans, other than the Spaniards, was found within 15 miles, or even less, of the capital of the United States, and possibly within the District of Columbia itself.
The first meeting of the white man with the buffalo on the northern boundary of that animal's habitat occurred in 1679, when Father ​Hennepin ascended the St. Lawrence to the great lakes, and finally penetrated the great wilderness as far as western Illinois.
The next meeting with the buffalo on the Atlantic slope was in October, 1729, by a party of surveyors under Col. William Byrd, who were engaged in surveying the boundary between North Carolina and Virginia.
As the party journeyed up from the coast, marking the line which now constitutes the interstate boundary, three buffaloes were seen on Sugar-Tree Creek, but none of them were killed.
On the return journey, in November, a bull buffalo was killed on Sugar-Tree Creek, which is in Halifax County, Virginia, within 5 miles of Big Buffalo Creek; longitude 780 40" W., and 155 miles from the coast. "It was found all alone, tho' Buffaloes Seldom are." The meat is spoken of as "a Rarity," not met at all on the expedition up. The animal was found in thick woods, which were thus feelingly described: "The woods were thick great Part of this Day's Journey, so that we were forced to scuffle hard to advance 7 miles, being equal in fatigue to double that distance of Clear and Open Ground." One of the creeks which the party crossed was christened Buffalo Creek, and "so named from the frequent tokens we discovered of that American Behemoth."
In October, 1733, on another surveying expedition, Colonel Byrd's party had the good fortune to kill another buffalo near Sugar-Tree Creek, which incident is thus described.
"We pursued our journey thro' uneven and perplext woods, and in the thickest of them had the Fortune to knock down a Young Buffalo 2 years old. Providence threw this vast animal in our way very Seasonably, just as our provisions began to fail us. And it was the more wel. come, too, because it was change of dyet, which of all Varietys, next to that of Bed-fellows, is the most agreeable. We had lived upon Venison and Bear till our stomachs loath'd them almost as much as the Hebrews of old did their Quails. Our Butchers were so unbandy at their Business that we grew very lank before we cou'd get our Dinner. But when it came, we found it equal in goodness to the best Beef. They made it the longer because they kept Sucking the Water out of the Guts in imitation of the Catauba Indians, upon the belief that it is a great Cordial, and will even make them drunk, or at least very Gay."
A little later a solitary bull buffalo was found, but spared, the earliest instance of the kind on record, and which had few successors to keep it company.
II. Geographical Distribution.
The range of the American bison extended over about one-third of the entire continent of North America. Starting almost at tide-water ​on the Atlantic coast, it extended westward through a vast tract of dense forest, across the Alleghany Mountain system to the prairies along the Mississippi, and southward to the Delta of that great stream. Although the great plains country of the West was the natural home of the species, where it flourished most abundantly, it also wandered south across Texas to the burning plains of northeastern Mexico, westward across the Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah, and Idaho, aud northward across a vast treeless waste to the bleak and inhospitable shores of the Great Slave Lake itself. It is more than probable that had the bison remained unmolested by man and uninfluenced by him, he would eventually have crossed the Sierra Nevadas and the Coast Range and taken up his abode in the fertile valleys of the Pacific slope.
Had the bison remained for a few more centuries in undisturbed possession of his range, and with liberty to roam at will over the North American continent, it is almost certain that several distinctly recognizable varieties would have been produced. The buffalo of the hot regions in the extreme south would have become a short-haired animal like tbe gaur of India and the African buffalo. The individuals inhabiting the extreme north, in the vicinity of Great Slave Lake, for example, would have developed still longer hair, and taken on more of the dense hairyness of the musk ox. In the "wood" or "mountain buffalo" we already have a distinct foreshadowing of the changes which would have taken place in the individuals which made their permanent residence upon rugged mountains.
It would be an easy matter to fill a volume with facts relating to the geographical distribution of Bison americanus and the dates of its occurrence and disappearance in the multitude of different localities embraced within the immense area it once inhabited. The capricious shiftings of certain sections of the great herds, whereby large areas which for many years had been utterly unvisited by buffaloes suddenly became overrun by them, could be followed up indefinitely, but to little purpose. In order to avoid wearying the reader with a mass of dates and references, the map accompanying this paper has been prepared to show at a glance the approximate dates at which the bison finally disappeared from the various sections of its habitat. In some cases the date given is coincident with the death of the last buffalo known to have been killed in a given State or Territory; in others, where records are meager, the date given is the nearest approximation, based on existing records. In the preparation of this map I have drawn liberally from Mr. J. A. Allen's admirable monograph of "The American Bison," in which the author has brought together, with great labor and invariable accuracy, a vast amount of historical data bearing upon this subject. In this connection I take great pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Professor Allen's work.
While it is inexpedient to include here all the facts that might be recorded with reference to the discovery, existence, and ultimate ​extintion of the bison in the various portions of its former habitat, it is yet worth while to sketch briefly the extreme limits of its range. In doing this, our starting point will be the Atlantic slope east of the Alleghanies, and the reader will do well to refer to the large map.
District of Columbia.—There is no indisputable evidence that the bison ever inhabited this precise locality, but it is probable that it did. In 1612 Captain Argoll sailed up the "Pembrook River" to the head of navigation (Mr. Allen believes this was the James River, and not the Potomac) and marched inland a few miles, where he discovered buffaloes, some of which were killed by his Indian guides. If this river was the Potomac, and most authorities believe that it was, the buffaloes seen by Captain Argoll might easily have been in what is now the District of Columbia.
Admitting the existence of a reasonable doubt as to the identity of the Pembrook River of Captain Argoll, there is yet another bit of history which fairly establishes the fact that in the early part of the seventeenth century buffaloes inhabited the banks of the Potomac between this city and the lower falls. In 1624 an English fur-trader named Henry Fleet came hither to trade with the Anacostian Indians, who then inhabited the present site of the city of Washington, and with the tribes of the Upper Potomac. In his journal (discovered a few years since in the Lambeth Library, London) Fleet gave a quaint description of the city's site as it then appeared. The following is from the explorer's journal:
"Monday, the 25th June, we set sail for the town of Tohoga, where we came to an anchor 2 leagues short of the falls. * * * This place, without questiou, is the most pleasant and healthful place in all this country, and most convenient for habitation, the air temperate in summer and not violent in winter. It aboundeth with all manner of fish. The Indians in one night commonly will catch thirty sturgeons in a place where the river is not above 12 fathoms broad, and as for deer, buffaloes, bears, turkeys, the woods do swarm with them. * * * The 27th of June I manned my shallop and went up with the flood, the tide rising about 4 feet at this place. We had not rowed above 3 miles, but we might hear the falls to roar about 6 miles distant."
Maryland.—There is no evidence that the bison ever inhabited Maryland, except what has already been adduced with reference to the District of Columbia. If either of the references quoted may be taken as conclusive proof, and I see no reason for disputing either, then the fact that the bison once ranged northward from Virginia into Maryland is fairly established. There is reason to expect that fossil remains of Bison americanus will yet be found both in Maryland and the District of Columbia, and I venture to predict that this will yet occur.
Virginia.—Of the numerous references to the occurrence of the bison in Virginia, it is sufficient to allude to Col. William Byrd's meetings ​with buffaloes in 1620, while surveying the southern boundary of the State, about 155 miles from the coast, as already quoted; the references to the discovery of buffaloes on the eastern side of the Virginia mountains, quoted by Mr. Allen from Salmon's "Present State of Virginia," page 14 (London, 1737), and the capture and domestication of buffaloes in 1701 by the Huguenot settlers at Manikintown, which was situated on the James River, about 14 miles above Richmond. Apparently, buffaloes were more numerous in Virginia than in any other of the Atlantic States.
North Carolina.-Colonel Byrd's discoveries along the inter-state boundary between Virginia and North Carolina fixes the presence of the bison in the northern part of the latter State at the date of the survey. The following letter to Prof. G. Brown Goode, dated Birdsnest post-office, Va., August 6, 1888, from Mr. C. R. Moore, furnishes reliable evidence of the presence of the buffalo at another point in North Carolina: "In the winter of 1857 I was staying for the night at the house of an old gentleman named Houston. I should judge he was seventy then. He lived near Buffalo Ford, on the Catawba River, about 4 miles from Statesville, N. C. I asked him how the ford got its name. He told me that his grandfather told him that when he was a boy the buffalo crossed there, and that when the rocks in the river were bare they would eat the moss that grew upon them." The point indicated is in longitude 81° west and the date not far from 1750.
South Carolina.-Professor Allen cites numerous authorities, whose observations furnish abundant evidence of the existence of the buffalo in South Carolina during the first half of the eighteenth century. From these it is quite evident that in the north western half of the State buffaloes were once fairly numerous. Keating declares, on the authority of Colhoun, "and we know that some of those who first settled the Abbeville district in South Carolina, in 1756, found the buffalo there." This appears to be the only definite locality in which the presence of the species was recorded.
Georgia.-The extreme southeastern limit of the buffalo in the United States was found on the coast of Georgia, near the mouth of the Altamaha River, opposite St. Simon's Island. Mr. Francis Moore, in his "Voyage to Georgia," made in 1736 and reported upon in 1744, makes the following observation:
"The island (St. Simon's] abounds with deer and rabbits. There are no buffalo in it, though there are large herds upon the main." Else. where in the same document (p. 122) reference is made to buffalo-hunting by Indians on the main-land near Darien.
In James E. Oglethorpe's enumeration (A.D. 1733) of the wild beasts of Georgia and South Carolina he mentions "deer, elks, bears, wolves, and buffaloes."
​Up to the time of Moore's voyage to Georgia the interior was almost wholly unexplored, and it is almost certain that bad not the "large herds of buffalo on the main-land" existed within a distance of 20 or 30 miles or less from the coast, the colonists would have had no knowledge of them; nor would the Indians have taken to the war-path against the whites at Darien "under pretense of hunting buffalo."
Alabama. — Haring established the existence of the bison in northwestern Georgia almost as far down as the center of the State, and in Mississippi down to the neighborhood of the coast, it was naturally expected that a search of historical records would reveal evidence that the bison once inhabited the northern half of Alabama. A most careful. search through all the records bearing upon the early history and exploration of Alabama, to be found in the Library of Congress, failed to discover the slightest reference to the existence of the species in that State, or even to the use of buffalo skins by any of the Alabama Indians. While it is possible that such a hiatus really existed, in this instance its existence would be wholly unaccountable. I believe that the buffalo once inhabited the northern half of Alabama, even though history fails to record it.
Louisiana And Mississippi.-At the beginning of the eighteenth century, buffaloes were plentiful in southern Mississippi and Louisiana, not only down to the coast itself, from Bay St. Louis to Biloxi, but even in the very Delta of the Mississippi, as the following record shows. In a "Memoir addressed to Count de Pontchartrain," December 10, 1697, the author, M. de Remonville, describes the country around the mouth of the Mississippi, now the State of Louisiana, and further says:
"A great abundance of wild cattle are also found there, which might be domesticated by rearing up the young calves." Whether these animals were buffaloes might be considered an open question but for the following additional information, which affords positive evidence: "The trade in furs and peltry would be immensely valuable and exceedingly profitable. We could also draw from thence a great quantity of buffalo hides every year, as the plains are filled with the animals."
In the same volume, page 47, in a document entitled "Annals of Louisiana from 1693 to 1722, by M. Penicaut" (1698), the author records the presence of the buffalo on the Gulf coast on the banks of the Bay St. Louis, as follows: "The next day we left Pea Island, and passed through the Little Rigolets, which led into the sea about three leagues from the Bar of St. Lonis. We encamped at the entrance of the bay, near a fountain of water that flows from the hills, and which was called at this time Belle Fountain. We hunted during several days upon the coast of this bay, and filled our boats with the meat of the deer, buffaloes, and other wild game which we had killed, and carried it to the fort (Biloxi)." ​The occurrence of the buffalo at Natchez is recorded, and also (p. 115) at the mouth of Red River, as follows: "We ascended the Mississippi to Pass Manchac, where we killed fifteen buffaloes. The next day we lauded again, and killed eight more buffaloes and as many deer."
The presence of the buffalo in the Delta of the Mississippi was observed and recorded by D'Iberville in 1699.
According to Claiborne, the Choctaws have an interesting tradition in regard to the disappearance of the buffalo from Mississippi. It relates that during the early part of the eighteenth century a great drought occurred, which was particularly severe in the prairie region. For three years not a drop of rain fell. The Nowubee and Tombigbee Rivers dried up and the forests perished. The elk and buffalo, which up to that time had been numerous, all migrated to the country beyond the Mississippi, and never returned.
Texas. — It will be remembered that it was in southeastern Texas, in all probability within 50 miles of the present city of Houston, that the earliest discovery of the American bison on its native heath was made in 1530 by Cabeza de Yaca, a half-starved, half-naked, and wholly wretched Spaniard, almost the only surviving member of the celebrated expedition which burned its ships behind it. In speaking of the buffalo in Texas at the earliest periods of which we have any historical record, Professor Allen says: "They were also found in immense herds on the coast of Texas, at the Bay of St. Bernard (Matagorda Bay), and on the lower part of the Colorado (Rio Grande, according to some authorities), by La Salle, in 1685, and thence northwards across the Colorado, Brazos, and Trinity Rivers. Joutel says that when in latitude 28° 51′ "the sight of abundance of goats and bullocks, differing in shape from ours, and running along the coast, heightened our earnestness to be ashore." They afterwards landed in St. Louis Bay (now called Matagorda Bay), where they found buffaloes in such numbers on the Colorado River that they called it La Rivière aux Bœufs. According to Professor Allen, the buffalo did not inhabit the coast of Texas east of the mouth of the Brazos River.
It is a curious coincidence that the State of Texas, wherein the earliest discoveries and observations upon the bison were made, should also now furnish a temporary shelter for one of the last remnants of the great herd.
Mexico. — In regard to the existence of the bison south of the Rio Grande, in old Mexico, there appears to be but one authority on record. Dr. Berlandier, who at the time of his death left in MS. a work on the mammals of Mexico. At one time this MS. was in the Smithsonian Institution, but it is there no longer, nor is its fate even ​ascertainable. It is probable that it was burned in the fire that destroyed a portion of the Institution in 1865. Fortunately Professor Allen obtained and published in his monograph (in French) a copy of that portion of Dr. Berlandier's work relating to the presence of the bison in Mexico, of which the following is a translation:
"In Mexico, when the Spaniards, ever greedy for riches, pushed their explorations to the north and northeast, it was not long before they met with the buffalo. In 1602 the Franciscan monks who discovered Nuevo Leon eucouutered in the neighborhood of Monterey numerous herds of these quadrupeds. They were also distributed in Nouvelle Biscaye (States of Chihuahua and Durango), and they sometimes advanced to the extreme south of that country. In the eighteenth century they concentrated more and more toward the north, but still remained very abundant in the neighborhood of the province of Bexar. At the commencement of the nineteenth century we see them recede gradually in the interior of the country to such an extent that they became day by day scarcer and scarcer about the settlements. Now, it is not in their periodical migrations that we meet them near Bexar. Every year in the spring, in April or May, they advance toward the north, to return again to the southern regions in September and October. The exact limits of these annual migrations are unknown; it is, however, probable that in the north they never go beyond the banks of the Rio Bravo, at least in the States of Cohahuila and Texas. Toward the north, not being checked by the currents of the Missouri, they progress even as far as Michigan, and they are found in summer in the Territories and interior States of the United States of North America. The route which these animals follow in their migrations occupies a width of several miles, and becomes so marked that, besides the verdure destroyed, one would believe that the fields had been covered with manure.
"These migrations are not general, for certain bands do not seem to follow the general mass of their kin, but remain stationary throughout the whole year on the prairies covered with a rich vegetation on the banks of the Rio de Guadelupe and the Rio Colorado of Texas, not far from the shores of the Gulf, to the east of the colony of San Felipe, precisely at the same spot where La Salle and his traveling companions saw them two hundred years before. The Rev. Father Damian Mansanet saw them also as in our days on the shores of Texas, in regions which have since been covered with the habitations, hamlets, and villages of the new colonists, and from whence they have disappeared since 1828.
"From the observations made on this subject we may conclude that the buffalo inhabited the temperate zone of the New World, and that they inhabited it at all times. In the north they never advanced beyond the 48th or 58th degree of latitude, and in the south, although ​
​they may have reached as low as 25°, they scarcely passed beyond the 27th or 28th degree (north latitude), at least in the inhabited and known portions of the country."
New Mexico.—In 1542 Coronado, while on his celebrated inarch, met with vast herds of buffalo on the Upper Pecos River, since which the presence of the species in the valley of the Pecos has been well known. In describing the journey of Espejo down the Pecos River in the year 1584, Davis says (Spanish Conquest of New Mexico, p. 260): "They passed down a river they called Rio de las Vacas, or the River of Oxen [the river Pecos, and the same Cow River that Vaca describes, says Professor Allen], and was so named because of the great number of buffaloes that fed upon its banks. They traveled down this river the distance of 120 leagues, all the way passing through great herds of buffaloes."
Professor Allen locates the western boundary of the buffalo in New Mexico even as far west as the western side of Rio Grande del Norte.
Utah.—It is well known that buffaloes, though in very small numbers, once inhabited northeastern Utah, and that a few were killed by the Mormon settlers prior to 1840 in the vicinity of Great Salt Lake. In the museum at Salt Lake City I was shown a very ancient mounted head of a buffalo bull which was said to have been killed in the Salt Lake Valley. It is doubtful that such was really fact. There is no evidence that the bison ever inhabited the southwestern half of Utah, and, considering the general sterility of the Territory as a whole previous to its development by irrigation, it is surprising that any buffalo in his senses would ever set foot in it at all.
Idaho.—The former range of the bison probably embraced the whole of Idaho. Fremont states that in the spring of 1824 " the buffalo were spread in immense numbers over the Green River and Bear River Valleys, and through all the country lying between the Colorado, or Green River of the Gulf of California, and Lewis' Fork of the Columbia River, the meridian of Fort Hall then forming the western limit of their range. [In J. K. Townsend's "Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains," in 1834, he records the occurrence of herds near the Mellade and Boise and Salmon Rivers, ten days' journey—200 miles—west of Fort Hall.] The buffalo then remained for many years in that country, and frequently moved down the valley of the Columbia, on both sides of the river, as far as the Fishing Falls. Below this point the}' never descended in any numbers. About 1834 or 1835 they began to diminish very rapidly, and continued to decrease until 1838 or 1840, when, with the country we have just described, they entirely abandoned all the waters of the Pacific north of Lewis's Fork of the Columbia [now called Snake] River. At that time the Flathead Indians were in the habit of finding their buffalo on the heads of Salmon River and other streams of the Columbia, ​Oregon.—The only evidence on record ot the occurrence of the bison in Oregon is the following, from Professor Allen's memoir (p. 119): "Respecting its former occurrence m eastern Oregon, Prof. O. C. Marsh, under date of New Haven, February 7, 1875, writes me as follows: 'The most western point at which I have myself observed remains of the buffalo was in 1873 on Willow Creek, eastern Oregon, among the foot hills on the eastern side of the Blue Mountains. This is about latitude 44°. The bones were perfectly characteristic, although nearly decomposed.'"
The remains must have been those of a solitary and very enterprising straggler.
The Northwest territories (British).—At two or three points only did the buffloes of the British Possessions cross the Rocky Mountain barrier toward British Columbia. One was the pass through which the Canadian Pacific Railway now runs, 200 miles north of the international boundary. According to Dr. Richardson, the number of buffaloes which crossed the mountains at that point were sufficiently noticeable to constitute a feature of the fauna on the western side of the range. It is said that buffaloes also crossed by way of the Kootenai Pass, which is only a few miles north of the boundary line, but the number which did so must have been very small.
As might be expected from the character of the country, the favorite range of the bison in British America was the northern extension of the great pasture region lying between the Missouri River and Great Slave Lake. The most northerly occurrence of the bison is recorded as an observation of Franklin in 1820 at Slave Point, on the north side of Great Slave Lake. "A few frequent Slave Point, on the north side of the lake, but this is the most northern situation in which they were observed by Captain Franklin's party."
Dr. Richardson defined the eastern boundary of the bison's range in British America as follows: "They do not frequent any of the districts formed of primitive rocks, and the limits of their range to the eastward, within the Hudson's Bay Company's territories, may be correctly marked on the map by a line commencing in longitude 97°, on the Red River, which flows into the south end of Lake Winnipeg, crossing the Saskatchewan to the westward of the Basqnian Hill, and running thence by the Athapescow to the east end of Great Slave Lake. Their migrations westward were formerly limited to the Rocky Mountain range, and they are still unknown in New Caledonia and on the shores of the Pacific to the north of the Columbia River; but of late years they have found out a passage across the mountains near the sources of the Saskatchewan, and their numbers to the westward are annually increasing.
Great Slave Lake.—That the buffalo inhabited the southern shore of this lake as late as 1871 is well established by the following letter from ​Mr. E. W. Nelson to Mr. J. A. Allen, under date of July 11, 1877: "I have met here (St. Michaels, Alaska) two gentlemen who crossed the mountains from British Columbia and came to Fort Yukon through British America, from whom I have derived some information about the buffalo (Bison americanus) which will be of interest to you. These gentlemen descended the Peace River, and on about the one hundred and eighteenth degree of longitude made a portage to Hay River, directly north. On this portage they saw thousands of buffalo skulls, and old trails, in some instances 2 or 3 feet deep, leading east and west. They wintered on Hay River near its entrance into Great Slave Lake, and here found the buffalo still common, occupying a restricted territory along the southern border of the lake. This was iu 1871. They made inquiry concerning the large number of skulls seen by them on the portage, and learned that about fifty years before, snow fell to the estimated depth of 14 feet, and so enveloped the animals that they perished by thousands. It is asserted that these buffaloes are larger than those of the plains."
Minnesota and Wisconsin. — A line drawn from Winnipeg to Chicago, curving slightly to the eastward in the middle portion, will very nearly define the eastern boundary of the buffalo's range in Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Illinois and Indiana. — The whole of these two States were formerly inhabited by the buffalo, the fertile prairies of Illinois being particularly suited to their needs. It is doubtful whether the range of the species extended north of the northern boundary of Indiana, but since southern Michigan was as well adapted to their support as Ohio or Indiana, their absence from that State must have been due more to accident than design.
Ohio. — The southern shore of Lake Erie forms part of the northern boundary of the bison's range in the eastern United States. La Hon. tan explored Lake Erie in 1637 and thus describes its southern shore: "I can not express what quantities of Deer and Turkeys are to be found in these Woods, and in the vast Meads that lye upon the South side of the Lake. At the bottom of the Lake we find beeves upon the Banks of two pleasant Rivers that disembogue into it, without Cataracts or Rapid Currents." It thus appears that the southern shore of Lake Erie forms part of the northern boundary of the buffalo's range in the eastern United States.
New York. — In regard to the presence of the bison in any portion of the State of New York, Professor Allen considers the evidence as fairly conclusive that it once existed in western New York, not only in the vicinity of the eastern end of Lake Erie, where now stands the city of Buffalo, at the mouth of a large creek of the same name, but also on the shore of Lake Ontario, probably in Orleans County. In his monograph ​of "The American Bisons," page 107, he gives the following testimony and conclusions on this point:
"The occurrence of a stream in western New York, called Buffalo Creek, which empties into the eastern end of Lake Erie, is commonly viewed as traditional evidence of its occurrence at this point, but positive testimony to this effect has thus far escaped me.
"This locality, if it actually came so far eastward, must hare formed the eastern limit of its range along the lakes. I bare found only highly questionable allusions to the occurrence of buffaloes along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Keating, on the authority of Colhoun, however, has cited a passage from Morton's "New English Canaan" as proof of their former existence in the neighborhood of this lake. Mor. ton's statement is based on Indian reports, and the context gives sufficient evidence of the general vagueness of his knowledge of the region of which he was speaking. The passage, printed in 1637 is as follows: They [the Indians] have also made descriptions of great heards of well growne beasts that live about the parts of this lake [Erocoise) such as the Christian world (untill this discovery) hath not bin made acquainted with. These Beasts are of the bignesse of a Cowe, their flesh being very good foode, their hides good lether, their fleeces very usefull, being a kinde of wolle as fine almost as the wolle of the Bearer, and the Salvages doe make garments thereof. It is tenne yeares since first the relation of these things came to the eares of the English.' The 'beast' to which allusion is here made [says Professor Allen] is unquestionably the buffalo, but the locality of Lake 'Erocoise' is not so easily settled. Colhoun regards it, and probably correctly, as identical with Lake Ontario. * * * The extreme northeastern limit of the former range of the buffalo seems to have been, as above stated, in western New York, near the eastern end of Lake Erie. That it probably ranged thus far there is fair evidence."
Pennsylvania. — From the eastern end of Lake Erie the boundary of the bison's habitat extends south into western Pennsylvania, to a marsh called Buffalo Swamp on a map published by Peter Kalm in 1771. Professor Allen says it "is indicated as situated between the Alleghany River and the West Branch of the Susquehanna, near the heads of the Licking and Toby's Creeks (apparently the streams now called Oil Creek and Clarion Creek)." In this region there were at one time thousands of buffaloes. While there is not at hand any positive evidence that the buffalo erer inhabited the south western portion of Pennsylvania, its presence in the locality mentioned above, and in West Virginia generally, on the south, furnishes sufficient reason for extend. ing the boundary so as to include the southwestern portion of the State and connect with our starting point, the District of Columbia.
III. Abundance.
Of all the quadrupeds that have lived upon the earth, probably no other species has ever marshaled such innumerable hosts as those of the American bison. It would have been as easy to count or to estimate the number of leaves in a forest as to calculate the number of buffaloes living at any given time during the history of the species previous to 1870. Even in South Central Africa, which has always been exceedingly prolific in great herds of game, it is probable that all its quadrupeds taken together on an equal area would never have more than equaled the total number of buffalo in this country forty years ago.
To an African hunter, such a statement may seem incredible, but it appears to be fully warranted by the literature of both branches of the subject.
Not only did the buffalo formerly range eastward far into the forest regions of western New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, but in some places it was so abundant as to cause remark. In Mr. J. A. Allen's valuable monograph appear a great number of interesting historical references on this subject, as indeed to every other relating to the buffalo, a few of which I will take the liberty of quoting.
In the vicinity of the spot where the town of Clarion now stands, in northwestern Pennsylvania, Mr. Thomas Ashe relates that one of the first settlers built bis log cabin near a salt spring which was visited by buffaloes in such numbers that "He supposed there could not have been less than two thousand in the neighborhood of the spring." During the first years of his residence there, the buffaloes came in droves of about three hundred each.
Of the Blue Licks in Kentucky, Mr. John Filson thus wrote, in 1784: "The amazing herds of buffaloes which resort thither, by their size and number, fill the traveller with amazement and terror, especially when ​he beholds the prodigious roads they hare made from all quarters, as if leading to some populous city; the vast space of land around these springs desolated as if by a ravaging enemy, and hills reduced to plains; for the land near these springs is chiefly hilly. * * * I bare heard a hunter assert he saw above one thousand buffaloes at the Blue Licks at once; so numerous were they before the first settlers had wantonly sported away their lives." Col. Daniel Boone declared of the Red River region in Kentucky, "The buffaloes were more frequent than I bare seen cattle in the settlements, browzing on the leaves of the cane, or cropping the herbage of those extensive plains, fearless because ignorant of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing."
According to Ramsey, where Nashville now stands, in 1770 there were "immense numbers of buffalo and other wild game. The country was crowded with them. Their bellowings sounded from the hills and forest." Daniel Boone found vast herds of buffalo grazing in the valleys of East Tennessee, between the spurs of the Cumberland mountains.
Marquette declared that the prairies along the Illinois River were "covered with buffaloes." Father Hennepin, in writing of northern Illinois, between Chicago and the Illinois River, asserted that "there must be an innumerable quantity of wild bulls in that country, since the earth is covered with their horns. * * * They follow one another, so that you may see a drove of them for above a league together. * * * Their ways are as beaten as our great roads, and no herb grows therein."
Judged by ordinary standards of comparison, the early pioneers of the last century thought buffalo were abundant in the localities mentioned above. But the herds which lived east of the Mississippi were comparatively only mere stragglers from the innumerable mass which covered the great western pasture region from the Mississippi to the Rocky Mountains, and from the Rio Grande to Great Slave Lake. The town of Kearney, in south central Nebraska, may fairly be considered the geographical center of distribution of the species, as it originally existed, but ever since 1800, and until a few years ago, the center of population has been in the Black Hills of southwestern Dakota.
Between the Rocky Mountains and the States lying along the Mississippi River on the west, from Minnesota to Louisiana, the whole country was one vast buffalo range, inhabited by millions of buffaloes. One could fill a volume with the records of plainsmen and pioneers who penetrated or crossed that vast region between 1800 and 1870, and were in turn surprised, astounded, and frequently dismayed by the tens of thousands of buffaloes they observed, avoided, or escaped from. The lived and moved as no other quadrupeds ever have, in great multitudes, like grand armies in review, covering scores of square miles at once. They were so numerous they frequently stopped boats in the ​rivers, threatened to overwhelm travelers on the plains, and in later years derailed locomotives and cars, until railway engineers learned by experience the wisdom of stopping their trains whenever there were buffaloes crossing the track. On this feature of the buffalo's life history a few detailed observations may be of value.
Near the mouth of the White River, in south western Dakota, Lewis and Clark saw (in 1806) a herd of buffalo which caused them to make the following record in their journal:
These last animals [buffaloes) are now so numerous that from an eminence we discovered more than we had ever seen before at one time; and if it be not impossible to calculate the moving multitude, which darkened the whole plains, we are convinced that twenty thousand would be no exaggerated number."
When near the mouth of the Yellowstone, on their way down the Missouri, a previous record had been made of a meeting with other herds:
6. The buffalo now appear in vast numbers. A herd happened to be on their way across the river (the Missouri). Such was the multitude of these animals that although the river, including an island over which they passed, was a mile in length, the herd stretched as thick as they could swim completely from one side to the other, and the party was obliged to stop for an hour. They consoled themselves for the delay by killing four of the herd, and then proceeded till at the distance of 45 miles they halted on an island, below which two other herds of buffalo, as numerous as the first, soon after crossed the river."
Perhaps the most vivid picture ever afforded of the former abun. dance of buffalo is that given by Col. R. I. Dodge in his "Plains of the Great West," p. 120, et seq. It is well worth reproducing entire:
"In May, 1871, I drove in a light vagon from Old Fort Zara to Fort Larned, on the Arkansas, 34 miles. At least 25 miles of this distance was through one immense herd, composed of countless smaller herds of buffalo then on their journey north. The road ran along the broad level 'bottom,' or valley, of the river. * * *
"The whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo, moving slowly to the north ward; and it was only when actually among them that it could be ascertained that the apparently solid mass was an agglomeration of innumerable small herds, of from fifty to two hundred animals, separated from the surrounding herds by greater or less space, but still separated. The herds in the valley sullenly got out of my way, aud, turning, stared stupidly at me, sometimes at only a few yards' distance. When I had reached a point where the hills were no longer more than a mile from the road, the buffalo on the hills, seeing an unusual object in their rear, turned, stared an instant, then started at full speed directly towards me, stampeding and bringing with them the ​numberless herds through which they passed, and pouring down upon inc all the herds, no longer separated, but one immense compact mass of plunging animals, mad with fright, and as irresistible as an avalanche.
"The situation was by no means pleasant. Reining up my horse (which was fortunately a quiet old beast that had been in at the death of many a buffalo, so that their wildest, maddest rush only caused him to cock his ears in wonder at their unnecessary excitement), I waited until the front of the mass was within 50 yards, when a few well-directed shots from my rifle split the herd, and sent it pouring off in two streams to my right and left. When all had passed me they stopped, apparently perfectly satisfied, though thousands were yet within reach of my rifle and many within less than 100 yards. Disdaining to fire again, 1 sent my servant to cut out the tongues of the fallen. This occurred so frequently within the next 10 miles, that when I arrived at Fort Larned I had twenty-six tongues in my wagon, representing the greatest number of buffalo that my conscience can reproach me for having murdered on any single day. I was not hunting, wanted no meat, and would not voluntarily have fired at these herds. I killed only in self-preservation and fired almost every shot from the wagon."
At my request Colonel Dodge has kindly furnished me a careful estimate upon which to base a calculation of the number of buffaloes in that great herd, and the result is very interesting. In a private letter, dated September 21, 1887, he writes as follows:
"The great herd on the Arkansas through which I passed could not have averaged, at rest, over fifteen or twenty individuals to the acre, but was, from my own observation, not less than 25 miles wide, and from reports of hunters and others it was about five days in passing a given point, or not less than 50 miles deep. From the top of Pawnee Rock I could see from 6 to 10 miles in almost, every direction. This whole vast space was covered with buffalo, looking at a distance like one compact mass, the visual angle not permitting the ground to be seen. I have seen such a sight a great number of times, but never on so large a scale.
"That was the last of the great herds."
With these figures before us, it is not difficult to make a calculation that will be somewhere near the truth of the number of buffaloes actually seen in one day by Colonel Dodge on the Arkansas River during that memorable drive, and also of the number of head in the entire herd.
According to his recorded observation, the herd extended along the river for a distance of 25 miles, which was in reality the width of the vast procession that was moving north, and back from the road as far as the eye could reach, on both sides. It is making a low estimate to consider the extent of the visible ground at 1 mile on either side. This gives a strip of country 2 miles wide by 25 long, or a total of 50 square ​miles covered with buffalo, averaging from fifteen to twenty to the acre. Taking the lesser number, in order to be below the truth rather than above it, we find that the number actually seen on that day by Colonel Dodge was in the neighborhood of 480,000, not counting the additional number taken in at the view from the top of Pawnee Rock, which, if added, would easily bring the total up to a round half million!
If the advancing multitude had been at all points 50 miles in length (as it was known to have been in some places at least) by 25 miles in width, and still averaged fifteen head to the acre of ground, it would have contained the enormous number of 12,000,000 head. But, judging from the general principles governing such migrations, it is almost certain that the moving mass advanced in the shape of a wedge, which would make it necessary to deduct about two-thirds from the grand total, which would leave 4,000,000 as our estimate of the actual number of buffaloes in this great herd, which I believe is more likely to be below the truth than above it.
No wonder that the men of the West of those days, both white and red, thought it would be impossible to exterminate such a mighty multitude. The Indians of some tribes believed that the buffaloes issued from the earth continually, and that the supply was necessarily inexhaustible. And yet, in four short years the southern herd was almost totally annihilated.
With such a lesson before our eyes, confirmed in every detail by living testimony, who will dare to say that there will be an elk, moose, caribou, mountain sheep, mountain goat, antelope, or black-tail deer left alive in the United States in a wild state fifty years from this date, ay, or even twenty-five?
Mr. William Blackmore contributes the following testimony to the abundance of buffalo in Kansas:
"In the autumn of 1868, whilst crossing the plains on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, for a distance of upwards of 120 miles, between Ellsworth and Sheridan, we passed through an almost unbroken herd of buffalo. The plains were blackened with them, and more than once the train had to stop to allow unusually large herds to pass. * * * In 1872, whilst on a scout for about a hundred miles south of Fort Dodge to the Indian Territory, we were never out of sight of buffalo."
Twenty years hence, when not even a bone or a buffalo-chip remains above ground throughout the West to mark the presence of the buffalo, it may be difficult for people to believe that these animals ever existed in such numbers as to constitute not only a serious annoyance, but very ​often a dangerous menace to wagon travel across the plains, and also to stop railway trains, and even throw them off the track. The like has probably never occurred before in any country, and most assuredly never will again, if the present rate of large game destruction all over the world can be taken as a foreshadowing of the future. In this connection the following additional testimony from Colonel Dodge (* Plains of the Great West," p. 121) is of interest:
"The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad was then (in 1871-72] in process of construction, and nowhere could the peculiarity of the buffalo of which I am speaking be better studied than from its trains. If a herd was on the north side of the track, it would stand stupidly gazing, and without a symptom of alarm, although the locomotive passed within a hundred yards. If on the south side of the track, even though at a distance of 1 or 2 miles from it, the passage of a train set the whole herd in the wildest com motion. At full speed, and utterly regardless of the consequences, it would make for the track on its line of retreat. If the train happened not to be in its path, it crossed the track and stopped satisfied. If the train was in its way, each individual buffalo went at it with the desperation of despair, plunging against or between locomotive and cars, just as its blind madness chanced to direct it. Numbers were killed, but numbers still pressed on, to stop and stare as soon as the obstacle had passed. After having trains thrown off the track twice in one week, conductors learned to have a very decided respect for the idiosyncrasies of the buffalo, and when there was a possibility of striking a herd on the rampage for the north side of the track, the train was slowed up and sometimes stopped entirely."
The accompanying illustration, reproduced from the "Plains of the Great West," by the kind permission of the author, is, in ove sense, ocular proof that collisions between railway trains and vast herds of buffaloes were so numerous that they formed a proper subject for illustration. In regard to the stoppage of trains ani derailment of locomotives by buffaloes, Colonel Dodge makes the following allusion in the private letter already referred to: "There are at least a hundred reliable railroad men non employed on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad who were witnesses of, and sometimes sufferers from, the wild rushes of buffalo as described on page 121 of my book. I was at the time stationed at Fort Dodge, and I was personally cognizant of several of these 'accidents.'"
The following, from the ever pleasing pen of Mr. Catlin, is of decided interest in this connection:
"In one instance, near the mouth of White River, we met the most immense herd crossing the Missouri River [in Dakota), and from an imprudence got our boat into imminent danger amongst them, from which we were highly delighted to make our escape. It was in the midst of the 'running season,' and we had heard the 'roaring' (as it is called) of the herd when we were several miles from them. When ​
* Slaughter of Buffalo on the Kansas Pacific Railroad
* Reproduced from The Plains of the Great West by permission of the author, Col, R. L. Dodge.
IV. Character of the Species.
1. The buffalo's rank amongst ruminants. — With the Americau people, and through them all others, familiarity with the buffalo has bred contempt. The incredible numbers in which the animals of this species formerly existed wade their slaughter an easy matter, so much so that the hunters and frontiersmen who accomplished their destruction have handed down to us a contemptuous opinion of the size, character, and general presence of our bison. And how could it be otherwise than that a man who could find it in his heart to murder a majestic bull bison for a hide worth only a dollar should form a one-dollar estimate of the grandest ruminant that ever trod the earth? Men who butcher African elephants for the sake of their ivory also entertain a similar estimate of their victims.
With an acquaintance which includes fine living examples of all the larger ruminants of the world except the musk-ox and the European bison, I am sure that the American bison is the grandest of them all. His only rivals for the kingship are the Indian bison, or gaur (Bos gaurus), of Southern India, and the aurochs, or European bison, both of which ​really surpass him in height, if not in actual bulk also. The aurochs is taller, and possesses a larger pelvis and heavier, stronger hindquarters, but his body is decidedly smaller in all its proportions, which gives him a lean and "leggy" look. The hair on the head, neck, and forequarters of the aurochs is not nearly so long or luxuriant as on the same parts of the American bison. This covering greatly magnifies the actual bulk of the latter animal. Clothe the aurochs with the wonderful pelage of our buffalo, give him the same enormous chest and body, and the result would be a magnificent bovine monster, who would indeed stand without a rival. But when first-class types of the two species are placed side by side it seems to me that Bison americanus will easily rank his European rival.
The gaur has no long hair upon any part of his body or head. What little hair he has is very short and thin, his hindquarters being almost naked. I have seen hundreds of these animals at short range, and have kdled and skinned several very fine specimens, one of which stood 5 feet 10 inches in height at the shoulders. But, despite his larger bulk, his appearance is not nearly so striking and impressive as that of the male American bison. He seems like a huge ox running wild.
The magnificent dark brown frontlet and beard of the buffalo, the shaggy coat of hair upon the neck. hump, and shoulders, terminating at the knees in a thick mass of luxuriant black locks, to say nothing of the dense coat of finer fur on the body and hindquarters, give to our species not only an apparent height equal to that of the gaur, but a grandeur and nobility of presence which are beyond all comparison amongst ruminants.
The slightly larger bulk of the gaur is of little significance in a comparison of the two species; for if size alone is to turn the scale, we must admit that a 600-pound lioness, with no mane whatever, is a more majestic looking animal than a 450-pound lion, with a mane which has earned him his title of king of beasts.
2. Change of form in captivity.—By a combination of unfortunate circumstances, the American bison is destined to go down to posterity shorn of the honor which is his due. and appreciated at only half his worth. The hunters who slew him were from the very beginning so absorbed in the scramble for spoils that they had no time to measure or weigh him, nor even to notice the majesty or his personal appearance on his native heath.
In captivity he fails to develop as finely as in his wild state, and with the loss of his liberty he becomes a tame-looking animal. He gets fat and short-bodied, and the lack of vigorous and constant exercise prevents the development of bone and muscle which made the prairie animal what he was.
From observations made upon buffaloes that have been reared in captivity, I am firmly convinced that confinement and semi-domestication ​are destined to effect Striking changes in the form of Bison americanus. While this is to be expected to a certain extent with most large species, the changes promise to be most conspicuous in the buffalo. The most striking change is in the body between the hips and the shoulders. As before remarked, it becomes astonishingly short and rotund, and through liberal feeding and total lack of exercise the muscles of the shoulders and hindquarters, especially the latter, are but feebly developed. The most striking example of the change of form in the captive buffalo is the cow in the Central Park Menagerie, New York. Although this animal is fully adult, and has given birth to three fine calves, she is small, astonishingly short-bodied, and in comparison with the magnificently developed cows taken in 1886 by the writer in Montana, she seems almost like an animal of another species.
Both the live buffaloes in the National Museum collection of living animals are developing the same shortness of body and lack of muscle, and when they attain their full growth will but poorly resemble the splendid proportions of the wild specimens in the Museum mounted group, each of which has been mounted from a most careful and elaborate series of post-mortem measurements. It may fairly be considered, however, that the specimens taken by the Smithsonian expedition were in every way more perfect representatives of the species than have been usually taken in times past, for the simple reason that on account of the muscle they had developed in the numerous chases they had survived, and the total absence of the fat which once formed such a prominent feature of the animal, they were of finer form, more active habit, and keener intelligence than buffaloes possessed when they were so numerous. Out of the millions which once composed the great northern herd, those represented the survival of the fittest, and their existence at that time was chiefly due to the keenness of their senses and their splendid muscular powers in speed and endurance.
Under such conditions it is only natural that animals of the highest class should be developed. On the other hand, captivity reverses all these conditions, while yielding an equally abundant food supply. In no feature is the change from natural conditions to captivity more easily noticeable than in the eye. In the wild buffalo the eye is always deeply set, well protected by the edge of the bony orbit, and perfect in form and expression. The lids are firmly drawn around the ball, the opening is so small that the white portion of the eyeball is entirely covered, and the whole form and appearance of the organ is as shapely and as pleasing in expression as the eye of a deer.
In the captive the various muscles which support and control the eyeball seem to relax and thicken, and the ball protrudes far beyond its normal plane, showing a circle of white all around the iris, and bulging out in a most unnatural way. I do not mean to assert that this is common in captive buffaloes generally, but I have observed it to be disagreeably conspicuous in many. ​Another change which takes place in the form of the captive buffalo is an arching of the back in the middle, which has a tendency to make the hump look lower at the shoulders and visibly alters the outline of the back. This tendency to "hump up" the back is very noticeable in domestic cattle and horses during rainy weather. While a buffalo on his native heath would seldom assume such an attitude of dejection and misery, in captivity, especially if it be anything like close confinement, it is often to be observed, and I fear will eventually become a permanent habit. Indeed, I think it may be confidently predicted that the time will come when naturalists who have never seen a wild buffalo will compare the specimens composing the National Museum group with the living representatives to be seen in captivity and assert that the former are exaggerations in both form and size.
3. Mounted Specimens in Museums.– Of the stuffed" specimens to be found in museums, all that I have ever seen outside of the National Museum, and even those within that institution up to 1886, were "stuffed" in reality as well as in name. The skins that have been rammed full of straw or excelsior have lost from 8 to 12 inches in height at the shoulders, and the high and sharp hump of the male has become a huge, thick, rounded mass like the hump of a dromedary, and totally unlike the hump of a bison. It is impossible for any taxidermist to stuff a buffalo-skin with loose materials and produce a specimen which fitly represents the species. The proper height and form of the animal can be secured and retained only by the construction of a manikin, or statue, to carry the skin. In view of this fact, which surely must be apparent to even the most casual observer, it is to be earnestly hoped that here. after no one in authority will ever consent to mount or have mounted a valuable skin of a bison in any other way than over a properly constructed manikin.
4. The Calf.—The breeding season of the buffalo is from the 1st of July to the 1st of October. The young cow does not breed until she is three years old, and although two calves are sometimes produced at a birth, one is the usual number. The calves are born in April, May, and June, and sometimes, though rarely, as late as the middle of August. The calf follows its mother until it is a year old, or even older. In May, 1886, the Smithsonian expedition captured a calf alive, which had been abandoned by its mother because it could not keep up with her. The little creature was apparently between two and three weeks old, and was therefore born about May 1. Unlike the young of nearly all other Bovidæ, the buffalo calf during the first months of its existence is clad with hair of a totally different color from that which covers him during the remainder of his life. His pelage is a luxuriant growth of rather long, wavy hair, of a uniform brownish-yellow or "sandy" color (cinnamon, or yellow ocher, with a shade of Indian yellow) all over the head, body, and tail, in striking contrast with the darker colors of the older animals. On the lower half of the leg it is lighter, shorter, and straight. ​On the shoulders and hump the bair is longer than on the other portions, being 11/2 inches in length, more wavy, and already arranges itself in the tufts, or small bunches, so characteristic in the adult animal. On the extremity of the muzzle, including the chin, the hair is very short, straight, and as light in color as the lower portions of the leg. Starting on the top of the nose, an inch behind the nostrils, and forming a division between the light yellowish muzzle and the more reddish hair on the remainder of the bead, there is an irregular band of dark, straight bair, which extends down past the corner of the mouth to a point just back of the chin, where it unites. From the chin backward the dark band increases in breadth and intensity, and continues back half way to the angle of the jaw. At that point begins a sort of under mane of wary, dark-brown hair, nearly 3 inches long, and extends back along the median line of the throat to a point between the fore legs, where it abruptly terminates. From the back of the bead another streak of dark hair extends backward along the top of the neck, orer the hump, and down to the lumbar region, where it fades out entirely. These two dark bands are in sharp contrast to the light sandy bair adjoining.
The tail is densely haired. The tuft on the end is quite luxuriant, and shows a center of darker hair. The hair on the inside of the ear is dark, but that on the outside is sandy.
The naked portion of the nose is light Vandyke-brown, with a pinkish tinge, and the edge of the eyelid the same. The iris is dark brown. The horn at three months is about 1 inch in length, and is a mere little black stub. In the male, the hump is clearly defined, but by no means so high in proportion as in the adult animal. The hump of the calf from which this description is drawn is of about the same relative angle and height as that of an adult cow buffalo. The specimen itself is well represented in the accompanying plate.
The measurements of this specimen in the flesh were as follows:
Bison Americants. (Male; four months old.)
(No. 15503, National Museum collection.)
| | Feet. | Inches. |
| Height at shoulders | 2 | 8 | |
| Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 3 | 10 | 1/4 |
| Depth of chest. | 1 | 4 | |
| Depth of flank | | 10 | |
| Girth behind fore leg. | 3 | | 1/2 |
| From base of horns around end of nose. | 1 | 7 | 1/2 |
| Length of tail vertebræ | | 7 | |
The calves begin to shed their coat of red hair about the beginning of August. The first signs of the change, however, appear about a month earlier than that, in the darkening of the mane under the throat, and also on the top of the neck. ​By the 1st of August the red hair on the body begins to fall off in small patches, and the growth of fine, new, dark hair seems to actually crowd off the old. As is the case with the adult animals, the shortest hair is the first to be shed, but the change of coat takes place in about half the time that it occupies in the older animals.
By the 1st of October the transformation is complete, and not even a patch of the old red hair remains upon the new suit of brown. This is far from being the case with the old bulls and cows, for even up to the last week in October we found them with an occasional patch of che old hair still clinging to the new, on the back or shoulders.
Like most young animals, the calf of the buffalo is very easily tamed, especially if taken when only a few weeks old. The oue captured in Montana by the writer, resisted at first as stoutly as it was able, by butting with its head, but after we had tied its legs together and carried it to camp, across a horse, it made up its mind to yield gracefully to the inevitable, and from that moment became perfectly docile. It very soon learned to drink milk in the most satisfactory manner, and adapted itself to its new surroundings quite as readily as any domestic calf would have done. Its only cry was a low-pitched, pig-like grunt through the nose, which was uttered only when hungry or thirsty.
I have been told by old frontiersmen and buffalo-hunters that it used to be a common practice for a hunter who had captured a young calf to make it follow him by placing one of his fingers in its mouth, and allowing the calf to suck at it for a moment. Often a calf has been induced in this way to follow a horseman for miles, and eventually to join his camp outfit. It is said that the same result has been accomplished with calves by breathing a few times into their nostrils. In this connection Mr. Catlin's observations on the habits of buffalo calves are most interesting.
"In pursuing a large herd of buffaloes at the season when their calves are but a few weeks old, I have often been exceedingly amused with the curious maneuvers of these shy little things. Amidst the thundering confusion of a throng of several hundreds or several thousands of these animals, there will be many of the calves that lose sight of their dams; and being left behind by the throng, and the swift-passing hunters, they endeavor to secrete themselves, when they are exceedingly put to it on a level prairie, where naught can be seen but the short grass of 6 or 8 inches in height, save an occasional bunch of wild sage a few inches higher, to which the poor affrighted things will run, and dropping on their knees, will push their noses under it and into the grass, where they will stand for hours, with their eyes shut, imagining themselves securely hid, whilst they are standing up quite straight upon their hind feet, and can easily be seen at several miles distance. It is a familiar amusement with us, accustomed to these scenes, to retreat back over the ground where we have just escorted the herd, and approach these little trembling things, which stubbornly maintain their ​
| From a photograph of group in National Museum | Engraved by R. H Carson |
| Buffalo Cow Calf (four months old) and Yearling ||
| Reproduced from the Cosmopolitan Magazine, by permission of the publishers ||
​positions, with their noses pushed under the grass and their eyes strained upon us, as we dismount from our horses and are passing around them. From this fixed position they are sure not to more until hands are laid upon them, and then for the shins of a notice we can extend our sympathy; or if he can preserve the skin on his bones from tbe furious buttings of its bead, we know how to congratulate him on bis signal success and good luck.
"In these desperate struggles for a moment, the little thing is conquered, and makes no further resistance. And I have often, in concurrence with a known custom of the country, held my hands over the eyes of the calf and breathed a few strong breaths into its nostrils, after which I bare, with my bunting companions, rode several miles into our encampment with the little prisoner busily following the heels of my horse the whole way, as closely and as affectionately as its instinct would attach it to the company of its dam.
"This is one of the most extraordinary things that I have met with in the habits of this wild country, and although I bad often heard of it, and felt unable exactly to believe it, I am now willing to bear testimony to the fact from the numerous instances which I have witnessed since I came into the country. During the time that I resided at this post [month of the Teton River] in the spring of the year, on my way up the river, I assisted (in numerous hunts of the buffalo with the fur company's men) in bringing in, in the above manner, several of these little prisoners, which sometimes followed for 5 or 6 miles close to our horse's heels, and even into the fur company's fort, and into the stable where our horses were led. In this way, before I left the head waters of the Missouri, I think we had collected about a dozen, which Mr. Laidlaw was successfully raising with the aid of a good milch cow.
It must be remembered, however, that such cases as the above were exceptional, even with the very young calves, which alone exhibited the trait described. Such instances occurred only when buffaloes existed in such countless numbers that man's presence and influence had not affected the character of the animal in the least. No such instances of innocent stupidity will ever be displayed again, even by the youngest calf. The war of extermination, and struggle for life and security have instilled into the calf, even from its birth, a mortal fear of both men and horses, and the instinct to fly for life. The calf captured by our party was not able to run, but in the most absurd manner it butted our horses as soon as they came near enough, and when Private Moran attempted to lay hold of the little fellow it turned upon him, struck him in the stomach with its head, and sent him sprawling into the sagebrush. If it had only possessed the strength, it would have led us a lively chase.
During 1886 four other buffalo calves were either killed or caught by the cowboys on the Missouri-Yellowstone divide, in the Dry Creek region. ​All of them ran tbe moment they discovered their enemies. Two were shot and killed. One was caught by a cowboy named Horace Brodhurst, ear marked, and turned loose. The fifth one was caught in September on the Porcupine Creek round-up. He was then about five months old, and being abundantly able to travel he showed a clean pair of heels. It took three fresh horses, one after another, to catch him, and his final capture was due to exhaustion, and not to the speed of any of his pursuers. The distance covered by the chase, from the point where bis first pursuer started to where the third ove finally lassoed him, was considered to be at least 15 miles. But the capture came to naught, for on the following day the calf died from overexertion and want of milk.
Colonel Dodge states that the very young calves of a herd bare to depend upon the old bulls for protection, and seldom in vain. The mothers abandon their offspring on slight provocation, and even none at all sometimes, if we may judge from the condition of the little waif that fell into our hands. Had its mother remained with it, or even in its neighborhood, we should at least bare seen her, but she was nowhere within a radius of 5 miles at the time her calf was discovered. Nor did she return to look for it, as two of us proved by spending the night in the sage-brush at the very spot where the calf was taken. Colonel Dodge declares that "the cow seems to possess scarcely a trace of maternal instinct, and, when frightened, will abandon and run away from her calf without the slightest hesitation. * * * When the calves are young they are always kept in the center of each small herd, while the bulls dispose themselves on the outside."
Apparently the maternal instinct of the cow buffalo was easily mastered by fear. That it was often manifested, however, is proven by the following from Audubon and Bachman:
"Buffalo calves are drowned from being unable to ascend the steep banks of the rivers across which they have just swam, as the cows cannot help them, although they stand near the bank, and will not leave them to their fate unless something alarms them.
"On one occasion Mr. Kipp, of the American Fur Company, caught eleven calves, their dams all the time standing near the top of the bank. Frequently, however, the cows leave the young to their fate, when most of them perish. In connection with this part of the subject, we may add that we were informed, when on the Upper Missouri River, that when the banks of that river were practicable for cows, and their calves could not follow them, they went down again, after having gained the top, and would remain by them until forced away by the cravings of hunger. When thus forced by the necessity of saving themselves to quit their young, they seldom, if ever, return to them. When a large herd of these wild animals are crossing a river, the calves or yearlings manage to get on the backs of the cows, and are thus conveyed safely over." ​5. The Yearling. — During the first five months of his life, the calf changes its coat completely, and becomes in appearance a totally different animal. By the time he is six months old he has taken on all the colors which distinguish him in after life, excepting that upon his forequarters. The hair on the head has started out to attain the luxuriant length and density which is so conspicuous in the adult, and its general color is a rich dark brown, shading to black under the chin and throat. The fringe under the neck is long, straight, and black, and the under parts, the back of the fore-arm, the outside of thigh, and the tail-tuft are all black.
The color of the shoulder, the side, and upper part of the hind quarter is a peculiar smoky brown ("broccoli brown" of Ridgway), having in connection with the darker browns of the other parts a peculiar faded appearance, quite as if it were due to the bleaching power of the sun. On the fore quarters there is none of the bright straw color so characteristic of the adult animal. Along the top of the neck and shoulders, however, this color has at last begun to show faintly. The hair on the body is quite luxuriant, both in length and density, in both respects quite equaling, if not even surpassing, that of the finest adults. For example, the hair on the side of the mounted yearling in the Museum group has a length of 2 to 24 inches, while that on the same region of the adult bull, whose pelage is particularly fine, is recorded as being 2 inches only.
The horn is a straight, conical spike from 4 to 6 inches long, according to age, and perfectly black. The legs are proportionally longer and larger in the joints than those of the full-grown animal. The countenance of the yearling is quite interesting. The sleepy, helpless, innocent expression of the very young calf has given place to a wide awake, mischievous look, and he seems ready to break away and run at a second's notice.
The measurements of the yearling in the Museum group are as follows:
Bison Americanus. (Male yearling, taken Oct. 31, 1886. Montana.)
(No. 15694, National Museum collection.)
| | Feet. | Inches. |
| Height at shoulders | 3 | 4 |
| Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 5 | |
| Depth of chest | 1 | 11 |
| Depth of flank | 1 | 1 |
| Girth behind fore leg | 4 | 3 |
| From base of horns around end of nose | 2 | 11/2 |
| Length of tail vertebræ | | 10 |
6. The Spike Bull.-In bunters' parlance, the male buffalo between the "yearling" age and four years is called a "spike" bull, in recognition of the fact that up to the latter period the horn is a spike, either perfectly straight, or with a curve near its base, and a straight point the ​rest of the way up. The curve of the horn is generally hidden in the hair, and the only part visible is the straight, terminal spike. Usually the spike points diverge from each other, but often they are parallel, and also perpendicular. In the fourth year, however, the points of the horns begin to curve in ward toward each other, describing equal arcs of the same circle, as if they were going to meet over the top of the head.
In the handsome young "spike" bull in the Museum group, the hair on the shoulders has begun to take on the length, the light color, and tufted appearance of the adult, beginning at the highest point of the hump and gradually spreading. Immediately back of this light patch the hair is long, but dark and woolly in appearance. The leg tufts have doubled in length, and reveal the character of the growth that may be finally expected. The beard has greatly lengthened, as also has the hair upon the bridge of the nose, the forehead, ears, jaws, and all other portions of the head except the cheeks.
The "spike" period of a buffalo is a most interesting one. Like a seventeen-year-old boy, the young bull shows his youth in so many ways it is always conspicuous, and his countenance is so suggestive of a half. bearded youth it fixes the interest to a marked degree. He is active, alert, and suspicious, and when he makes up his mind to run the hunter may as well give up the chase.
By a strange fatality, our spike bull appears to be the only one in any museum, or even in preserved existence, as far as can be ascertained. Out of the twenty-five buffaloes killed and preserved by the Smithsonian espedition, ten of which were adult bulls, this specimen was the only male between the yearling and the adult ages. An effort to procure another entire specimen of this age from Texas yielded only two spike Leads. It is to be sincerely regretted that more specimens representing this very interesting period of the buffalo's life bare not been preserved, for it is now too late to procure wild specimens.
The following are the post-mortem dimensions of our specimen:
Bison Americanus.
("Spike" bull, two years old; taken October 14, 1886. Montana.)
(No. 15685, National Museum collection.)
| | Feet. | Inches. |
| Height at shoulders. | 4 | 2 |
| Length, head and body to insertion of tail. | 7 | 7 |
| Depth of chest | 2 | 3 |
| Depth of flank | 1 | 7 |
| Girth behind fore leg | 5 | 8 |
| From base of horns around end of nose | 2 | 81/2 |
| Length of tail vertebræ | 1 | |
7. The Adult Bull. — In attempting to describe the adult male in the National Museum group, it is difficult to decide which feature is most prominent, the massive, magnificent head, with its shaggy frontlet and lusuriant black beard, or the lofty hump, with its showy covering of ​
From the group in National Museum :
* Spike Bull (four months old) and Yearling |
* Reproduced from the Cosmopolitan Magazine, by permission of the publishers |
​straw-yellow hair, in thickly-growing locks 4 inches long. But the head is irresistible in its claims to precedence.
It must be observed at this point that in many respects this animal is an exceptionally fine one. In actual size of frame, and in quantity and quality of pelage, it is far superior to the average, even of wild buffaloes when they were most numerous and at their best. In one respect, however, that of actual bulk, it is believed that this specimen may have often been surpassed. When buffaloes were numerous, and not required to do any great amount of running in order to exist, they were, in the autumn months, very fat. Audubon says: "A large bison bull will generally weigh nearly 2,000 pounds, and a fat cow about 1,200 pounds. We weighed one of the bulls killed by our party, and found it to reach 1,727 pounds, although it had already lost a good deal of blood. This was an old bull, and not fat. It had probably weighed more at some previous period." Our specimen when killed (by the writer, December 6, 1886) was in full vigor, superbly muscled, and well fed, but he carried not a single pound of fat. For years the neverceasing race for life had utterly prevented the secretion of useless and cumbersome fat, and his "subsistence had gone toward the development of useful muscle. Having no means by which to weigh him, we could only estimate his weight, in which I called for the advice of my cowboys, all of whom were more or less familiar with the weight of range cattle, and one I regarded as an expert. At first the estimated weight of the animal was fixed at 1,700 pounds, but with a constitutional fear of estimating over the truth, I afterward reduced it to 1,600 pounds. This I am now well convinced was an error, for I believe the first figure to have been nearer the truth.
In mounting the skin of this animal, we endeavored by every means in our power, foremost of which were three different sets of measurements, taken from the dead animal, one set to check another, to reproduce him when mounted in exactly the same form he possessed in life — muscular, but not fat.
The color of the body and hindquarters of a buffalo is very peculiar, and almost baffles intelligent description. Audubon calls it "between a dark umber and liver shining brown." I once saw a competent artist experiment with his oil-colors for a quarter of an hour before he finally struck the combination which exactly watched the side of our large bull. To my eyes, the color is a pale gray-brown or smoky gray. The range of individual variation is considerable, some being uniformly ​darker than the average type, and others lighter. While the under parts of most adults are dark brown or blackish brown, others are actually black. The hair on the body and hinder parts is fine, wavy on the outside, and woolly underneath, and very dense. Add to this the thickness of the skin itself, and the combination forms a covering that is almost impervious to cold.
The entire fore-quarter region, e.g., the shoulders, the hump, and the upper part of the neck, is covered with a luxuriant growth of pale yellow hair (Naples yellow + yellow ocher), which stands straight out in a dense mass, disposed in handsome tufts. The hair is somewhat woolly in its nature, and the ends are as even as if the whole mass had lately been gone over with shears and carefully clipped. This hair is 4 inches in length. As the living animal moved his head from side to side, the hair parted in great vertical furrows, so deep that the skin itself seemed almost in sight. As before remarked, to comb this hair would utterly destroy its naturalness, and it should never be done under any circumstances. Standing as it does between the darker hair of the body on one side and the almost black mass of the head on the other, this light area is rendered doubly striking and conspicuous by contrast. It not only covers the shoulders, but extends back upon the thorax, where it abruptly terminates on a line corresponding to the sixth rib.
From the shoulder-joint downward, the color shades gradually into a dark brown until at the knee it becomes quite black. The huge forearm is lost in a thick mass of long, coarse, and rather straight hair 10 inches in length. This growth stops abruptly at the knee, but it hangs within 6 inches of the hoof. The front side of this mass is blackish brown, but it rapidly shades backward and downward into jet-black.
The hair on the top of the head lies in a dense, matted mass, forming a perfect crown of rich brown (burnt sienna) locks, 16 inches in length, hanging over the eyes, almost enveloping both horns, and spreading back in rich, dark masses upon the light-colored neck.
On the cheeks the hair is of the same blackish-brown color, but comparatively short, and lies in beautiful waves. On the bridge of the nose the hair is about 6 inches in length and stands out in a thick, uni. form, very curly mass, which always looks as if it had just been carefully combed.
Immediately around the nose and mouth the hair is very short, straight and stiff, and lies close to the skin, which leaves the nostrils and lips fully exposed. The front part of the chin is similarly clad, and its form is perfectly flat, due to the habit of the animal in feeding upon the short, crisp buffalo grass, in the course of which the chin is pressed flat against the ground. The end of the muzzle is very massive, measuring 2 feet 2 inches in circumference just back of the nostrils.
The hair of the chin-beard is coarse, perfectly straight, jet black, and 111/2 inches in length on our old bull.
Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson
​was a wonder to behold. I have now in my possession a small lock of hair which I plucked from his forehead, and its length is 22.1/2 inches. His horns were entirely concealed by the immense mass of long hair that nature had piled upon his head, and his beard was as luxuriant as his frontlet.
The nostril opening is large and wide. The color of the hairless portions of the nose and mouth is shiny Vandyke brown and black, with a strong tinge of bluish-purple, but this latter tint is not noticeable save upon close examination, and the eyelid is the same. The iris is of an irregular pear shaped outline, inches in its longest diameter, very dark, reddish brown iu color, with a black edging all around it. Ordinarily no portion of the white eyeball is visible, but the broad black baud surrounding the iris, and a corner patch of white, is frequently shown by the turning of the eye. The tongue is bluish purple, as are the lips inside.
The hoofs and horns are, in reality, jet black throughout, but the horn often has at the base a scaly, dead appearance on the outside, and as the wrinkles around the base increase with age and scale up and gather dirt, that part looks gray. The horus of bulls taken in their prime are smooth, glossy black, and even look as if they had been half polished with oil.
As the bull increases in age, the outer layers of the horn begin to break off at the tip and pile up one upon another, until the horn has become a thick, blunt stub, with only the tip of what was once a neat and shapely point showing at the end. The bull is then known as a 14 stubborn," and his horns increase in roughness and unsightliness as he grows older. From long rubbing on the earth, the outer curve of each horn is gradually worn flat, which still further mars its symmetry.
The horns serve as a fair index of the age of a bison. After he is three years old, the bison adds each year a ring around the base of his horns, the same as domestic cattle. If we may judge by this, the horn begins to break when the bison is about ten or eleven years old, and the stubbing process gradually continues during the rest of his life. Judging by the teeth, and also the oldest horns I have seen, I am of the opinion that the natural life time of the bison is about twenty-five years; certainly no less.
Bison americanus. (Male, eleven years old. Taken December 6, 1866. Montana.)
(No. 15703, National Museum collection.)
| | Feet. | Inches. |
| Height at shoulders to the skin | 5 | 8 |
| Height at shoulders to top of hair | 6 | -- |
| Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 10 | 20 |
| Depth of chest | 3 | 10 |
| Depth of flank | 2 | 0 |
| Girth behind fore leg | 8 | 4 |
| From base of horns around end of nose | 3 | 6 |
| Length of tail vertebræ | 1 | 3 |
| Circumference of muzzle back of nostrils | 2 | 2 |
​8. The Cow in the third year.—The young cow of course possesses the same youthful appearance already referred to as characterizing the "spike" bull. The hair ou the shoulders has begun to take on the light straw-color, and has by this time attained a length which causes it to arrange itself in tufts, or locks. The body colors have grown darker, and reached their permanent tone. Of course the hair on the head has by no means attained its full length, and the head is not at all handsome.
The horns are quite small, but the curve is well defined, and they distinctly mark the sex of the individual, even at the beginning of the third year.
Bison americanus. (Young cow, in third year. Taken October 14, 1886. Montana.)
(No. 15686, National Museum collection.)
| | Feet. | Inches. |
| Height at shoulders | 4 | 5 |
| Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 7 | 7 |
| Depth of chest | 2 | 4 |
| Depth of flank | 1 | 4 |
| Girth behind fore leg | 5 | 4 |
| From base of horns around end of nose | 2 | 81/2 |
| Length of tail vertebræ | 1 | -- |
9. The adult Cow.—The upper body color of the adult cow in the National Museum group (see Plate) is a rich, though not intense, Vandyke brown, shading imperceptibly down the sides into black, which spreads over the entire under parts and inside of the thighs. The hair on the lower joints of the leg is in turn lighter, being about the same shade as that on the loins. The fore arm is concealed in a mass of almost black hair, which gradually shades lighter from the elbow upward and along the whole region of the humerus. On the shoulder itself the hair is pale yellow or straw-color (Naples yellow+yellow ocher), which extends down in a point toward the elbow. From the back of the head a conspicuous baud of curly, dark-brown hair extends back like a mane along the neck and to the top of the hump, beyond which it soon fades out.
The hair on the head is everywhere a rich burnt-sienna brown, except around the corners of the mouth, where it shades into black.
The horns of the cow bison are slender, but solid for about two-thirds of their length from the tip, ringed with age near their base, and quite black. Very often they are imperfect in shape, and out of every five pairs at least one is generally misshapen. Usually one horn is "crumpled," e. g. dwarfed in length and unnaturally thickened at the base, and very often one horn is found to be merely an unsightly, misshapen stub.
The udder of the cow bison is very small, as might be expected of an animal which must do a great deal of hard traveling, but the milk is said to be very rich. Some authorities declare that it requires the ​
| From a photograph. | Engraved by Frederick Juengling. |
| Bull Buffalo (rear view) ||
| Reproduced from the Cosmopolitan Magazine, by permission of the publishers ||
​milk of two domestic cows to satisfy one buffalo calf, but this, I think, is an error. Our calf began in May to consume 6 quarts of domestic milk daily, wbich by June 10 had increased to 8, and up to July 10, 9 quarts was the utmost it could drink. By that time it began to eat grass, but the quantity of milk disposed of remained about the same.
Bison Americanus. (Adult cow, eight years old. Taken November 18, 1896. Montana.)
(No. 15767, National Museum collection.)
| | Feet. | Inches. |
| Height at shoulders | 4 | 10 |
| Length, head and body to insertion of tail | 8 | 6 |
| Depth of chest | 3 | 7 |
| Depth of flank | 1 | 7 |
| Girth behind fore leg | 6 | 10 |
| From base of horns around end of nose | 3 | 3 |
| Length of tail vertebræ | 1 | |
10. The "Wood," or "Mountain" Buffalo. — Having myself never seen a specimen of the so called "mountain buffalo" or "wood buffalo," which some writers accord the rank of a distinct variety, I can only quote the descriptions of others. While most Rocky Mountain hunt. ers consider the bison of the mountains quite distinct from that of the plains, it must be remarked that no two authorities quite agree in regard the distinguishing characters of the variety they recognize. Colonel Dodge states that "His body is lighter, whilst his legs are sborter, but much thicker and stronger, than the plains animal, thus enabling him to perform feats of climbing and tumbling alınost incredible in such a huge and unwieldy beast."
The belief in the existence of a distinct mountain variety is quite common amongst hunters and frontiersmen all along the eastern slope the Rocky Mountains as far north as the Peace River. In this connection the following from Professor Henry Youle Hind is of general interest:
"The existence of two kinds of buffalo is firmly believed by many hunters at Red River; they are stated to be the prairie buffalo and the buffalo of the woods. Many old hunters with whom I have conversed on this subject aver that the so-called wood buffalo is a distinct species, and although they are not able to offer scientific proofs, get the difference in size, color, hair, and horns, are enumerated as the evidence upon which they base their statement. Men from their youth familiar with these animals in the great plains, and the varieties which are frequently met with in large herds, still cling to this opinion. The buffalo of the plains are not always of the dark and rich bright brown which forms their characteristic color. They are sometimes seen from white to almost black, and a gray buffalo is not at all uncommon. Buffalo ​emasculated by wolves are often found on the prairies, where they grow to an immense size; the skin of the buffalo ox is recognized by the shortness of the wool and by its large dimensions. The skin of the socalled wood buffalo is much larger than that of the common animal, the the hair is very short, mane or hair about the neck short and soft, and altogether destitute of curl, which is the common feature in the hair or wool of the prairie animal. Two skins of the so-called wood buffalo, which I saw at Selkirk Settlement, bore a very close resemblance to the skin of the Lithuanian bison, judging from the specimens of that species which I have since had an opportunity of seeing in the British Museum.
"The wood buffalo is stated to be very scarce, and only found north of the Saskatchewan and on the flanks of the Rocky Mountains. It never ventures into the open plains. The prairie buffalo, on the contrary, generally avoids the woods in summer and keeps to the open country; but in winter they are frequently found in the woods of the Little Souris, Saskatchewan, the Touch wood Hills, and the aspen grores on the Qu'Appelle. There is no doubt that formerly the prairie buffalo ranged through open woods almost as much as he now does through the prairies."
Mr. Harrison S Young, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, stationed at Fort Edmonton, writes me as follows in a letter dated October 22, 1887: "In our district of Athabasca, along the Salt River, there are still a few wood buffalo killed every year; but they are fast diminishing in numbers, and are also becoming very shy."
In Prof. John Macoun's "Manitoba and the Great North west," page 342, there occurs the following reference to the wood buffalo: "In the winter of 1870 the last buffalo were killed north of Peace River; but in 1875 about one thousand head were still in existence between the Athabasca and Peace Rivers, north of Little Slave Lake. These are called wood buffalo by the hunters, but differ only in size from those of the plain."
In the absence of facts based on personal observations, I may be permitted to advance an opinion in regard to the wood buffalo. There is some reason for the belief that certain changes of form may have taken place in the buffaloes that have taken up a permanent residence in rugged and precipitous mountain regions. Indeed, it is hardly possible to understand how such a radical change in the habitat of an animal could fail, through successive generations, to effect certain changes in the animal itself. It seems to me that the changes which would take place in a band of plains buffaloes transferred to a permanent mountain habitat can be forecast with a marked degree of certainty. The changes that take place under such conditions in cattle, swine, and goats are well known, and similar causes would certainly produce similar results in the buffalo.
The scantier feed of the mountains, and the great waste of vital energy called for in procuring it, would hardly produce a larger buffalo ​than the plains-fed animal, who acquires an abundance of daily food of the best quality with but little effort.
We should expect to see the mountain buffalo smaller in body than the plaius animal, with better leg development, and particularly with stronger hind quarters. The pelvis of the plains buffalo is surprisingly small and weak for so large an animal. Beyond question, constant mountain climbing is bound to develop a maximum of useful muscle and bone and a minimum of useless fat. If the loss of mane sustained by the African lions who live in bushy localities may be taken as an index, we should expect the bison of the mountains, especially the "wood buffalo," to lose a great deal of his shaggy frontlet and mane <>n the bushes and trees which surrounded him. Therefore, we would naturally expect to find the hair on those parts shorter and in far less perfect condition than on the bison of the treeless prairies. By reason of the more shaded condition of his home, and the decided mitigation of the sun's fierceness, we should also expect to see his entire pelage of a darker tone. That he would acquire a degree of agility and strength unknown in his relative of the plain is reasonably certain. In the course of many centuries the change in his form might become well defined, constant, and conspicuous; but at present there is apparently not the slightest ground for considering that the "mountain buffalo" or "wood buffalo" is entitled to rank even as a variety of Bison amcricanus.
Colonel Dodge has recorded some very interesting information in regard to the "mountain, or wood buffalo," which deserves to be quoted entire.
"In various portions of the Bocky Mountains, especially in the region of the parks, is found an animal which old mountaineers call the 'bison.' This animal bears about the same relation to a plains buffalo as a sturdy mountain pony does to an American horse. His body is lighter, whilst his legs are shorter, but much thicker and stronger, than the plains animal, thus enabling him to perform feats of climbing and tumbling almost incredible in such a huge and apparently unwieldy beast.
"These animals are by no means plentiful, and are moreover excessively shy, inhabiting the deepest, darkest defiles, or the craggy, almost precipitous, sides of mountains inaccessible to any but the must practiced mountaineers.
"From the tops of the mountains which rim the parks the rains of ages have cut deep gorges, which plunge with brusque abruptness, but nevertheless with great regularity, hundreds or even thousands of feet to the valley below. Down the bottom of each such gorge a clear, cold stream of purest water, fertilizing a narrow belt of a few feet of alluvial, and giving birth and growth to a dense jungle of spruce, quaking asp, and other mountain trees. One side of the gorge is generally a ​thick forest of pine, while the other side is a meadow-like park, covered with splendid grass. Such gorges are the favorite haunt of the mountain buffalo. Early in the morning he enjoys a bountiful breakfast of the rich nutritious grasses, quenches his thirst with the finest water, and, retiring just within the line of jungle, where, himself unseen, he can scan the open, he crouches himself in the long grass and reposes in comfort and security until appetite calls him to his dinner late in the evening. Unlike their plains relative, there is no stupid staring at an intruder. At the first symptom of danger they disappear like magic in the thicket, and never stop until far removed from even the apprehension of pursuit. I have many times come upon their fresh tracks, upon the beds from which they had first sprung in alarm, but I have never even seen one.
"I have wasted much time and a great deal of wind in vain endeavors to add one of these animals to my bag. My figure is no longer adapted to mountain climbing, and the possession of a bison's head of my own killing is one of my blighted hopes.
"Several of my friends have been more fortunate, but I know of no sportsman who has bagged more than one.
"Old mountaineers and trappers have given me wonderful accounts of the number of these animals in all the mountain region 1 many years ago;' and I have been informed by them that their present rarity is due to the great snow-storm of 1841-15, of which I have already spoken as destroying the plains buffalo in the Laramie country.
"One of my friends, a most ardent and pertinacious sportsman, determined on the possession of a bison's head, and, hiring a guide, plunged into the mountain wilds which separate the Middle from South Park. After several days fresh tracks were discovered. Turning their horses loose on a little gorge park, such as described, they started on foot on the trail; for all that day they toiled and scrambled with the utmost caution—now up, now down, through deep and narrow gorges and pine thickets, over bare and rocky crags, sleeping where night overtook them. Betimes next morning they pushed on the trail, and about 11 o'clock, when both were exhausted and well nigh disheartened, their route was intercepted by a precipice. Looking over, they descried, on a projecting ledge several hundred feet below, a herd of about 20 bisons lying down. The ledge was about 300 feet at widest, by probably 1,000 feet long. Its inner boundary was the wail of rock on the top of which they stood; its outer appeared to be a sheer precipice of at least 200 feet. This ledge was connected with the slope of the mountain by a narrow neck. The wind being right, the hunters succeeded in reaching this neck unobserved. My friend selected a magnificent head, that of a ​fine bull, young but full grown, and both fired. At the report the bisons all ran to the far end of the ledge and plunged over.
"Terribly disappointed, the hunters ran to the spot, and found that they had gone down a declivity, not actually a precipice, but so steep that the hunters could not follow them.
"At the foot lay a bison. A long, a fatiguing detour brought them to the spot, and in the animal lying dead before him my friend recognized his bull — his first and last mountain buffalo. None but a true sportsman can appreciate his feelings.
"The remainder of the herd was never seen after the great plunge, down which it is doubtful if even a dog could have followed unharmed."
In the issue of Forest and Stream of June 14, 1888, Dr. E. W. Shufeldt, in an article entitled "The American Buffalo," relates a very interesting experience with buffaloes which were pronounced to be of the "mountain" variety, and his observations on the animals are well worth reproducing here. The animals (eight in number) were encountered on the northern slope of the Big Horn Mountains, in the autumn of 1877. "We came upon them during a fearful blizzard of heavy hail, during which our animals could scarcely retain their feet. In fact, the packer's mule absolutely lay down on the ground rather than risk being blown down the mountain side, and my own horse, totally unable to face such a violent blow and the pelting hail (the stones being as large as big marbles), positively stood stock-still, facing an old buffalo bull that was not more than 25 feet in front of me. * * * Strange to say, this fearful gust did not last more than ten minutes, when jt stopped as suddenly as it had commenced, and I deliberately killed my old buffalo at one shot, just where he stood, and, separating two other bulls from the rest, charged them down a rugged ravine. They passed over this and into another one, but with less precipitous sides and no trees in the way, and when I was on top of the intervening ridge I noticed that the largest bull had halted in the bottom. Checking my horse, an excellent buffalo hunter, I fired down at him without dismounting. The ball merely barked his shoulder, and to my infinite surprise he turned and charged me up the hill. * * * Stepping to one side of my horse, with the charging and infuriated bull not 10 feet to my front, I fired upon him, and the heavy ball took him square in the chest, bringing him to his knees, with a gush of scarlet blood from his mouth and nostrils. * * *
"Upon examining the specimen, I found it to be an old bull, apparently smaller and very much blacker than the ones I had seen killed on the plains only a day or so before. Then I examined the first one [ had shot, as well as others which were killed by the packer from the same bunch, and I came to the conclusion that they were typical representatives of the variety known as the 'mountain buffalo,' a form much more active in movement, of slighter limbs, blacker, and far more dangerous to attack. My opinion in the premises remains unaltered to-day. In ​all this I may be mistaken, but it was also the opinion held by the old buffalo hunter who accompanied me, and who at once remarked when be saw them that they were 'mountain buffalo,' and not the plains variety. * * *
"These specimens were not actually measured by me in either case, and their being considered smaller only rested upon my judging them by my eye. But they were of a softer pelage, black, lighter in limb, and when discovered were in the timber, on the side of the Big Horn Mountains."
The band of bison in the Yellowstone Parle must, of necessity, be of the so-called; "wood" or "mountain" variety, and if by any chance one of its members ever dies of old age, it is to be hoped its skin may be carefully preserved and sent to the National Museum to throw some further light on this question.
11. The shedding of the winter pelage.—In personal appearance the buffalo is subject to striking, and even painful, variations, and the estimate an observer forms of him is very apt to depend upon the time of the year at which the observation is made. Toward the end of the winter the whole coat has become faded and bleached by the action of the sun, wind, snow, and rain, until the freshness of its late autumn colors has totally disappeared. The bison takes on a seedy, weathered, and rusty look. But this is not a circumstance to what happens to him a little later. Promptly with the coming of the spring, if not even in the last week of February, the buffalo begins the shedding of his winter coat. It is a long and difficult task, and with commendable energy he sets about it at the earliest possible moment. It lasts him more than half the year, and is attended with many positive discomforts.
The process of shedding is accomplished in two ways: by the new hair growing into and forcing off the old, and by the old hair falling off in great patches, leaving the skin bare. On the heavily-haired portions—the head, neck, fore quarters, and hump—the old hair stops growing, dies, and the new hair immediately starts through the skin and forces it off. The new hair grows so rapidly, and at the same time so densely, that it forces itself into the old, becomes hopelessly entangled with it. and in time actually lifts the old hair clear of the skin. On the head the new h dr is dark brown or black, but on the neck, fore quarters, and hump it has at first, and indeed until it is 2 inches in length, a peculiar gray or drab color, mixed with brown, totally different from its final and natural color. The new hair starts first on the head, bat the actual shedding of the old hair is to be seen first along the lower parts of the neck and between the fore legs. The heavily-haired parts are never bare, but, on the contrary, the amount of hair upon them is about the same all the year round. The old and the new hair cling together with provoking tenacity long after the old coat should fall, and on several of the bulls we killed in October there were patches of it ​still sticking tightly to the shoulders, from which it had to be forcibly plucked away. Under all such patches the new hair was of a different color from that around them.
The other process of shedding takes place on the body and hind quarters, from which the old hair loosens and drops off in great woolly flakes a foot square, more or less. The shedding takes place very unevenly, the old hair remaining much longer in some places than in others. During April, May, and June the body and hind quarters present a most ludicrous and even pitiful spectacle. The island-like patches of persistent old hair alternating with patches of bare brown skin are adorned (?) by great ragged streamers of loose hair, which flutter in the wind like signals of distress. Whoever sees a bison at this period is filled with a desire to assist nature by plucking off the flying streamers of old hair; but the bison never permits anything of the kind, however good one's intentions may be. All efforts to dislodge the old hair are resisted to the last extremity, and the buffalo generally acts as if the intention were to deprive him of his skin itself. By the end of June, if not before, the body and hind quarters are free from the old hair, and as bare as the hide of a hippopotamus. The naked skin has a shiny brown appearance, and of course the external anatomy of the animal is very distinctly revealed. But for the long hair ou the fore quarters, neck, and head the bison would lose all his dignity of appearance with his hair. As it is, the handsome black head, which is black with new hair as early as the first of May, redeems the animal from utter homeliness.
After the shedding of the body hair, the naked skin of the buffalo is burned by the sun and bitten by flies until he is compelled to seek a pool of water, or even a bed of soft mud, in which to roll and make himself comfortable. He wallows, not so much because he is so fond of either water or mud, but in self-defense; and when he emerges from his wallow, plastered with mud from head to tail, his degradation is complete. He is then simply not fit to be seen, even by his best friends.
By the first of October, a complete and wonderful transformation has taken place. The buffalo stands forth clothed in a complete new suit of hair, fine, clean, sleek, and bright in color, not a speck of dirt nor a lock awry anywhere. To be sure, it is as yet a trifle short on the body, where it is not over an inch in length, and hardly that; but it is growing rapidly and getting ready for winter.
From the 20th of November to the 20th of December the pelage is at its very finest. By the former date it has attained its fall growth, its colors are at their brightest, and nothing has been lost either by the elements or by accidental causes. To him who sees an adult bull at this period, or near it, the grandeur of the animal is irresistibly felt. After seeing buffaloes of all ages in the spring and summer months the contrast afforded by those seen in October, November, and December was most striking and impressive. In the later period, as different in. ​individuals were wounded and brought to bay at close quarters, their hair was so clean and well-kept, that more than once I was led to exclaim: "He looks as if he had just been combed."
It must be remarked, however, that the long hair of the head and fore quarters is disposed in locks or tufts, and to comb it in reality would utterly destroy its natural and characteristic appearance.
Inasmuch as the pelage of the domesticated bison, the only representatives of the species which will be found alive ten years hence, will in all likelihood develop differently from that of the wild animal, it may some time in the future be of interest to know the length, by careful measurement, of the hair found on carefully-selected typical wild specimens.
To this end the following measurements are given. It must be borne in mind that these specimens were not chosen because their pelage was particularly luxuriant, but rather because they are fine average specimens.
The hair of the adult bull is by no means as long as I have seen on a bison, although perhaps not many have greatly surpassed it. It is with the lower animals as with man — the length of the hairy covering is an individual character only. I have in my possession a tuft of hair, from the frontlet of a rather small bull bison, which measures 224 inches in length. The beard on the specimen from which this came was correspondingly long, and the entire pelage was of wonderful length and density.
Albinism. — Cases of albinism in the buffalo were of extremely rare occurrence. I have met many old buffalo hunters, who had killed thousands and seen scores of thousands of buffaloes, yet never had seen a white one. From all accounts it appears that not over ten or eleven white buffaloes, or white buffalo skins, were ever seen by white men. Pied individuals were occasionally obtained, but even they were rare. Albino buffaloes were always so highly prized that not a single one, so far as I can learn, ever had the good fortune to attain adult size, their appearance being so striking, in contrast with the other members of the herd, as to draw upon them an unusual number of enemies, and cause their speedy destruction. ​At the New Orleans Exposition, in 1884–85, the Territory of Dakota exhibited, amongst other Western quadrupeds, the mounted skin of a two-year-old buffalo which might fairly be called an albino. Although not really white, it was of a uniform dirty cream-color, and showed not a trace of the bison's normal color on any part of its body.
Lieut. Col. S. C. Kellogg, U.S. Army, has on deposit in the National Museum a tanned skin which is said to have come from a buffalo. It is from an animal about one year old, and the hair upon it, which is short, very curly or wavy, and rather coarse, is pure white. In length and texture the hair does not in any one respect resemble the hair of a yearling buffalo save in one particular, — along the median line of the neck and hump there is a rather long, thin mane of hair, which has the peculiar woolly appearance of genuine buffalo hair on those parts. On the shoulder portions of the skin the hair is as short as on the hind quarters. I am inclined to believe this rather remarkable specimen came from a wild half-breed calf, the result of a cross between a white domestic cow and a buffalo bull. At one time it was by no means uncommon for small bunches of domestic cattle to enter herds of buffalo and remain there permanently.
I have been informed that the late General Marcy possessed a white buffalo skin. If it is still in existence, and is really white, it is to be hoped that so great a rarity may find a permanent abiding place in some museum where the remains of Bison americanus are properly appreciated.
V. The Habits of the Buffalo.
The history of the buffalo's daily life and habits should begin with the "running season." This period occupied the mouths of August and September, and was characterized by a degree of excitement and activity throughout the entire herd quite foreign to the ease-loving and even slothful nature which was so noticable a feature of the bison's character at all other times.
The mating season occurred when the herd was on its summer range. The spring calves were from two to four months old. Through continued feasting on the new crop of buffalo-grass and bunch-grass — the most nutritious in the world, perhaps-every buffalo in the herd had grown round-sided, fat, and vigorous. The faded and weather beaten suit of winter hair had by that time fallen off and given place to the new coat of dark gray and black, and, excepting for the shortness of his hair, the buffalo was in prime condition.
During the "running season," as it was called by the plainsmen, the whole nature of the herd was completely changed. Instead of being broken up into countless small groups and dispersed over a vast extent of territory, the herd came together in a dense and confused mass of many thousand individuals. so closely congregated as to actually blacken the face of the landscape. As if by a general and ​irresistible impulse, every straggler would be drawn to the common center, ami for miles on every side of the great herd the country would be found entirely deserted.
At this time the herd itself became a seething mass of activity and excitement As usual under such conditions, the bulls were half the time chasing the cows, and fighting each other during the other half. These actual combats, which were always of short duration and over in a few seconds alter the actual collision took place, were preceded by the usual threatening demonstrations, in which the bull lowers his head until his nose almost touches the ground, roars like a fog-horn until the earth seems to fairly tremble with the vibration, glares madly upon his adversary with half-white eyeballs, and with his forefeet paws up the dry earth and throws it upward in a great cloud of dust high above his back. At such times the mingled roaring—it can not truthfully be described as lowing or bellowing—of a number of huge bulls unite and form a great volume of sound like distant thunder, which has often been heard at a distance of from 1 to 3 miles. I have even been assured by old plainsmen that under favorable atmospheric conditions such sounds have been heard five miles.
Notwithstanding the extreme frequency of combats between the bulls during this season, their results were nearly always harmless, thanks to the thickness of the hair and hide on the head and shoulders, and the strength of the neck.
Under no conditions was there ever any such thing as the pairing off or mating of male and female buffaloes for any length of time. In the entire process of reproduction the bison's habits were similar to those of domestic cattle. For years the opinion was held by many, in some cases based on misinterpreted observations, that in the herd the identity of each family was partially preserved, and that each old bull maintained an individual harem and group of progeny of his own. The observations of Colonel Dodge completely disprove this very interesting theory: for at best it was only a picturesque fancy, ascribing to the bison a degree of intelligence which be never possessed.
At the close of the breeding season the herd quickly settles down to its normal condition. The mass gradually resolves itself into the numerous bands or herdlets of from twenty to a hundred individuals, so characteristic of bison on their feeding grounds, and these gradually scatter in search of the best grass until the herd covers many square miles of country.
In his search for grass the buffalo displayed but little intelligence or power of original thought. Instead of closely following the divides between water courses where the soil was best and grass most abundant, he would not hesitate to wander away from good feeding-grounds into barren "bad lands," covered with sage-brush, where the grass was very thin and very poor. In such broken country as Montana, Wyoming, and southwestern Dakota, the herds, on reaching the best grazing ​grounds on the divides, would graze there day after day until increasing thirst compelled them to seek for water. Then, actuated by a common impulse, the search for a water-hole was begun in a businesslike way. The leader of a herd, or "bunch," which post was usually filled by an old cow, would start off down the nearest "draw," or streamheading, and all the rest would fall into live and follow her. From the moment this start was made there was no more feeding, sare as a mouthful of grass could be snatched now and then without turning aside. In single file, in a live sometimes half a mile long and containing between one and two hundred buffaloes, the procession slowly marched down the coulée, close alongside the gully as soon as the water-course began to cut a pathway for itself. When the gully curved to right or left the leader would cross its bed and keep straight on until the narrow ditch completed its wayward curve and came back to the middle of the coulée. The trail of a herd in search of water is usually as good a piece of engineering as could be executed by the best railway surveyor, and is goverved by precisely the same principles. It always follows the level of the valley, swerves around the high points, and crosses the stream repeatedly in order to avoid climbing up from the level. The same trail is used again and again by different herds until the narrow path, not over a foot in width, is gradually cut straight down into the soil to a depth of several inches, as if it bad been done by a 12-inch grooving. plane. By the time the trail has been worn down to a depth of 6 or 7 inches, without having its width increased in the least, it is no longer a pleasant path to walk in, being too much like a narrow ditch. Then the buffaloes abandon it and strike out a new one alongside, which is used until it also is worn down and abandoned.
To-day the old buffalo trails are conspicuous among the very few classes of objects which remain as a reminder of a vanished race. The herds of cattle now follow them in single file just as the buffaloes did a few years ago, as they search for water in the same wav. In some parts of the West, in certain situations, old buffalo trails exist which the wild herds wore down to a depth of 2 feet or more.
Mile after mile marched the herd, straight down stream, bound for the upper water-hole. As the hot summer drew on, the pools would dry up one by one, those nearest the source being the first to disappear. Toward the latter part of summer, the journey for water was often a long one. Hole after hole would be passed without finding a drop of water. At last a hole of mud would be found, below that a hole with a little muddy water, and a mile farther on the leader would arrive at a shallow pool under the edge of a "cut bank," a white, snowlike deposit of alkali on the sand encircling its margin, and incrusting the blades of grass and rushes that grew up from the bottom. The damp earth around the pool was cut up by a thousand hoof-prints, and the water was warm, strongly impregnated with alkali, and yellow with animal impurities, but it was water. The nauseous mixture was quickly ​surrounded by a throng of thirsty, heated, and eager buffaloes of all ages, to which the oldest and strongest asserted claims of priority. There was much crowding and some fighting, but eventually all were satisfied. After such a long journey to water, a herd would usually remain by it for some hours, lying down, resting, and drinking at intervals until completely satisfied.
Haring drunk its fill, the herd would never march directly back to the choice feeding grounds it bad just left, but instead would leisurely stroll off at a right angle from the course it came, cropping for awhile the rich bunch grasses of the bottom-lands, and then wander across the hills in an almost aimless search for fresh fields and pastures new. When buffaloes remained long in a certain locality it was a common thing for them to visit the same watering-place a number of times, at intervals of greater or less duration, according to circumstances.
When undisturbed on his chosen range, the bison used to be fond of lying down for an hour or two in the middle of the day, particularly when fine weather and good grass combined to encourage him in luxurious habits. I once discovered with the field-glass a small herd of buffaloes lying down at midday on the slope of a high ridge, and bar. ing ridden hard for several hours we seized the opportunity to unsaddle and give our horses an hour's rest before making the attack. While we were so doing, the herd got up, shifted its position to the opposite side of the ridge, and again laid down, every buffalo with his nose pointing to windward.
Old hunters declare that in the days of their abundance, when feeding on their ranges in fancied security, the younger animals were as playful as well-fed domestic calves. It was a common thing to see them cavort and frisk around with about as much grace as young ele. phants, prancing and running to and fro with tails held high in air like scorpions."
Buffaloes are very fond of rolling in dry dirt or even in mud, and this habit is quite strong in captive animals. Not only is it indulged in during the shedding season, but all through the fall and winter. The two live buffaloes in the National Museum are so much given to rolling, even in rainy weather, that it is necessary to card them every few days to keep them presentable.
Bulls are much more given to rolling than the cows, especially after they have reached maturity. They stretch out at full length, rub their heads violently to and fro on the ground, in which the horn serves as the chief point of contact and slides over the ground like a sled-runner. After thoroughly scratching one side on mother earth they rode over and treat the other in like manner. Notwithstanding his sharp and lofty hump, a buffalo bull can roll completely over with as much ease as any horse.
The vast amount of rolling and side-scratching on the earth indulged in by bull buffaloes is shown in the worn condition of the horns of ​
Development of the Horns of the American Bison :
| 1. The Calf. | 4. Spike Bull 3 years old. | 6. Bull, 11 years old. |
| 2. The Yearling. | 5. Bull, 4 years old. | 7. Old "stub-horn" Bull, 20 years old. |
| 3. Spike Bull 2 years old. | | |
​every old specimen. Often a thickness of half an inch is gone from the upper half of each horn on its outside curve, at which point the horn is worn quite flat. This is well illustrated in the horns shown in the accompanying plate, fig. 6.
Mr. Catlin affords some very interesting and valuable information in regard to the bison's propensity for wollowing in mud, and also the origin of the u fairy circles," which have caused so much speculation amongst travelers:
"In the heat of summer, these huge animals, which no doubt suffer very much with the great profusion of their long and shaggy hair, or fur, often graze on the low grounds of the prairies, where there is a little stagnant water lying amongst the grass, and the ground underneath being saturated with it, is soft, into which the enormous built lowered down upon one knee, will plunge his horns, and at last his head, driving up the earth, and soon making an excavation in the ground into which the water filters from amongst the grass, forming for him in a few moments a cool and comfortable bath, into which he plunges like a hog in his mire.
"In this delectable laver he throws himself flat upon his side, and forcing himself violently around, with his horns and his huge hump on his shoulders presented to the sides, he ploughs up the ground by his rotary motion, sinking himself deeper and deeper in the ground, continually enlarging his pool, in which he at length becomes nearly immersed, and the water and mud about him mixed into a complete mortar, which changes his color and drips in streams from every part of him as he rises up upon his feet, a hideous monster of mud and ugliness, too frightful and too eccentric to be described!
"It is generally the leader of the herd that takes upon him to make this excavation, and if not (but another one opens the ground), the leader (who is conqueror) marches forward, and driving the other from it plunges himself into it; and, having cooled his sides and changed his color to a walking mass of mud and mortar, he stands in the pool until inclination induces him to step out and give place to the next in command who stands ready, and another, and another, who advance forward in their turns to enjoy the luxury of the wallow, until the whole baud (sometimes a hundred or more) will pass through it in turn, each one throwing his body around in a similar manner and each one adding a little to the dimensions of the pool, while he carries away in his hair an equal share of the clay, which dries to a gray or whitish color and gradually falls off. By this operation, which is done perhaps in the space of half an hour, a circular excavation of fifteen or twenty feet in diameter and two feet in depth is completed and left for the water to run into, which soon fills it to the level of the ground. ​"To these sinks, the waters lying on the surface of the prairies are continually draining and in them lodging their vegetable deposits, which after a lapse of years fill them up to the surface with a rich soil, which throws up an unusual growth of grass and herbage, forming conspicuous circles, which arrest the eye of the traveler and are calculated to excite his surprise for ages to come."
During the latter part of the last century, when the bison inhabited Kentucky and Pennsylvania, the salt springs of those States were resorted to by thousands of those animals, who drank of the saline waters and licked the impregnated earth. Mr. Thomas Ashe affords us a most interesting account, from the testimony of an eye-witness, of the behavior of a bison at a salt spring. The description refers to a locality in western Pennsylvania, where "an old man, one of the first settlers of this country, built bis log house on the immediate borders of a salt spring. He informed me that for the first several seasons the buffaloes paid him their visits with the utmost regularity; they traveled in sin. gle files, always following each other at equal distances, forming droves, on their arrival, of about 300 each.
"The first and second years, so unacquainted were these poor brutes with the use of this man's house or with his nature, that in a few hours they rubbed the house completely down, taking delight in turning the logs off with their horns, while he had some difficulty to escape from being trampled under their feet or crushed to death in his own ruins. At that period he supposed there could not have been less than 2,000 in the neighborhood of the spring. They sought for no manner of food, but only bathed and drank three or four times a day and rolled in the earth, or reposed with their flanks distended in the adjacent shades; and on the fifth and sixth days separated into distinct droves, bathed, drank, and departed in single files, according to the exact order of their arrival. They all rolled successively in the same hole, and each thus carried away a coat of mud to preserve the moisture on their skin and which, when hardened and baked in the sun, would resist the stings of millions of insects that otherwise would persecute these peaceful travelers to madness or even death."
It was a fixed habit with the great buffalo herds to more southward from 200 to 400 miles at the approach of winter. Sometimes this movement was accomplished quietly and without any excitement, but at other times it was done with a rush, in which considerable distances would be gone over on the double quick. The advance of a herd was often very much like that of a big army, in a straggling line, from four to ten animals abreast. Sometimes the herd moved forward in a dense mass, and in consequence often came to grief in quicksands, alkali bogs, muddy crossings, and on treacherous ice. In such places thousands of buffaloes lost their lives, through those in the lead being forced into danger by pressure of the mass coming behind. In this manner, in the ​summer of 1867, over two thousand buffaloes, out of a herd of about four thousand, lost their lives in the quicksands of the Platte River, near Plum Creek, while attempting to cross. One winter, a herd of nearly a hundred buffaloes attempted to cross a lake called Lac-qui-parle, in Minnesota, upon the ice, which gave way, and drowned the entire herd. During the days of the buffalo it was a common thing for voyagers on the Missouri River to see buffaloes hopelessly mired in the quicksands or mud along the shore, either dead or dying, and to find their dead bodies floating down the river, or lodged on the upper ends of the islands and sand bars.
Such accidents as these, it may be repeated, were due to the great number of animals and the momentum of the moving mass. The forced marches of the great herds were like the flight of a routed army, in which helpless individuals were thrust into mortal peril by the irresistible force of the mass coming behind, which rushes blindly on after their leaders. In this way it was possible to decoy a herd toward a precipice and cause it to plunge over en masse, the leaders being thrust over by their followers, and all the rest following of their own free will, like the sheep who cheerfully leaped, one after another, through a hole in the side of a high bridge because their bell-wether did so. But it is not to be understood that the movement of a great herd, because it was made on a run, necessarily partook of the nature of a stampede in which a herd sweeps forward in a body. The most graphic account that I ever obtained of facts bearing on this point was furnished by Mr. James McNavey, drawn from his experience on the northern buffalo range in 1882. His party reached the range (on Beaver Creek, abont 100 miles south of Glendive) about the middle of November, and found buffaloes already there; in fact they had begun to arrive from the north as early as the middle of October. About the first of December an immense herd arrived from the north. It reached their vicinity one night, about 10 o'clock, in a mass that seemed to spread everywhere. As the hunters sat in their tents, loading cartridges and cleaning their rifles, a low rumble was heard, which gradually increased to "a thundering noise," and some one exclaimed, "There! that's a big herd of buffalo coming in!" All ran out immediately, and hallooed and discharged rifles to keep the buffaloes from running over their tents. Fortunately, the borses were picketed some distance away in a grassy coulée, which the buffaloes did not enter. The herd came at a jog trot, and moved quite rapidly. "In the morning the whole country was black with buffalo." It was estimated that 10,000 head were in sight. One immense detachment went down on to a "flat" and laid down. There it remained quietly, enjoying a long rest, for about ten days. It gradually broke up into small bands, which strolled off in various directions looking for food, and which the hunters quietly attacked. A still more striking event occurred about Christmas time at the same place. For a few days the neighborhood of McNaney's camp had ​been entirely deserted by buffaloes, not even one remaining. But one morning about daybreak a great herd which was traveling south began to pass their camp. A long line of moving forms was seen advancing rapidly from the northwest, coming in the direction of the hunters' camp, it disappeared in the creek valley for a few moments, and presently the leaders suddenly came in sight again at the top of "a rise" a few hundred yards away, and came down the intervening slope at full speed, within 50 yards of the two tents. After them came a living stream of followers, all going at a gallop, described by the observer as "a long lope," from four to ten buffaloes abreast. Sometimes there would be a break in the column of a minute's duration, then more buffaloes would appear at the brow of the hill, and the column went rushing by as before. The calves ran with their mothers, and the young stock got over the ground with much less exertion than the older animals. For about four hours, or until past 11 o'clock, did this column of buffaloes gallop past the camp over a course no wider than a village street. Three miles away toward the south the long dark line of bobbing humps and hind quarters wound to the right between two hills and disappeared. True to their instincts, the hunters promptly brought out their rifles, and began to fire at the buffaloes as they ran. A furious fusilade was kept up from the very doors of the tents, and from first to last over fifty buffaloes were killed. Some fell headlong the instant they were hit, but the greater number ran on until their mortal wounds compelled them to halt, draw off a little way to one side, and finally fall in their death struggles.
Mr. McNaney stated that the hunters estimated the number of buffaloes on that portion of the range that winter (1881-'82) at 100,000.
It is probable, and in fact reasonably certain, that such forced-march migrations as the above were due to snow-covered pastures and a searcity of food on the more northern ranges. Having learned that a journey south will bring him to regions of less snow and more grass, it is but natural that so lusty a traveler should migrate. The herds or bauds which started south in the fall months traveled more leisurely, with frequent halts to graze on rich pastures. The advance was on a very different plan, taking place in straggling lines and small groups dispersed over quite a scope of country.
Unless closely pursued, the buffalo never chose to make a jouruey of several miles through hilly country on a continuous run. Even when fleeing from the attack of a hunter, I have often had occasion to notice that, if the hunter was a mile behind, the buffalo would always walk when going uphill; but as soon as the crest was gained he would begin to run, and go down the slope either at a gallop or a swift trot. In former times, when the buffalo's world was wide, when retreating from an attack he always ran against the wind, to avoid running upon anew danger, which showed that he depended more upon his sense of smell than his eye-sight. During the last years of his existence, however, this ​habit almost totally disappeared, and the harried survivors learned to run for the regions which offered the greatest safety. But even to-day, if a Texas hunter should go into the Staked Plains, and descry in the distance a body of animals running against the wind, he would, without a moment's hesitation, pronounce them buffaloes, and the chances are that he would be right.
In winter the buffalo used to face the storms, instead of turning tail and "drifting" before them helplessly, as domestic cattle do. But at the same time, when beset by a blizzard, he would wisely seek shelter from it in some narrow and deep valley or system of ravines. There the herd would lie down and wait patiently for the storm to cease. After a heavy fall of snow, the place to find the buffalo was in the fiats and creek bottoms, where the tall, rank bunch-grasses showed their tops above the snow, and afforded the best and almost the only food obtainable.
When the snow-fall was unusually heavy, and lay for a long time on the ground, the buffalo was forced to fast for days together, and sometimes even weeks. If a warm day came, and thawed the upper surface of the snow sufficiently for succeeding cold to freeze it into a crust, the outlook for the bison began to be serious. A man can travel over a crust through which the hoofs of a ponderous bison cut like chisels and leave him floundering belly-deep. It was at such times that the Indians hunted him on snow-shoes, and drove their spears into his vitals as he wallowed helplessly in the drifts. Then the wolves grew fat upon the victims which they, also, slaughtered almost without effort.
Although buffaloes did not often actually perish from hunger and cold during the severest winters (save in a few very exceptional cases), they often came out in very poor condition. The old bulls always suffered more severely than the rest, and at the end of winter were frequently in miserable plight.
Unlike most other terrestrial quadrupeds of America, so long as he could roam at will the buffalo had settled migratory habits. While the elk and black-tail deer change their altitude twice a year, in conformity with the approach and disappearance of winter, the buffalo makes a radical change of latitude. This was most noticeable in the great western pasture region, where the herds were most numerous and their movements most easily observed. ​At the approah of winter the whole great system of herds which ranged from the Peace River to the Indian Territory moved south a few hundred miles, and wintered under more favorable circumstances than each band would have experienced at its farthest north. Thus it happened that nearly the whole of the great range south of the Saskatchewan was occupied by buffaloes even in winter.
The movement north began with the return of mild weather in the early spring. Undoubtedly this northward migration was to escape the heat of their southern winter range rather than to find better pasture; for as a grazing country for cattle all the year round. Texas is hardly surpassed, except where it is overstocked. It was with the buffaloes a matter of choice rather than necessity which sent them on their annual pilgrimage northward.
Col. R. L Dodge, who has made many valuable observations on the migratory habits of the southern buffaloes, has recorded the following:
"Early in spring, as soon as the dry and apparently desert prairie had begun to change its coat of dingy brown to one of palest green, the horizon would begin to be dotted with buffalo, single or in groups of two or three, forerunners of the coming herd. Thicker and thicker and in larger groups they come, until by the time the grass is well up the whole vast landscape appears a mass of buffalo, some individuals feeding, others standing, others lying down, but the herd moving slowly, moving constantly to the northward.***Some years, as in 1871, the buffalo appeared to move northward in one immense column oftentimes from 20 to 50 miles in width, and of unknown depth from front to rear. Other years the northward journey was made in several parallel columns, moving at the same rate, and with their numerous flankers covering a width of a hundred or more miles.
"The line of march of this great spring migration was not always the same, though it was confined within certain limits. I am informed by old frontiersmen that it has not within twenty-five years crossed the Arkansas River east of Great Bend nor west of Big Sand Creek. The most favored routes crossed the Arkansas at the mouth of Walnut Creek, Pawnee Fork, Mulberry Creek, the Cimarron Crossing, and Big Sand Creek.
"As the great herd proceeds northward it is constantly depleted, numbers wandering off to the right and left, until finally it is scattered in small herds far and wide over the vast feeding grounds, where they past the summer.
"When the food in one locality fails they go to another, and towards fall, when the grass of the high prairie becomes parched by the heat and drought, they gradually work their way back to the south, concentrating on the rich pastures of Texas and the Indian Territory, whence, the same instinct acting on all, they are ready to start together on the northward march as soon as spring starts the grass." ​So long as the bison held undisputed possession of the great plains his migratory habits were as above — regular, general, and on a scale that was truly grand. The herds that wintered in Texas, the Indian Territory, and New Mexico probably spent their summers in Nebraska, southwestern Dakota, and Wyoming. The winter herds of northern Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and southern Dakota went to northern Dakota and Montana, while the great Montana herds spent the summer on the Grand Coteau des Prairies lying between the Saskatchewau and the Missouri. The two great annual expeditions of the Red River halfbreeds, which always took place in summer, went in two directions from Winnipeg and Pembina — one, the White Horse Plain division, going westward along the Qu'Appelle to the Saskatchewan country, and the other, the Red River division, south west into Dakota. In 1840 the site of the present city of Jamestown, Dakota, was the northeastern limit of the herds that summered in Dakota, and the country lying between that point and the Missouri was for years the favorite hunting ground of the Red River division.
The herds which wintered on the Montana ranges always went north in the early spring, usually in March, so that during the time the hunters were bauling in the hides taken on the winter hunt the ranges were entirely deserted. It is equally certain, however, that a few small bands remained in certain portions of Montana throughout the summer. But the main body crossed the international boundary, and spent the summer on the plains of the Saskatchewan, where they were hunted by the half-breeds from the Red River settlements and the Indians of the plains. It is my belief that in this movement nearly all the buffaloes of Montana and Dakota participated, and that the herds which spent the summer in Dakota, where they were annually hunted by the Red River half-breeds, came up from Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska.
While most of the calves were born on the summer ranges, many were brought forth en route. It was the habit of the cows to retire to a secluded spot, if possible a ravine well screened from observation, bring forth their young, and nourish and defend them until they were strong enough to join the herd. Calves were born all the time from March to July, and sometimes even as late as August. On the summer ranges it was the habit of the cows to leave the bulls at calving time, and thus it often happened that small herds were often seen composed of bulls only. Usually the cow produced but one calf, but twins were not uncommon. Of course many calves were brought forth in the herd, but the favorite habit of the cow was as stated. As soon as the young calves were brought into the herd, which for prudential reasons occurred at the earliest possible moment, the bulls assumed the duty of protecting them from the wolves which at all times congregated in the vicinity of a herd, watching for an opportunity to seize a calf or a wounded buffalo which might be left behind. A calf always follows its mother until its successor is appointed and installed, unless separated from her by force of ​circumstances. They suck until they are nine months old, or even older, and Mr. Melaney once saw a lusty calf suck its mother (in January) on the Montana range several hours after she had been killed for her skin.
When a buffalo is wounded it leaves the herd immediately and goes off as far from the line of pursuit as it can get, to escape the rabble of hunters, who are sure to follow the main body. If any deep ravines are at hand the wounded animal limps away to the bottom of the deepest and most secluded one, and gradually works his way up to its very head, where he finds himself in a perfect cul-de-sac, barely wide enough to admit him. Here he is completely hidden by the high walls and numerous bends that his pursuer must needs come within a few feet of his horns before his huge bulk is visible. I hare more than once been astonished at the real impregnability of the retreats selected by wounded bison. In following up wounded bulls in ravine headings it always became too dangerous to make the last stage of the pursuit on horseback, for fear of being caught in a passage so narrow as to insure a fatal accident to man or horse in case of a sudden discovery of the quarry. I hare seen wounded bison shelter in situations where a single bull could easily defend himself from a whole pack of wolves, being completely walled in on both sides and the rear, and leaving his foes no point of attack save his head and horns.
Bison which were nursing serious wounds must often have gone many days at a time without either food or water, and in this connection it may be mentioned that the recuperative power of a bison is really wonderful. Judging from the number of old leg wounds, fully healed, which I bare found in freshly killed bisons, one may be tempted to believe that a bison never died of a broken leg. One large bull which I skeletonized had had his humerus shot squarely in two, but it had united again more firmly than ever. Another large bull had the head of his left femur and the hip socket shattered completely to pieces by a big ball, but he had entirely recovered from it, and was as lusty a runner as any bull we chased. We found that while a broken leg was a misfortune to a buffalo, it always took something more serious than that to stop him.
VI. The Food of the Bison.
It is obviously impossible to enumerate all the grasses which served the bison as food on his native heath without presenting a complete list of all the plants of that order found in a given region; but it is at least desirable to know which of the grasses of the great pasture region were his favorite and most common food. It was the nutritious character and marvelous abundance of his food supply which enabled the bison to exist in such absolutely countless numbers as characterized his occupancy of the great plains. The following list comprises the grasses which were the bison's principal food, named in the order of their importance: ​Bouteloua oligostachya (buffalo, grama, or mesquite grass). — This remarkable grass formed the pièce de résistance of the bison's bill of fare in the days when he flourished, and it now comes to us daily in the form of beef produced of primest quality and in greatest quantity on what was until recently the great buffalo range. This grass is the most abundant and widely distributed species to be found in the great pasture region between the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains and the nineteenth degree of west longitude. It is the principal grass of the plains from Texas to the British Possessions, and even in the latter territory it is quite conspicuous. To any one but a botanist its first acquaintance means a surprise. Its name and fame lead the unacquainted to expect a grass which is tall, rank, and full of "fodder," like the "blue joint" (Andropogon provincialis). The grama grass is very short, the leaves being usually not more than 2 or 3 inches in length and crowded together at the base of the stems. The flower stalk is about a foot in height, but on grazed lands are eaten off and but seldom seen. The leaves are narrow and inclined to curl, and lie close to the ground. Instead of developing a continuous growth, this grass grows in small, irregular patches, usually about the size of a man's hand, with varrow strips of perfectly bare ground between them. The grass curls closely upon the ground, in a woolly carpet or cushion, greatly resembling a layer of Florida moss. Eren ip spring-time it never shows more color than a tint of palest green, and the landscape which is dependent upon this grass for color is never more than "a gray and melancholy waste." Unlike the soft, juicy, and succulent grasses of the well-watered portions of the United States, the tiny leaves of the grama grass are hard, stiff, and dry. I have often noticed that in grazing neither cattle nor horses are able to bite off the blades, but instead each leaf is pulled out of the tuft, seemingly by its root.
Notwithstanding its dry and uninviting appearance, this grass is highly nutritious, and its fat-producing qualities are unexcelled. The heat of summer dries it up effectually without destroying its nutritive elements, and it becomes for the remainder of the year excellent hay, cured on its own roots. It affords good grazing all the year round, sare in winter, when it is covered with snow, and even then, if the snow is not too deep, the buffaloes, cattle, and horses paw down through it to reach the grass, or else repair to wind-swept ridges and hill-tops, where the snow has been blown off and left the grass partly exposed. Stock pre. fer it to all the other grasses of the plains.
On bottom-lands, where moisture is abundant, this grass develops much more luxuriantly, growing in a close mass, and often to a height of a foot or more, if not grazed down, when it is cut for hay, and some. times yields 11/2 tons to the acre. In Montana and the north it is generally known as "buffalo-grass," a name to which it would seem to be fully entitled, notwithstanding the fact that this name is also applied, and quite generally, to another species, the next to be noticed. ​Buchloë dactyloids (Southern buffalo-grass). — This species is next in value and extent of distribution to the grama grass. It also is found all over the great plains south of Nebraska and southern Wyoming, but not further north, although in many localities it occurs so sparsely as to be of little account. A single bunch of it very greatly resembles Boutelua oligostachya. but its general growth is very different. It is very short, its general mass seldom rising more than 3 inches above the ground. It grows in extensive patches, and spreads by means of stolons, which sometimes are 2 feet in length, with joints every 3 or 4 inches. Owing to its southern distribution this might well be named the Southern buffalo grass, to distinguish it from the two other species of higher latitudes, to which the name "buffalo" has been fastened forever.
Stipa spartea (Northern buffalo-grass; wild oat). — This grass is found in southern Manitoba, westwardly across the plains to the Rocky Mountains, aud southward as far as Montana, where it is common in many localities. On what was once the buffalo range of the British Possessions this rank grass formed the bulk of the winter pasturage, and in that region is quite as famous as our grama grass. An allied species (Stipa viridula. bunch-grass) is "widely diffused over our Rocky Mountain region, extending to California and British America, and furnishing a considerable part of the wild forage of the region." Stipa spartea bears an ill name among stockmen on account of the fact that at the base of each seed is a very hard and sharp-pointed callus, which under certain circumstances (so it is said) lodges in the cheeks of domestic animals that feed upon this grass when it is dry. and which cause much trouble. But the buffalo, like the wild horse and half-wild range cattle, evidently escaped this annoyance. This grass is one of the common species over a wide area of the northern plains, and is always found on soil which is comparatively dry. In Dakota, Minnesota, and northwest Iowa it forms a considerable portion of the upland prairie hay.
Of the remaining grasses it is practically impossible to single out any one as beiug specially entitled to fourth place in this list. There are several species which flourish in different localities, and in many respects appear to be of about equal importance as food for stock. Of these the following are the most noteworthy:
Aristida purpurea (Western beard-grass: purple "bunch-grass" of Montana). — On the high, rolling prairies of the Missouri-Yellowstone divide this grass is very abundant. It grows in little solitary bunches, about 6 inches high, scattered through the curly buffalo-grass (Bouteloua oligostachya). Under more favorable conditions it grows to a height of 12 to 18 inches. It is one of the prettiest grasses of that region, and in the fall and winter its purplish color makes it quite noticeable. The Montana stockmen consider it one of the most valuable grasses of that region for stock oi all kinds. Mr. C. M. Jacobs assured me that the ​buffalo used to be very fond of this grass, and that "wherever this grass grew in abundance there were the best hunting-grounds for the bison." It appears that Aristida purpurea is not sufficiently abundant elsewhere in the Northwest to make it an important food for stock; but Dr. Vesey declares that it is abundant on the plains of Kansas, New Mexico, and Texas."
Kœleria cristata. — Very generally distributed from Texas and New Mexico to the British Possessions; sand hills and arid soils; mountains, up to 8,000 feet.
Poa tenuifolia (blue-grass of the plains and mountains). — A valuable "bunch-grass," widely distributed throughout the great pasture region; grows in all sorts of soils and situations; common in the Yellowstone Park.
Festuca scabrella (bunch-grass). — One of the most valuable grasses of Montana and the North west generally; often called the "great bunchgrass." It furnishes excellent food for horses and cattle, and is so tall it is cat in large quantities for hay. This is the prevailing species on the foot-hills and mountains generally, up to an altitude of 7,000 feet, where it is succeeded by Festuca ovina.
Andropogon provincialis (blue-stem). — An important species, extend. ing from eastern Kansas and Nebraska to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, and from Northern Texas to the Saskatchewan; common in Montana on alkali flats and bottom lands generally. This and the preceding species were of great value to the buffalo in winter, when the shorter grasses were covered with snow.
Andropogon scoparius (bunch-grass; broom sedge; wood-grass). — Similar to the preceding in distribution and value, but not nearly so tall.
None of the buffalo-grasses are found in the mountains. In the mountain regions which have been visited by the buffalo and in the Yellowstone Park, where to-day the only herd remaining in a state of nature is to be found (though not by the man with a gun), the following are the grasses which form all but a small proportion of the ruminant food: Kæleria cristata; Poa tenuifolia (Western blue-grass); Stipa viridula (feather-grass); Stipa comata; Agropyrum divergens; Agropyrum caninum.
When pressed by hunger, the buffalo used to browse on certain species of sage-brush, particularly Atriplex canescens of the Southwest. But be was discriminating in the matter of diet, and as far as can be ascer. tained he was never known to eat the famous and much-dreaded "loco" weed (Astragalus molissimus), which to ruminant animals is a veritable drug of madness. Domestic cattle and horses often eat this plant where it is abundant, and become demented in consequence.
VII. Mental Capacity and Disposition.
(1) Reasoning from cause to effect. — The buffalo of the past was an animal of a rather low order of intelligence, and his dullness of ​intellect was one of the important factors in his phenomenally swift extermination. He was provokingly slow in comprehending the existence and nature of the dangers that threatened his life, and, like the stupid brute that he was, would very often stand quietly and see two or three score, or even a hundred, of his relatives and companions shot down before his eyes, with no other feeling than one of stupid wonder and curiosity. Neither the noise nor smoke of the still-hunter's rifle, the falling, struggling, nor the final death of his companions conveyed to his mind the idea of a danger to be fled from, and so the berd stood still and allowed the still-hunter to slaughter its members at will.
Like the Indian, and many white men also, the buffalo seemed to feel that their number was so great it could nerer be sensibly diminished. The presence of such a great multitude gave to each of its individuals a feeling of security and mutual support that is very generally found in animals who congregate in great herds. The time was when a band of elk would stand stupidly and wait for its members to be shot down one after another; but it is believed that this was due more to panic than to a lack of comprehension of danger.
The fur seals who cover the “hauling grounds” of St. Paul and St. George Islands, Alaska, in countless thousands, hare even less sense of danger and less comprehension of the slaughter of thousands of their kind, which takes place daily, than had the bison. They allow them. selves to be herded and driven off landwards from the hauling-ground for half a mile to the killing-ground, and, finally, with most cheerful indifference, permit the Aleuts to club their brains out.
It is to be added that whenever and wherever seals or sea-lions in. habit a given spot, with but few exceptions, it is an easy matter to approach individuals of the herd. The presence of au immense number of individuals plainly begets a feeling of security and mutual support. And let not the bison or the seal be blamed for this, for man himself exhibits the same foolish instinct. Who has not met the woman of mature years and full intellectual vigor who is mortally afraid to spend a night entirely alone in her own house, but is perfectly willing to do so, and often does do so without fear, when she can have the company of one small and helpless child, or, what is still worse, three or four of them?
But with the approach of extermination, and the utter breaking up of all the herds, a complete change has been wrought in the character of the bison. At last, but alas! entirely too late, the crack of the rifle and its accompanying puff of smoke conveyed to the slow mind of the bison a sense of deadly danger to himself. At last he recognized man, whether on foot or horseback, or peering at him from a coulée, as his mortal enemy. At last he learned to run. In 1886 we found the scat. tered remnant of the great northern herd the wildest and most difficult animals to kill that we had ever hunted in any country. It had been only through the keenest exercise of all their powers of self preservation that those buffaloes had survived until that late day, and we found ​them almost as swift as antelopes and far more wary. The instant a buffalo caught sight of a man, even though a mile distant, he was off at the top of his speed, and generally ran for some wild region several miles away.
In our party was an experienced buffalo-hunter, who in three years had slaughtered over three thousand head for their hides. He declared that if he could ever catch a “bunch” at rest he could get a stand” the same as be used to do, and kill several head before the rest would run. It so happened that the first time we found buffaloes we discovered a bunch of fourteen head, lying in the sun at noon, on the level top of a low butte, all roses pointing up the wind. We stole up within range and fired. At the instant the first shot rang out up sprang every buffalo as if he had been thrown upon his feet by steel springs, and in a second's time the whole bunch was dashing away from us with the speed of race-horses.
Our buffalo-hunter declared that in chasing buffaloes we could count with certainty upon their always running against the wind, for this had always been their habit. Although this was once their habit, we soon found that those who now represent the survival of the fittest hare learned better wisdom, and now run (1) away from their pursuer and (2) toward the best hiding place. Now they pay no attention whatever to the direction of the wind, and if a pursuer follows straight behind, a buffalo may change his course three or four times in a 10-mile chase. Au old bull once led one of our hunters around three-quarters of a circle which had a diameter of 5 or 6 miles.
The last buffaloes were mentally as capable of taking care of then selves as any animals I ever hunted. The power of original reasoning which they manifested in scattering all over a given tract of rough country, like hostile Indians when hotly pressed by soldiers, in the Indian-like manner in which they bid from sight in deep hollows, and, as we finally proved, in grazing only in ravines and hollows, proved conclusively that but for the use of fire-arms those very buffaloes would have been actually safe from harm by man, and that they would have in.
creased indefinitely. As they were then, the Indians' arrows and spears could never have been brought to bear upon them, save in rare instances, for they had thoroughly learned to dread man and fly from him for their lives. Could those buffaloes have been protected from rifles and revolvers the resultant race would have displayed far more active mental powers, keener vision, and finer physique than the extinguished race possessed.
In fleeing from an enemy the buffalo ran against the wind, in order that his keen scent might save him from the disaster of running upon new enemies; which was an idea wholly his own, and not copied by any other animal so far as known.
But it must be admitted that the buffalo of the past was very often a most stupid reasoner. He would deliberately walk into a quicksand, ​where hundreds of bis companions were already ingulfed and in their death-straggle. He would quit feeding, run half a mile, and rush headlong into a moving train of cars that happened to come between him and the main herd on the other side of the track. He allowed himself to be impounded and slaughtered by a howling mob in a rudely constructed pen, which a combined effort on the part of three or four old bolls would have utterly demolished at any point. A herd of a thousand buffaloes would allow an armed hunter to gallop into their midst, very often within arm's-length, when any of the bulls nearest him might easily have bowled him over and had him trampled to death in a moment. The hunter who would ride in that manner into a herd of the Cape buffaloes of Africa (Buhalus coffer) would be unhorsed and killed before he had gone half a furlong.
(2) Curiosity. — The buffalo of the past possessed but little curiosity; he was too dull to entertain many unnecessary thoughts. Had he possessed more of this peculiar trait, which is the mark of an inquiring mind, he would much sooner have accomplished a comprehension of the dangers that proved his destruction. His stolid indifference to everything he did not understand cost him his existence, although in later years he displayed more interest in his environment. On one occasion in hunting I staked my success with an old bull I was pursuing on the chance that when he reached the crest of a ridge his curiosity would prompt him to pause an instant to look at me. Up to that moment he had had only one quick glance at me before he started to run. As he climbed the slope ahead of me, in full view, I dismounted and made ready to fire the instant he should pause to look at me. As I expected, he did come to a full stop on the crest of the ridge, and turned half around to look at me. But for his curiosity I should have been obliged to fire at him under very serious disadvantages.
(3) Fear. — With the buffalo, fear of man is now the ruling passion. Says Colonel Dodge: "He is as timid about his flank and rear as a raw recruit. When traveling nothing in front stops him, but an unusual object in the rear will send him to the right-about [toward the main body of the herd] at the top of his speed."
(4) Courage. — It was very seldom that the buffalo evinced any courage save that of despair, which even cowards possess. Unconscious of his strength, his only thought was flight, and it was only when brought to bay that he was ready to fight. Now and then, however, in the chase, the buffalo turned upon his pursuer and overthrew horse and rider. Sometimes the tables were completely turned, and the hunter found his only safety in flight During the buffalo slaughter the butchers sometimes had narrow escapes from buffaloes supposed to be dead or mortally wounded, and a story comes from the great northern range south of Glendive of a hunter who was killed by an old bull whose tongue he had actually cut out in the belief that he was dead.
Sometimes buffalo cows display genuine courage in remaining with ​their calves in the presence of danger, although in most cases they left their offspring to their fate. During a hunt for live buffalo calves, undertaken by Mr. C. J. Jones of Garden City, Kans., in 1886, and very graphically described by a staff correspondent of the American Field in a series of articles in that journal under the title of “The Last of the Buffalo," the following remarkable incident occurred:
“The last calf was caught by Carter, who roped it neatly as Mr. Jones cut it out of the herd and turned it toward him. This was a fine heifer calf, and was apparently the idol of her mother's heart, for the latter came very near making a casualty the price of the capture. As soon as the calf was roped, the old cow left the herd and charged on Carter viciously, as he bent over his victim. Seeing the danger, Mr. Jones rode in at just the nick of time, and drove the cow off for a moment; but she returned again and again, and finally began charging him whenever he came near; so that, much as he regretted it, be lad to shoot her with his revolver, which he did, killing her almost immediately."
The mothers of the thirteen other calves that were caught by Mr. Jones's party allowed their offspring to be "cut out,” lassoed, and tied, while they themselves devoted all their energies to leaving them as far behind as possible.
(5) Affection. — While the buffalo cows manifested a fair degree of affection for their young, the adult bulls of the herd often displayed a sense of responsibility for the safety of the calves that was admirable, to say the least. Those who have had opportunities for watching large berds tell us that whenever wolves approached and endeavored to reach a calf the old bulls would immediately interpose and drive the enemy away. It was a well-defined habit for the bulls to form the outer circle of every small group or section of a great herd, with the calves in the center, well guarded from the wolves, which regarded them as their most choice prey.
Colonel Dodge records a remarkable incident in illustration of the manner in which the bull buffaloes protected the calves of the herd.
“The duty of protecting the calves devolved almost entirely on the bulls. I have seen evidences of this many times, but the most remarkable instance I have ever heard of was related to me by an army surgeon, who was an eye-witness.
"He was one evening returning to camp after a day's hunt, when his attention was attracted by the curious action of a little knot of six or eight buffalo. Approaching sufficiently near to see clearly, he discovered that this little knot were all bulls, standing in a close circle, with their heads outwards, while in a concentric circle at some 12 or 15 paces distant sat, licking their chaps in impatient expectancy, at least a dozen large gray wolves (excepting man, the most dangerous enemy of the buffalo). ​"The doctor determined to watch the performance. After a few moments the knot broke up, and, still keeping in a compact mass, started on a trot for the main herd, some half a mile off. To his very great astonishment, the doctor now saw that the central and controlling figure of this mass was a poor little calf so newly born as scarcely to be able to walk. After going 50 or 100 paces the calf laid down, the bulls dis. posed themselves in a circle as before, and the wolves, who had trotted along on each side of their retreating supper, sat down and licked their chaps again; and though the doctor did not see the finale, it being late and the camp distant, he bad no doubt that the noble fathers did their whole duty by their offspring, and carried it safely to the herd."
(6) Temper. — I have asked many old buffalo hunters for facts in regard to the temper and disposition of herd buffaloes, and all agree that they are exceedingly quiet, peace loving, and even indolent animals at all times save during the rutting season. Says Colonel Dodge: "The habits of the buffalo are almost identical with those of the domestic cattle. Owing either to a more pacific disposition, or to the greater number of bulls, there is very little fighting, even at the season when it might be expected. I have been among them for days, have watched their conduct for hours at a time, and with the very best opportunities for observation, but have never seen a regular combat between bulls. They frequently strike each other with their horns, but this seems to be a mere expression of impatience at being crowded."
In referring to the "running season" of the buffalo, Mr. Catlin says: "It is no uncommon thing at this season, at these gatherings, to see several thousands in a mass eddying and wheeling about under a cloud of dust, which is raised by the bulls as they are pawing in the dirt, or engaged in desperate combats, as they constantly are, plunging and butting at each other in a most furious manner."
On the whole, the disposition of the buffalo is anything. but vicious. Both sexes yield with surprising readiness to the restraints of captivity, and in a remarkably short time become, if taken young, as fully domesticated as ordinary cattle. Buffalo calfes are as easily tamed as domestic ones, and make very interesting pets. A prominent trait of character in the captive buffalo is a mulish obstinacy or headstrong perseverance under certain circumstances that is often very annoying. When a buffalo makes up bis mind to go through a fence, he is very apt to go through, either peacably or by force, as occasion requires. Fortunately, however, the captive animals usually accept a fence in the proper spirit, and treat it with a fair degree of respect.
VIII. Value of the Buffalo to Man.
It may fairly be supposed that if the people of this country could have been made to realize the immense money value of the great buffalo herds as they existed in 1870, a vigorous and successful effort would have been made to regulate and restrict the slaughter. The fur ​seal of Alaska, of which about 100,000 are killed annually for their skins, yield an annual revenue to the Government of $100,000, and add $900,000 more to the actual wealth of the United States. It pays to protect those seals, and we mean to protect them against all comers who seek their unrestricted slaughter, no matter whether the poachers be American, English, Russian, or Canadian. It would be folly to do
otherwise, and if those who would exterminate the fur seal by shooting them in the water will not desist for the telling, then they must by the compelling.
The fur seal is a good investment for the United States, and their number is not diminishing. As the buffalo herds existed in 1970, 500,000 Lead of bulls, young and old, could have been killed every year for a score of years without sensibly diminishing the size of the herds. At a low estimate these could easily have been made to yield various products worth $5 each, as follows: Robe. $2.50; tongue, 25 cents; meat of hind-quarters, $2; bones, horns, and hoofs, 25 cents; total, $5. And the amount annually added to the wealth of the United States would have been $2,500,000.
On all the robes taken for the market, say, 200,000, the Government could have collected a tax of 50 cents each, which would have yielded a sum doubly sufficient to have maintained a force of mounted police fully competent to enforce the laws regulating the slaughter. Had a contract for the protection of the buffalo been offered at 5.50,000 per annum, ay, or even half that sum, an army of competent men would have competed for it every year, and it could have been carried out to the letter. But, as yet, the American people have not learned to spend money for the protection of valuable game; and by the time they do learn it, there will be no game to protect.
Even despite the enormous waste of raw material that ensued in the utilization of the buffalo product, the total cash value of all the material derived from this source, if it could only be reckoned up, would certainly amount to many millions of dollars-perhaps twenty millions, all toll.
This estimate may, to some, seem high, but when we stop to consider that in eight years, from 1876 to 1854, a single firm, that of Messrs. J. & A. Boskowitz, 105 Greene street, New York, paid out the enormous sum of $923,070 (nearly one million) for robes and hides, anıl that in a single year (1892) another firm, that of Joseph Ullman, 165 Mercer street, New York, paid out $216,250 for robes and hides, it may not seem so incredible.
Had there been a deliberate plan for the suppression of all statistics relative to the slaughter of buffalo in the United States, and what it yielded, the result could not have been more complete barrenness than exists to-day in regard to this subject. There is only one railway company which kept its books in such a manner as to show the kind and quantity of its business at that time. Excepting this, nothing is known definitely. ​Fortunately, enough facts aud figures were recorded during the bunting operations of the lied River half-breeds to enable us, by bridging them all together, to calculate with sufficient exactitude the value of the buffalo to them from 1820 to 1840. The result ought to be of interest to all who think it is not worth while to spend money in preserving our characteristic game animals.
In Ross's "Red River Settlement," pp. 242-273, and Schoolcraft's "North American Indians," Part IV, pp. 101-110, are given detailed accounts of the conduct and results of two hunting expeditions by the half-breeds, with many valuable statistics. On this data we base our calculation.
Taking the result of one particular day's slaughter as an index to the methods of the hunters in utilizing the products of the chase, we find that while "not less than 2,500 animals were killed," out of that number only 375 bags of pemmican and 210 bales of dried meat were made. "!Sow," says Mr. Ross, "making all due allowance for waste, 750 animals would have been ample for such a result. What, then, we might ask, became of the remaining 1,7501***Scarcely one-third in number of the animals killed is turned to account."
A bundle of dried meat weighs 60 to 70 pounds, and a bag of pemmican 100 to 110 pounds. If economically worked up, a whole buffalo cow yields half a bag of pemmican (about 55 pounds) and three-fourths of a bundle of dried meat (say 45 pounds). The most economical calculate that from eight to ten cows are required to load a single Red River cart. The proceeds of 1,776 cows once formed 228 bags of pemmican. 1,213 bales of dried meat, 166 sacks of tallow, each weighing 200 pounds, 556 bladders of marrow weighing 12 pounds each, and the value of the whole was 88,160. The total of the above statement is 132.657 pounds of buffalo product for 1,776 cows, or within a fraction of 75 pounds to each cow. The bulls and young animals killed were not accounted for.
The expedition described by Mr. Ross contained 1,210 carts and 620 hunters, and returned with 1,080.000 pounds of meat, making 900 pounds for each cart, and 200 pounds for each individual in the expedition, of all ages and both sexes. Allowing, as already ascertained, that of the above quantity of product every 75 pounds represents one cow saved and two and one third buffaloes wasted, it means that 14,520 buffaloes were killed and utilized and 33,250 buffaloes were killed and eaten fresh or wasted, and 47,770 buffaloes were killed by 620 hunters, or an aver, age of 77 buffaloes to each hunter. The total number of buffaloes killed for each cart was 39.
Allowing, what was actually the case, that every buffalo killed would, if properly cared for, have yielded meat, fat, and robe worth at least $5, the total value of the buffaloes slaughtered by that expedition amounted to $238,850, and of which the various products actually ​utilized represented a cash value of $72,609 added to the wealth of the Red River half-breeds.
In 1920 there went 540 carts to the buffalo plains; in 1925, 650; in 1830, 820; in 1935, 970; in 1840, 1,210.
From 1820 to 1825 the average for each year was 610; from 1825 to 1330, 750; from 1830 to 1835, 895; from 1835 to 1840, 1,090. Accepting the statements of eye-witnesses that for every buffalo killed two and one-third buffaloes are wasted or eaten on the spot, and that every loaded cart represented thirty-nine dead buffaloes which were worth when utilized $5 each, we have the following series of totals:
From 1820 to 1525 five expeditious, of 610 carts each, killed 118,950 buffaloes, worth $594,750.
From 1825 to 1830 five expeditions, of 750 carts each, killed 146,250 buffaloes, worth $731,250.
From 1830 to 1835 fire expeditions, of 895 carts each, killed 174,525 buffaloes, worth $372,623.
From 1835 to 1840 five expeditions, of 1,090 carts each, killed 212,550 buffaloes, worth $1,062,750.
Total number of buffaloes killed in twenty years, $652,275; total value of buffaloes killed in twenty years, $3,261,375; total value of the product utilized and added to the wealth of the settlements, $978,412. The Eskimo has his seal, which yields nearly everything that he requires; the Korak of Siberia depends for his very existence upon his reindeer; the Ceylon native has the cocoa-nut palm, which leaves him little else to desire, and the North American Indian had the American bison. If any animal was ever designed by the land of nature for the express purpose of supplying, at one stroke, nearly all the wants of an entire race, surely the buffalo was intended for the Indian.
And right well was this gift of the gods utilized by the children of nature to whom it came. Up to the time when the United States Government began to support our Western Indians by the payment of annuities and furnishing quarterly supplies of food, clothing, blankets, cloth, tents, etc., the buffalo had been the main dependence of more than 50,000 Indians who inhabited the buffalo range and its environs. Of the many different uses to which the buffalo and his various parts were put by the red man, the following were the principal ones:
The body of the buffalo yielded fresh meat, of which thousands of tons were consumed; dried meat, prepared in summer for winter use; pemmican (also prepared in summer), of meat, fat, and berries; tallow, made up into large balls or sacks, and kept in store; marrow, preserved in bladders; and tongues, dried and smoked, and eaten as a delicacy. The skin of the buffalo yielded a robe, dressed with the hair on, for clothing and bedding; a hide, dressed without the hair, which made a teepee cover, when a number were sewn together; boats, when sewn together in a green state, over a wooden framework. Shields, made ​from the thickest portions, as rawhide; ropes, made up as rawhide; clothing of many kinds; bags for use in traveling; coffins, or winding sheets for the dead, etc.
Other portions utilized were sinews, which furnished fiber for ropes, thread, bow-strings, snow-shoe webs, etc.; hair, which was sometimes made into belts and ornaments; "buffalo chips," which formed a valuable and highly-prized fuel; bones, from which many articles of use and ornament were made; horns, which were made into spoons, drinking vessels, etc.
After the United States Government began to support the buffalo-hunting Indians with annuities and supplies, the woolen blanket and canvas tent took the place of the buffalo robe and the skin-covered teepee, and "Government beef" took the place of buffalo meat. But the slaughter of buffaloes went on just the same, and the robes and hides taken were traded for useless and often harmful luxuries, such as canned provisions, fancy knickknacks, whisky, fire-arms of the most approved pattern, and quantities of fixed ammunition. During the last ten years of the existence of the herds it is an open question whether the buffalo did not do our Indians more harm than good. Amongst the Crows, who were liberally provided for by the Government, horse racing was a common pastime, and the stakes were usually dressed buffalo robes. The total disappearance of the buffalo has made no perceptible difference in the annual cost of the Indians to the Government. During the years when buffaloes were numerous and robes for the purchase of firearms and cartridges were plentiful, Indian wars were frequent, and always costly to the Government. The Indians were then quite independent, because they could take the war path at any time and live on buffalo indefinitely. Now, the case is very different. The last time Sitting Bull went on the war-path and was driven up into Manitoba, he had the doubtful pleasure of living on his ponies and dogs until he became utterly starved out. Since his last escapade, the Sioux have been compelled to admit that the game is up and the war-path is open to them no longer. Should they wish to do otherwise they know that they could survive only by killing cattle, and cattle that are guarded by cow-boys and ranchmen are no man's game. Therefore, while we no longer have to pay for an annual campaign in force against hostile Indians, the total absence of the buffalo brings upon the nation the entire support of the Indian, and the cash outlay each year is as great as ever.
The value of the American bison to civilized man can never be calculated, nor even fairly estimated. It may with safety be said, however, that it has been probably tenfold greater than most persons have ​ever supposed. It would be a work of years to gather statistics of the immense bulk of robes and bides, undoubtedly amounting to millions in the aggregate; the thousands of tons of meat, and the train-loads of bones which have been actually utilized by man. Nor can the effect of the bison's presence upon the general development of the great West ever be calculated. It has sunk into the great sum total of our progress, and well nigh lost to sight forever.
As a mere suggestion of the immense value of "the buffalo product” at the time when it had an existence, I have obtained from two of our leading fur houses in New York City, with branches elsewhere, a detailed statement of their business in buffalo robes and hides during the last few years of the trade. They not only serve to show the great value of the share of the annual crop that passed through their hands, but that of Messrs. J. & A. Boskowitz is of especial value, because, being carefully itemized throughout, it shows the decline and final failure of the trade in exact figures. I am under many obligations to both these firms for their kindness in furnishing the facts I desired, and especially to the Messrs. Boskowitz, who devoted considerable time and labor to the careful compilation of the annexed statement of their business in buffalo skins.
Memorandum of buffalo robes and hides bought by Messrs. J. &• 4. Boskowitz, 101–105 Greene street, New York, and 202 Lake street, Chicago, from 1876 to 1884.
| Year. | Buffalo robes. | Buffalo robes. | Boffalo hides. | Boffalo hides. |
| Year. | Number. | Cost. | Number. | Cost. |
| 1876 | 31,838 | $39,620 | None. | ------- |
| 1877 | 9,353 | 35,660 | None. | ------- |
| 1878 | 41,268 | 150,500 | None | ------- |
| 1879 | 28,613 | 110,420 | None. | ------- |
| 1880 | 34,901 | 176,200 | 45,570 | $13,140 |
| 1881 | 23,355 | 151,800 | 26,601 | 89,030 |
| 1882 | 2,124 | 15,600 | 15,646 | 44,140 |
| 1883 | 5,690 | 29,770 | 21,869 | 67,190 |
| 1884 | None | ------- | 529 | 1,720 |
| Total | 177,142 | 709,570 | 69,033 | 215,220 |
Total number of buffalo skins handled in nine years, 246,175; total cost, $924,790.
I have also been favored with some very interesting facts and figures regarding the business done in buffalo skins by the firm of Mr. Joseph Ullman, exporter and importer of furs and robes, of 165-167 Mercer street, New York, and also 353 Jackson street, St. Paul, Minnesota. The following letter was written me by Mr. Joseph Ullman on November 12, 1887, for which I am greatly indebted:
Inasmuch as you particularly desire the figures for the years 1880–86, I have gone through my buffalo robe and hide accounts of those years, and herewith give you approximate figures, as there are a good many things to be considered which make it difficult to give exact figures.
“In 1882 we purchased between 35,000 and 40,000 hides, at an average cost of about $3.30, and about 10,000 robes, at an average cost of about $8.50.
"In 1883 we purchased from 6,000 to 7,000 hides and about 1,500 to 2,03O robes at a slight advance in price against the year previous.
"In 1884 we purchased less than 2,500 hides, and in my opinion these were such as were carried over from the previous season in the Northwest, and were not fresh-slanghtered skins. The collection of robes this season was also comparatirely small, and nominally robes carried over from 1883.
"In 1885 the collection of hides amounted to little or nothing.
"The aforesaid goods were all purchased direct in the Northwest, that is to sar,principally in Montana, and shipped in care of our branch house at St. Paul, Minnesota, to Joseph Ullman, Chicago. The robes mentioned above were Indian-tanned robes and were mainly disposed of to the jobbing trade both East and West.
"In 1881 and the years prior, the hides were divided into two kinds, viz, robe hides, which were such as had a good crop of fur and were serviceable for robe purposes, and the heavy and short-furred bull hides. The former were principally sold to the John S. Way Manufact. uring Compa Bridgeport, Connecticut, and to numerous small robe tanners, while the latter were sold for leather purposes to various hidetanvers throughout the United States and Canada, and brought 51/2 to 81/2 cents per pound. A very large proportion of these latter were tanned by the Wilcox Tanning Company, Wilcox, Pennsylvania.
About the fall of 1882 me established a tannery for buffalo robes in Chicago, and from that time forth we tanned all the good bides which we received into robes and disposed of them in the same manner as the Indian-tanned robes.
"I don't know that I am called upon to express an opinion as to the benefit or disadvantage of the extermination of the buffalo, but nevertheless take the liberty to say that I think that some proper law restricting the unpardonable slaughter of the buffalo should have been enacted at the time. It is a well-known fact that soon after the Northern Pacific Railroad opened up that portion of the country, thereby making the transportation of the buffalo bides feasible, that is to say, reducing the cost of freight, thousands upon thousands of buffaloes were killed for the sake of the hide alone, while the carcasses were left to rot on the open plains.
"The average prices paid the buffalo hunters [from 1880 to 1884) was about as follows: For cow hides [robes?], $3; bull hides, $2.50; yearlings. $1.50; calves, 15 cents; and the cost of getting the hides to market brought the cost up to about $3.50 per hide.”
The amount actually paid out by Joseph Ullman, in four years, for ​buffalo robes and hides was about $310,000, and this, too, long after the great southern herd had ceased to exist, and when the northern herd furnished the sole supply. It thus appears that during the course of eight years business (leaving out the small sum paid out in 1884), on the part of the Messrs. Boskowitz, and four years on that of Mr. Joseph Ullman, these two firms alone paid out the enormous sum of $1,233,070 for buffalo robes and hides which they purchased to sell again at a good profit. By the time their share of the buffalo product reached the consumers it must have represented an actual money value of about $2,000,000.
Besides these two firms there were at that time many others who also handled great quantities of buffalo skins and hides for which they paid out immense sums of money. In this country the other leading firms engaged in this business were I. G. Baker & Co., of Fort Benton; P. B. Weare & Co., Chicago; Obern, Hoosick & Co., Chicago and Saint Paul; Martin Bates & Co., and Messrs. Shearer, Nichols & Co. (now Hurlburt, Shearer & Sanford), of New York. There were also many others whose names I am now unable to recall.
In the British Possessions and Canada the frontier business was largely monopolized by the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, although the annual output of robes and hides was but small in comparison with that gathered in the United States, where the herds were far more numerous. Even in their most fruitful locality for robes — the country south of the Saskatchewan-this company had a very powerful competitor in the firm of I. G. Baker & Co., of Fort Benton, which secured the lion's share of the spoil and sent it down the Missouri River.
It is quite certain that the utilization of the buffalo product, even so far as it was accomplished, resulted in the addition of several millions of dollars to the wealth of the people of the United States. That the total sum, could it be reckoned up, would amount to at least fifteen millions, seems reasonably certain; and my own impression is that twenty millions would be nearer the mark. It is much to be regretted that the exact truth can never be known, for in this age of universal slaughter a knowledge of the cash value of the wild game of the United States that has been killed up to date might go far toward bringing about the actual as well as the theoretical protection of what remains.
UTILIZATION OF THE BUFFALO BY WHITE MEN.
Robes. — Ordinarily the skin of a large ruminant is of little value in comparison with the bulk of toothsome flesh it covers. In fattening domestic cattle for the market, the value of the bide is so insignificant that it amounts to no more than a butcher's perquisite in reckoning up the value of the animal. With the buffalo, however, so enormous was the waste of the really available product that probably nine-tenths of the total value derived from the slaughter of the animal came from his skin alone. Of this, about four-fifths came from the utilization of ​the furry robe and one-fifth from skins classed as "hides," which were either taken in the summer season, when the hair was very short or almost absent, and used for the manufacture of leather and leather goods, or else were the poorly-furred skins of old bulls.
The season for robe-taking was from October 15 to February 15, and a little later in the more northern latitudes. In the United States the hair of the buffalo was still rather short up to the first of November; but by the middle of November it was about at its finest as to length, density, color, and freshness. The Montana hunters considered that the finest robes were those taken from November 15 to December 15. Before the former date the hair had not quite attained perfection in length, and after the latter it began to show wear and lose color. The winter storms of December and January began to leave their mark upon the robes by the 1st of February, chiefly by giving the hair a bleached and weathered appearance. By the middle of February the pelage was decidedly on the wane, and the robe hunter was also losing his energy. Often, however, the hunt was kept up until the middle of March, until either the deterioration of the quality of the robe, the migration of the herds northward, or the hunter's longing to return "to town" and "clean up," brought the hunt to an end.
On the northern buffalo range, the hunter, or "buffalo skinner," removed the robe in the following manner:
When the operator had to do his work alone, which was almost always the case, he made haste to skin his victims while they were yet warm, if possible, and before rigor mortis had set in; but, at all hazards, before they should become hard frozen. With a warm buffalo he could easily do his work single-handed, but with one rigid or frozen stiff it was a very different matter.
His first act was to heave the carcass over until it lay fairly upon its back, with its feet up in the air. To keep it in that position lie wrenched the head violently around to one side, close against the shoulder, at the point where the hump was highest and the tendency to roll the greatest, and used it very effectually as a chock to keep the body from rolling back upon its side. Having fixed the carcass in position he drew forth his steel, sharpened his sharp-pointed "ripping-knife," and at once proceeded to make all the opening cuts in the skin. Each leg was girdled to the bone, about 8 inches above the hoof, and the skin of the leg ripped open from that point along the inside to the median line of the body. A long, straight cut was then made along the middle of the breast and abdomen, from the root of the tail to the chin. In skinning cows and young animals, nothing but the skin of the forehead and nose was left on the skull, the skin of the throat and cheeks being left on the hide; but in skinning old bulls, on whose heads the skin was very thick and tough, the whole head was left unskinned, to save labor and time. The skin of the neck was severed in a circle around the neck, just behind the ears. It is these huge heads of bushy brown hair, looking, at a ​
* Fig. 1. A Dead Bull.
* From a photograph by L. A. Huffman.
* Fig. 2. Buffalo Skinners at Work
* From a photograph by L. A. Huffman.
​little distance, quite black, in sharp contrast with the ghastly whiteness of the perfect skeletons behind them, which gives such a weird and ghostly appearance to the lifeless prairies of Montana where the bonegatherer has not yet done his perfect work. The skulls of the cows and young buffaloes are as clean and bare as if they had been carefully macerated, and bleached by a skilled osteologist.
The opening cuts having been made, the broad-pointed "skinning-knife" was duly sharpened, and with it the operator fell to work to detach the skin from the body in the shortest possible time. The tail was always skinned and left on the hide. As soon as the skin was taken off it was spread out on a clean, smooth, and level spot of ground, and stretched to its fullest extent, inside uppermost. On the northern range, very few skins were "pegged out" i. e, stretched thoroughly and held by means of wooden peg! driven through the edges of the skin into the earth. It was practiced to a limited extent on the southern range during the latter part of the great slaughter, when buffaloes were scarce and time abundant. Ordinarily, however, there was no time for pegging, nor were pegs available on the range to do the work with. A warm skin stretched on the curly buffalo-grass, hair side down, sticks to the ground of itself until it has ample time to harden. On the northern range the skinner always cut the initials of his outfit in the thin subcutaneous muscle which was always found adhering to the skin on each side, and which made a permanent and very plain mark of ownership.
In the south, the traders who bought buffalo robes on the range sometimes rigged up a rude press, with four upright posts and a huge lever, in which robes that had been folded into a convenient size were pressed into bales, like bales of cotton. These could be transported by wagon much more economically than could loose robes. An illustration of this process is given in au article by Theodore B. Davis, entitled "The Buffalo Range," in Harper's Magazine for January, 1869, Vol. xxxviii, p. 163. The author describes the process as follows:
"As the robes are secured, the trader has them arranged in lots of ten each, with but little regard for quality other than some care that particularly fine robes do not go too many in one lot. These piles are then pressed into a compact bale by means of a rudely constructed affair composed of saplings and a chain."
On the northern range, skins were not folded until the time came to haul them in. Then the hunter repaired to the scene of his winter's work, with a wagon surmounted by a hay rack (or something like it), usually drawn by four horses. As the skins were gathered up they were folded once, lengthwise down the middle, with the hair inside. Sometimes as many as 100 skins were hauled at one load by four horses. On one portion of the northern range the classification of buffalo peltries was substantially as follows: Under the head of robes was included all cow skins taken during the proper season, from one year old upward, ​and all bull skins from one to three years old. Bull skins over three years of age were classed as hides, and while the best of them were finally tanned and used as robes, the really poor ones were converted into leather. The large robes, when tanned, were used very generally throughout the colder portions of North America as sleigh robes aud wraps, and for bedding in the regions of extreme cold. The small robes, from the young animals, aud likewise many large robes, were made into overcoats, at once the warmest and the most cumbersome that ever enveloped a human being. Thousands of old bull robes were tanned with the hair on, and the body portions were made into overshoes, with the woolly hair inside — absurdly large and uncouth, but very warm.
I never wore a pair of buffalo overshoes without being torn by conflicting emotions — mortification at the ridiculous size of my combined foot gear, big boots inside of huge overshoes, and supreme comfort derived from feet that were always warm.
Besides the ordinary robe, the hunters and fur buyers of Montana recognized four special qualities, as follows:
The "beaver robe," with exceedingly fine, wavy fur, the color of a beaver, and having long, coarse, straight hairs coming through it. The latter were of course plucked out in the process of manufacture. These were very rare. In 1882 Mr. James McNaney took one, a cow robe, the only one out of 1,200 robes taken that season, and sold it for $75, when ordinary robes fetched only $3.50.
The "black-and-tan robe" is described as having the nose, flanks, and inside of fore legs black and-tan (whatever that may mean), while the remainder of the robe is jet black.
A "buckskin robe" is from what is always called a "white buffalo," and is in reality a dirty cream color instead of white. A robe of this character sold in Miles City in 1882 for $200, and was the only one of that character taken on the northern range during that entire winter. A very few pure white robes have been taken, so I have been told, chiefly by Indians, but I have never seen one.
A "blue robe" or "mouse-colored (?) robe" is one on which the body color shows a decidedly bluish cast, and at the same time has long, fine fur. Out of his 1,200 robes taken in 1882, Mr. McNaney picked out 12 which passed muster as the much sought for blue robes, and they sold at $16 each.
As already intimated, the price paid on the range for ordinary buffalo skins varied according to circumstances, and at different periods, and in different localities, ranged all the way from 65 cents to $10. The latter figure was paid in Texas in 1887 for the last lot of" robes" ever taken The lowest prices ever paid were during the tremendous slaughter which annihilated the southern herd. Even as late as 1876; in the southern country, cow robes brought on the range only from 65 ​
* Fig. 1. Five Minutes' Work
* From a photograph by L. A. Huffman.
* Fig. 2. Scene on the Northern Buffalo Range
* From a photograph by L. A. Huffman.
​to 90 cents, and bull robes $1.15. On the northern range, from 1881 to 1883, the prices paid were much higher, ranging from $2.30 to $4.
A few hundred dressed robes still remain in the hands of some of the largest fur dealers in New York, Chicago, and Montreal, which can be purchased at prices much lower than one would expect, considering the circumstances. In 1888, good robes, Indian tanned, were offered in New York at prices ranging from $15 to $30, according to size and quality, but in Montreal no first-class robes were obtainable at less than $40.
Hides. — Next in importance to robes was the class of skins known commercially as hides. Under this head were classed all skins which for any reason did not possess the pelage necessary to a robe, and were therefore fit only for conversion into leather. Of these, the greater portion consisted of the skins of old bulls on which the hair was of poor quality and the skin itself too thick and heavy to ever allow of its being made into a soft, pliable, and light-weight robe. The remaining portion of the hides marketed were from buffaloes killed in spring and summer, when the body and hind-quarters were almost naked. Apparently the quantity of summer-killed hides marketed was not very great, for it was only the meanest and most unprincipled ones of the grand army of buffalo-killers who were mean enough to kill buffaloes in summer simply for their hides. It is said that at one time summer-killing was practiced on the southern range to an extent that became a cause for alarm to the great body of more respectable hunters, and the practice was frowned upon so severely that the wretches who engaged in it found it wise to abandon it.
Bones. — Next in importance to robes and hides was the bone product, the utilization of which was rendered possible by the rigorous climate of the buffalo plains. Under the influence of the wind and sun and the extremes of heat and cold, the flesh remaining upon a carcass dried up, disintegrated, and fell to dust, leaving the bones of almost the entire skeleton as clean and bare as if they had been stripped of flesh by some powerful chemical process. Very naturally, no sooner did the live buffaloes begin to grow scarce than the miles of bleaching bones suggested the idea of finding a use for them. A market was readily found for them in the East, and the prices paid per ton were sufficient to make the business of bone-gathering quite remunerative. The bulk of the bone product was converted into phosphate for fertilizing purposes, but much of it was turned into carbon for use in the refining of sugar.
The gathering of bones became a common industry as early as 1872, during which year 1,135,300 pounds were shipped over the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad. In the year following the same road shipped 2,743,100 pounds, and in 1874 it handled 6,914,950 pounds more. This trade continued from that time on until the plains have been gleaned so far back from the railway lines that it is no longer profitable ​to seek them. For that matter, however, it is said that south of the Union Pacific nothing worth the seeking now remains.
The building of the Northern Pacific Rail way made possible the shipment of immense quantities of dry bones. Even as late as 1886 overland travelers saw at many of the 'stations between Jamestown, Dakota, and Billings, Montana, immense heaps of bones lying alongside the track awaiting shipment. In 1885 a single firm shipped over 200 tons of bones from Miles City.
The valley of the Missouri River was gleaned by teamsters who gathered bones from as far back as 100 miles and hauled them to the river for shipment on the steamers. An operator who had eight wagons in the business informed me that in order to ship bones on the river steamers it was necessary to crush them, and that for crushed bones, shipped in bags, a Michigan fertilizer company paid $18 per ton. Uncrushed bones, shipped by the railway, sold for $12 per ton.
It is impossible to ascertain the total amount or value of the bone product, but it is certain that it amounted to many thousand tons, and in value must have amounted to some hundreds of thousands of dollars. But for the great number of railroads, river steamers, and sea-going vessels (from Texas ports) engaged in carrying this product, it would have cut an important figure in the commerce of the country, but owing to the many interests between which it was divided it attracted little attention.
Meat. — The amount of fresh buffalo meat cured and marketed was really very insignificant. So long as it was to be had at all it was so very abundant that it was worth only from 2 to 3 cents per pound in the market, and many reasons combined to render the trade in fresh buffalo meat anything but profitable. Probably not more than one one-thousandth of the buffalo meat that might have been saved and utilized was saved. The buffalo carcasses that were wasted on the great plains every year during the two great periods of slaughter (of the northern and southern herds) would probably have fed to satiety during the entire time more than a million persons.
As to the quality of buffalo meat, it may be stated in general terms that it differs in no way whatever from domestic beef of the same age produced by the same kind of grass. Perhaps there is no finer grazing ground in the world than Montana, and the beef it produces is certainly entitled to rank with the best. There are many persons who claim to recognize a difference between the taste of buffalo meat and domestic beef; but for my part I do not believe any difference really exists, unless it is that the flesh of the buffalo is a little sweeter and more juicy. As lor myself, I feel certain I could not tell the difference between the flesh of a three year old buffalo and that of a domestic beef of the same age, nor do I believe any one else could, even on a wager. Having once seen a butcher eat an elephant steak in the belief that it was beef from his own shop, and another butcher eat loggerhead turtle steak for ​beef, I Lave become somewhat skeptical to regard to the intelligence of the human palate.
As a matter of experiment, during our hunt for buffalo we had buffalo meat of all ages, from one year up to eleven, cooked in as many different ways as our culinary department could turn out. We had it broiled, fried with batter, roasted, boiled, and stewed. The last method, when employed upon slices of meat that had been hacked from a frozen hindquarter, produced results that were undeniably tough and not particularly good. But it was an unfair way to cook any kind of meat, and may be guarantied to spoil the finest beef in the world.
Hump meat from a cow buffalo not too old, cut in slices and fried in batter, a la cow-boy, is delicious — a dish fit for the gods. We had tongues in plenty, but the ordinary meat was so good they were not half appreciated. Of course the tenderloin was above criticism, and even the round steaks, so lightly esteemed by the epicure, were tender and juicy to a most satisfactory degree.
It has been said that the meat of the buffalo has a coarser texture or "grain" than domestic beef. Although I expected to find such to be the case, I found no perceptible difference whatever, nor do I believe that any exists. As to the distribution of fat I am unable to say, lor the reason that our buffaloes were not fat.
It is highly probable that the distribution of fat through the meat, so characteristic of the shorthorn breeds, and which has been brought about only by careful breeding, is not found in either the beef of the buffalo or common range cattle. In this respect, shorthorn beef no doubt surpasses both the others mentioned, but in all other points, texture, flavor, and general tenderness, I am very sure it does not. It is a great mistake for a traveler to kill a patriarchal old bull buffalo, and after attempting to masticate a small portion of him to rise up and declare that buffalo meat is coarse, tough, and dry. A domestic bull of the same age would taste as tough. It is probably only those who have had the bad taste to eat bull beef who have ever found occasion to asperse the reputation of Bison americanus as a beef animal.
Until people got tired of them, buffalo tongues were in considerable demand, and hundreds, if not even thousands, of barrels of them were shipped east from the buffalo country.
Pemmican. — Out of the enormous waste of good buffalo flesh one product stands forth as a redeeming feature — pemmican. Although made almost exclusively by the half-breeds and Indians of the Northwest,it coustituted a regular article of commerce of great value to overland travelers, and was much sought for as long as it was produced. Its peculiar "staying powers," due to the process of its manufacture, which yielded a most nourishing food in a highly condensed form, made it of inestimable value to the overland traveler who must travel light or not at all. A handful of pemmican was sufficient food to constitute a meal when provisions were at all scarce. The price of pemmican in Winnipeg was ​once as low as 2d. per pound, but in 1883 a very small quantity which was brought in sold at 16 cents per pound. This was probably the last buffalo pemmican made. H. M. Robinson states that in 1878 pemmican was worth 1s. 3d. per pound.
The manufacture of pemmican, as performed by the Red River half-breeds, was thus described by the Rev. Mr. Belcourt, a Catholic priest, who once accompanied one of the great buffalo-hunting expeditions:
"Other portions which are destined to be made into pimikehigan, or pemmican, are exposed to an ardent heat, and thus become brittle and easily reducible to small particles by the use of a flail, the buffalo-hide answering the purpose of a threshing-floor. The fat or tallow, being cut up and melted in large kettles of sheet iron, is poured upon this pounded meat, and the whole mass is worked together with shovels until it is well amalgamated, when it is pressed, while still warm, into bags made of buffalo skin, which are strongly sewed up, and the mixture gradually cools and becomes almost as hard as a rock. If the fat used in this process is that taken from the parts containing the udder, the meat is called line pemmican. In some cases, dried fruits, such as the prairie pear and cherry, are intermixed, which forms what is called seed pemmican. The lovers of good eating judge the first described to be very palatable; the second, better: the third, excellent. A taurean of pemmican weighs from 100 to 110 pounds. Some idea may be formed of the immense destruction of buffalo by these people when it is stated that a whole cow yields one-half a bag of pemmican and three fourths of a bundle of dried meat; so that the most economical calculate that from eight to ten cows are required for the load of a single vehicle."
It is quite evident from the testimony of disinterested travelers that ordinary pemmican was not very palatable to one unaccustomed to it as a regular article of food. To the natives, however, especially the Canadian voyageur, it formed one of the most valuable food products of the country, and it is said that the demand for it was generally greater than the supply.
Dried, or "jerked" meat. — The most popular and universal method of curing buffalo meat was to cut it into thin flakes, an inch or less in thickness and of indefinite length, and without salting it in the least to hang it over poles, ropes, wicker-frames, or even clumps of standing sage brush, and let it dry in the sun. This process yielded the famous "jerked" meat so common throughout the West in the early days, from the Rio Grande to the Saskatchewan. Father Belcourt thus described the curing process as it was practiced by the half-breeds and Indians of the Northwest:
"The meat, when taken to camp, is cut by the women into long strips about a quarter of an inch thick, which are hung upon the lattice-work prepared for that purpose to dry. This lattice-work is formed of small pieces of wood, placed horizontally, transversely, and equidistant from ​each other, not unlike an immense gridiron, and is supported by wooden uprights (trepieds). In a few days the meat is thoroughly desiccated, when it is bent into proper lengths and tied into bundles of 60 or 70 pounds weight. This is called dried meat (viande seche). To make the hide into parchment (so called) it is stretched on a frame, and then scraped on the inside with a piece of sharpened bone and on the outside with a small but sharp-curved iron, proper to remove the hair. This is considered, likewise, the appropriate labor of women. The men break the bones, which are boiled in water to extract the marrow to be used for frying and other culinary purposes. The oil is then poured into the bladder of the animal, which contains, when filled, about 12 pounds, being the yield of the marrow-bones of two buffaloes.”
In the Northwest Territories dried meat, which formerly sold at 2d. per pound, was worth in 1878 10d. per pound.
Although I have myself prepared quite a quantity of jerked buffalo meat, I never learned to like it. Owing to the absence of salt in its curing, the dried meat when pounded and made into a stew has a “far away" taste which continually reminds one of hoofs and horns. For all that, and despite its resemblance in flavor to Liebig's Extract of Beef, it is quite good, and better to the taste than ordinary pemmican.
The Indians formerly cured great quantities of buffalo meat in this way — in summer, of course, for use in winter — but the advent of that popular institution called “Government beef” long ago rendered it unnecessary for the noble red man to exert bis squaw in that once honorable field of labor.
During the existence of the buffalo herds a few thrifty and enterprising white men made a business of killing buffaloes in summer and drying the meat in bulk, in the same manner which to-day produces our popular “dried beef.” Mr. Allen states that “a single hunter at Hays City shipped annually for some years several hundred barrels thus prepared, which the consumers probably bought for ordinary beef.”
Uses of bison's hair. — Numerous attempts hare been made to utilize the woolly hair of the bison in the manufacture of textile fabrics. As early as 1729 Col. William Byrd records the fact that garments were made of this material, as follows:
"The Hair growing upon his Head and Neck is long and Shagged, and so Soft that it will spin into Thread vot unlike Mohair, and might be wove into a sort of Camlet. Some People have Stockings knit of it, that would have served an Israelite during his forty Years march thro' the Wilderness."
In 1637 Thomas Morton published, in his “New English Canaan," p. 98, the following reference to the Indians who live on the southern shore of Lake Erocoise, supposed to be Lake Ontario:
“These Beasts (buffaloes, undoubtedly] are of the bignesse of a ​Cowe, their flesh being very good foode, their hides good lether, their fleeces very usefull, being a kind of wolle, as fine as the wolle of the Bearer, and the Salvages doe make garments thereof."
Professor Allen quotes a number of authorities who have recorded statements in regard to the manufacture of belts, garters, scarfs, sacks, etc., from buffalo wool by various tribes of Indians. He also calls attention to the only determined efforts ever made by white men on a liberal scale for the utilization of buffalo "wool” and its manufacture into cloth, an account of which appears in Ross's "Red River Settlement," pp. 69–72. In 1821 some of the more enterprising of the Red River (British) colonists conceived the idea of making fortunes out of the manufacture of woolen goods from the fleece of the buffalo, and for that purpose organized the Buffalo Wool Company, the principal object of which was declared to be “to provide a substitute for wool, which substitute was to be the wool of the wild buffalo, which was to be collected in the plains and manufactured both for the use of the colonists and for export.” A large number of skilled workmen of various kinds were procured from England, and also a plant of machinery and materials. When too late, it was found that the supply of buffalo wool obtainable was utterly insufficient, the raw wool costing the company 1s. 6d. per pound, and cloth which it cost the company £2 10s. per yard to produce was worth only 4s. 6d. per yard in England. The historian states that universal drunkenness on the part of all concerned aided very materially in bringing about the total failure of the enterprise in a very short time.
While it is possible to manufacture the fine, woolly fur of the bison into cloth or knitted garments, provided a sufficient supply of the raw material could be obtained (which is and always has been impossible), nothing could be more visionary than an attempt to thus produce salable garments at a profit.
Articles of wearing apparel made of buffalo's Lair are interesting as curiosities, for their rarity makes them so, but that is the only end they can ever serve so long as there is a sheep living.
In the National Museum, in the section of animal products, there is displayed a pair of stockings made in Canada from the finest buffalo wool, from the body of the animal. They are thick, heavy, and full of the coarse, straight hairs, which it seems can never be entirely separated from the fine wool. In general texture they are as coarse as the coarsest sheep's wool would produce.
With the above are also displayed a rope-like lariat, made by the Comanche Indians, and a smaller braided lasso, seemingly a sample more than a full-grown lariat, made by the Otoe Indians of Nebraska. Both of the above are made of the long, dark-brown hair of the head and shoulders, and in spite of the fact that they have been twisted as ​hard as possible, the ends of the hairs protude so persistently that the surface of each rope is extremely hairy.
Buffalo chips — Last, but by no means least in value to the traveler on the treeless plains, are the droppings of the buffalo, universally known as 14 buffalo chips." When over one year old and thoroughly dry, this material makes excellent fuel. Usually it occurs only where firewood is unobtainable, and thousands of frontiersmen have a million times found it of priceless value. When dry, it catches easily, burns readily, and makes a hot tire with but very little smoke, although it is rapidly consumed. Although not as good for a fire as even the poorest timber it is infinitely better than sage brush, which, in the absence of chips, is often the traveler's last resort.
It usually happens that chips are most abundant in the sheltered creek-bottoms and near the water-holes, the very situations which travelers naturally select for their camps. In these spots the herds have gathered either for shelter in winter or for water in summer, and remained in a body for some hours. And now, when the cow-boy on the round up, the surveyor, or hunter, who must camp out, pitches his tent in the grassy coulée or narrow creek-bottom, his first care is to start out with his largest gunning bag to "rustle some buffalo chips" for a campfire. He, at least, when he returns well laden with the spoil of his humble chase, still has good reason to remember the departed herd with feelings of gratitude. Thus even the last remains of this most useful animal are utilized by man in providing for his own imperative wants.
IX. The Present Value of the Bison to Cattle-Growers.
The bison in captivity and domestication. — Almost from time immemorial it has been known that the American bison takes kindly to captivity, herds contentedly with domestic cattle, and crosses with them with the utmost readiness. It was formerly believed, and indeed the tradition prevails even now to quite an extent, that on account of the hump on the shoulders a domestic cow could not give birth to a halfbreed calf. This belief is entirely without foundation, and is due to theories rather than facts.
Numerous experiments in buffalo breeding have been made, and the subject is far from being a new one. As early as 1701 the Hugeuot settlers at Manikintown, on the James River, a few miles above Richmond, began to domesticate buffaloes. It is also a matter of historical record that in 178G, or thereabouts, buffaloes were domesticated and bred in captivity in Virginia, and Albert Gallatin states that in some of the northwestern counties the mixed breed was quite common. In 1815 a series of elaborate and valuable experiments in cross-breeding the buffalo and domestic cattle was begun by Mr. Robert Wickliffe, of Lexington, Ky., and continued by him for upwards of thirty years.
​Quite recently the buffalo-breeding operations of Mr. S. L. Bedson, of Stony Mountain, Manitoba, and Mr. C. J. Jones, of Garden City, Kans., have attracted much attention, particularly for the reason that the efforts of both these gentlemen have been directed toward the practical improvement of the present breeds of range cattle. For this reason the importance of the work in which they are engaged can hardly be overestimated, and the results already obtained by Mr. Bedson, whose experiments antedate those of Mr. Jones by several years, are of the greatest interest to western cattle-growers. Indeed, unless the stock of pure-blood buffaloes now remaining proves insufficient for the purpose, I fully believe that we will gradually see a great change wrought in the character of western cattle by the introduction of a strain of buffalo blood.
The experiments which have been made thus far prove conclusively that —
(1) The male bison crosses readily with the opposite sex of domestic cattle, but a buffalo cow has never been known to produce a half-breed calf.
(2) The domestic cow produces a half-breed calf successfully.
(3) The progeny of the two species is fertile to any extent, yielding half-breeds, quarter, three-quarter breeds, and so on.
(4) The bison breeds in captivity with perfect regularity and success.
Need of an improvement in range cattle. — Ever since the earliest days of cattle-ranching in the West, stockmen have had it in their power to produce a breed which would equal in beef-bearing qualities the best breeds to be found upon the plains, and be so much better calculated to survive the hardships of winter, that their annual losses would have been very greatly reduced. Whenever there is an unusually severe winter, such as conies about three times in every decade, if not even oftener, range cattle perish by thousands. It is an absolute impossibility for every ranchman who owns several thousand, or even several hundred, head of cattle to provide hay for them, even during the severest portion of the winter season, and consequently the cattle must depend wholly upon their own resources. When the winter is reasonably mild, and the snows never very deep, nor lying too long at a time on the ground, the cattle live through the winter with very satisfactory success. Thanks to the wind, it usually happens that the falling snow is blown off the ridges as fast as it falls, leaving the grass sufficiently uncovered for the cattle to feed upon it. If the snow-fall is universal, but not more than a few inches in depth, the cattle paw through it here and there, and eke out a subsistence, on quarter rations it may be, until a friendly chinook wind sets in from the southwest and dissolves the snow as if by magic in a few hours' time.
Hut when a deep snow comes, and lies on the ground persistently, week in and week out. when the warmth of the sun softens and moistens its surface sufficiently for a returning cold wave to freeze it into a ​hard crust, forming a universal wall of ice between the luckless steer and his only food, the cattle starve and freeze in immense numbers. Being totally unfitted by nature to survive such unnatural conditions, it is not strange that they succumb.
Under present conditions the stockman simply stakes his cattle against the winter elements and takes his chances on the results, which are governed by circumstances wholly beyond his control. The losses of the fearful winter of 1886-87 will probably never be forgotten by the cattlemen of the great Western grazing ground. In many portions of Montana and Wyoming the cattlemen admitted a loss of 50 per cent, of their cattle, and in some localities the loss was still greater. The same conditions are liable to prevail next winter, or any succeeding winter, and we may yet see more than half the range cattle in the West perish in a single month.
Yet all this time the cattlemen have had it in their power, by the easiest and simplest method in the world, to introduce a strain of hardy native blood in their stock which would have made it capable of successfully resisting a much greater degree of hunger and cold. It is really surprising that the desirability of cross-breeding the buffalo and domestic cattle should for so long a time have been either overlooked or disregarded. While cattle-growers generally have shown the greatest enterprise in producing special breeds for milk, for butter, or for beef, cattle with short horns and cattle with no horns at all, only two or three men have had the enterprise to try to produce a breed particularly hardy and capable.
A buffalo can weather storms and outlive hunger and cold which would kill any domestic steer that ever lived. When nature placed him on the treeless and blizzard-swept plains, she left him well equipped to survive whatever natural conditions he would have to encounter. The most striking feature of his entire tout ensemble is his magnificent suit of hair and fur combined, the warmest covering possessed by any quadruped save the musk-ox. The head, neck, and fore quarters are clothed with hide and hair so thick as to be almost, if not entirely, impervious to cold. The hair on the body and hind quarters is long, fine, very thick, and of that peculiar woolly quality which constitutes the best possible protection against cold. Let him who doubts the warmth of a good buffalo robe try to weather a blizzard with something else, and then try the robe. The very form of the buffalo — short, thick legs, and head hung very near the ground — suggests most forcibly a special fitness to wrestle with mother earth for a living, snow or no snow. A buffalo will flounder for days through deep snow-drifts without a morsel of food, and survive where the best range steer would literally freeze on foot, bolt upright, as hundreds did in the winter of 1886-'87. While range cattle turn tail to a blizzard and drift helplessly, the buffalo faces it every time, and remains master of the situation.
It has for years been a surprise to me that Western stockmen have ​not seized upon the opportunity presented by the presence of the buf. falo to improve the character of their cattle. Now that there are no longer any buffalo calves to be had on the plains for the trouble of catching them, and the few domesticated buffaloes that remain are worth fabulous prices, we may expect to see a great deal of interest manifested in this subject, and some costly efforts made to atone for previous lack of forethought.
The character of the buffalo-domestic hybrid. — The subjoined illustration from a photograph kindly furnished by Mr. C. J. Jones, represents a ten months' old half-breed calf (male), the product of a buffalo bull and domestic cow. The prepotency of the sire is apparent at the first glance, and to so marked an extent that the illustration would pass muster anywhere as having been drawn from a full-blood buffalo. The head, neck, and hump, and the long woolly hair that corers them, proclaim the buffalo in every line. Excepting that the hair on the shoulders (below the hump) is of the same length as that on the body and hind quarters, there is, so far as one can judge from an excellent photograph, no difference whatever observable between this lusty young half-breed and a full-blood buffalo calf of the same age and sex. Mr. Jones describes the color of this animal as "iron-gray," and remarks: "You will see how even the fur is, being as long on the hind parts as on the shoulders and neck, very much unlike the buffalo, which is so shaggy about the shoulders and so thin farther back." Upon this point it is to be remarked that the hair on the body of a yearling or two-year-old buffalo is always very much longer in proportion to the hair on the forward parts than it is later in life, and while the shoulder hair is always decidedly longer than that back of it, during the first two years the contrast is by no means so very great. A reference to the memoranda of hair measurements already given will afford precise data on this point.
In regard to half-breed calves, Mr. Bedson states in a private letter that "the hump does not appear until several months after birth."
Altogether, the male calf described abore so strongly resembles a pure-blood buffalo as to be generally mistaken for one; the form of the adult half-blood cow promptly proclaims her origin. The accompanying plate, also from a photograph supplied by Mr. Jones, accurately represents a half-breed cow, six years old, weighing about 1,800 pounds. Her body is very noticeably larger in proportion than that of the cow buffalo, her pelvis much heavier, broader, and more cow-like, therein being a decided improvement upon the small and weak hind quarters of the wild species. The hump is quite noticeable, but is not nearly so high as in the pure buffalo cow. The hair on the fore quarters, neck, and lead is decidedly shorter, especially on the head; the frontlet and chin beard being conspicuously lacking. The tufts of long, coarse, black hair which clothe the fore arm of the buffalo cow are almost ab. sent, but apparently the hair on the body and hind quarters has lost ​
* Half-breed (Buffalo-Domestic) Calf. — Herd of C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kansas.
* Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson
​but little, if any, of its Length, density, and fine, furry quality. The horns are decidedly cow-like in their size, length, and curvature.
Regarding the general character of the half-breed buffalo, and his herd in general, Mr. Bedson writes me as follows, in a letter dated September 12, 1888:
"The nucleus of my herd consisted of a young buffalo bull and four heifer calves, which 1 purchased in 1877, and the increase from these few has been most rapid, as will be shown by a tabular statement farther on.
"Success with the breeding of the pure buffalo was followed by experiments in crossing with the domestic animal. This crossing has generally been between a buffalo bull and an ordinary cow, and with the most encouraging results, since it had been contended by many that although the cow might breed a calf from the buffalo, yet it would be at the expense of her life, owing to the hump on a buffalo's shoulder; but this hump does not appear until several months after birth. This has been proved a fallacy respecting this herd at least, for calving has been attended with no greater percentage of losses than would be experienced in ranching with the ordinary cattle. Buffalo cows and crosses have dropped calves at as low a temperature as 20° below zero, and the calves were sturdy and healthy.
"The half breed resulting from the cross as above mentioned has been again crossed with the thoroughbred buffalo bull, producing a three quarter breed animal closely resembling the buffalo, the head and robe being quite equal, if not superior. The half-breeds are very prolific. The cows drop a calf annually. They are also very hardy indeed, as they take the instinct of the buffalo during the blizzards and storms, and do not drift like native cattle. They remain upon the open prairie during our severest winters, while the thermometer ranges from 30 to 40 degrees below zero, with little or no food except what they rustled ou the prairie, and no shelter at all. In nearly all the ranching parts of North America foddering and housing of cattle is imperative in a more or less degree, creating an item of expense felt by all interested in cattleraising; but the buffalo [half] breed retains all its native hardihood, needs no housing, forages in the deepest snows for its own food, yet becomes easily domesticated, and consequently needs but little herding. Therefore the progeny of the buffalo is easily reared, cheaply fed, and requires no housing in winter; three very essential points in stockraising.
"They are always in good order, and I consider the meat of the halfbreed much preferable to domestic animals, while the robe is very line indeed, the fur being evened-up on the hind parts, the same as on the shoulders. During the history of the herd, accident and other causes have compelled the slaughtering of one or two, and in these instances ​the carcasses have sold for 18 cents per pound; the bides in their dressed state for 650 to 873 each. A half-breed buffalo ox (four years old, crossed With buffalo bull and Durham cow) was killed last winter, and weighed 1,280 pounds dressed beef. One pure buffalo bull now in my herd weighs fully 2,000 pounds, and a [half]breed bull 1,700 to 1,800 pounds.
"The three-quarter breed is an enormous animal in size, and has an extra good robe, which will readily bring $10 to $30 in any market where there is a demand for robes. They are also very prolific, and I consider them the coining cattle for our range cattle for the Northern climate, while the half and quarter breeds will be the animals for the more Southern district. The half and three-quarter breed cows, when really matured, will weigh from 1,100 to 1,800 pounds.
I have never crossed them except with a common grade of cows, while I believe a cross with the Galloways would produce the handsomest robe ever handled, and make the best range cattle in the world. I have not had time to give my attention to my herd, more than to let them range on the prairies at will. By proper care great results can be accomplished."
Hon. C. J. Jones, of Garden City, Kans., whose years of experience with the buffalo, both as old-time hunter, catcher, and breeder, has earned for him the sobriquet of "Buffalo Jones,". five years ago became deeply interested in the question of improving range cattle by crossing with the buffalo. With characteristic Western energy he has pursued the subject from that time until the present, having made five trips to the range of the only buffaloes remaining from the great southern herd, and captured sixty-eight buffalo calves and eleven adult cows with which to start a herd. In a short article published in the Farmers' Review (Chicago, August 22, 188S), Mr. Jones gives his views on the value of the buffalo in cross-breeding as follows:
"Id all my meanderings I have not found a place but I could count more carcasses [of cattle] than living animals. Who has not ridden over some of the Western railways and counted dead cattle by the thousands? The great question is, Where can we get a race of cattle that will stand blizzards, and endure the driftiug suow, and will not be driven with the storms against the railroad fences and pasture fences, thereto perish for the waut of nerve to face the northern winds for a few miles? to where the winter grasses could be had in abundance? Realizing these facts, both from observation and pocket, we pulled on our 'thinking cap,' and these points came vividly to our mind:
* "(1) We want an animal that is hardy.
* "(2) We want an animal with nerve and endurance.
* "(3) We want an animal that faces the blizzards and endures the storms.
* "(4) We want an animal that will rustle the prairies, and not yield to discouragement.
* "(5) We want an animal that will fill the above bill, and make good beef and plenty of it.
Half-breed (Buffalo-Domestic) Cow. Herd of C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kansas. :
* Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson. |
​"All the points abore could easily be found in the buffalo, excepting the fifth, and even that is more than filled as to the quality, but not in quantity. Where is the 'old timer' who has not had a cut from the hump or sirloin of a fat buffalo cow in the fall of the year, and where is the one who will not make affidavit that it was the best meat he ever ate? Yes, the fat was very rich, equal to the marrow from the bone of domestic cattle.***
"The great question remained unsolved as to the quantity of meat from the buffalo. I finally heard of a half-breed buffalo in Colorado, and immediately set out to find it. I traveled at least 1,000 miles to find it, and found a five-year-old half-breed cow that has been bred to domestic bulls and had brought forth two calves — a yearling and a sucking calf that gave promise of great results.
"The cow had never been fed, but depended altogether on the range, and when I saw her, in the fall of 1886, I estimated her weight at 1,800 pounds. She was a brindle, and had a handsome robe even in September; she had as good hind quarters as ordinary cattle; her fore parts were heavy and resembled the buffalo, yet not near so much of the hump. The offspring showed but very little of the buffalo, yet they possessed a woolly coat, which showed clearly that they were more than domestic cattle.***
"What we can rely on by having one-fourth, one-half, and threefourths breeds might be analyzed as follows:
"We can depend upon a race of cattle unequaled in the world for hardiness and durability; a good meat-bearing animal; the best and only fur-bearing animal of the bovine race; the animal always found in a storm where it is overtaken by it; a race of cattle so clannish as never to separate and go astray; the animal that can always have free range, as they exist where no other animal can live; the animal that can water every third day and keep fat, ranging from 20 to 30 miles from water; in fact, they are the perfect animal for the plains of North America. One-fourth breeds for Texas, one-half breeds for Colorado and Kausas, and three-fourths breeds for more northern country, is what will soon be sought after more than any living animal. Then we will never be confronted with dead carcasses from starvation, exhaustion, and lack of nerve, as in years gone by."
The bison as a beast of burden. — On account of the abundance of horses for all purposes throughout the entire country, oxen are so seldem used they almost constitute a curiosity. There never has existed a necessity to break buffaloes to the yoke and work them like domestic oxen, and so few experiments have been made in this direction that reliable data on this subject is almost wholly wanting. While at Miles City, Mont., I heard of a German "granger" who worked a small farm in the Tongue River Valley, and who once had a pair of cow buffaloes trained ​to the yoke. It was said that they were strong, rapid walkers, and capable of performing as much work as the best domestic oxen, but they were at times so uncontrollably headstrong and obstinate as to greatly detract from their usefulness. The particular event of their career on which their historian dwelt with special interest occurred when their owner was hauling a load of potatoes to town with them. In the course of the long drive the buffaloes grew very thirsty, and upon coming within sight of the water in the river they started for it in a straight course. The shouts and blows of the driver only served to hasten their speed, and presently, when they reached the edge of the high bank, they plunged down it without the slightest hesitation, wagon, potatoes, and all, to the loss of ererything except themselves and the drink they went after!
Mr. Robert Wickliffe states that trained buffaloes make satisfactory osen. "I have broken them to the yoke, and found them capable of making excellent oxen; and for drawing wagons, carts, or other heavily laden vehicles on long journeys they would, I think, be greatly preferable to the common ox."
It seems probable that, in the absence of horses, the buffalo would make a much more speedy and enduring draught animal than the domestic ox, although it is to be doubted whether he would be as strong. His weaker pelvis and hind quarters would surely count against him under certain circumstances, but for some purposes his superior speed and endurance would more than counterbalance that defect.
BISON HERDS AND INDIVIDUALS IN CAPTIVITY AND DOMESTICATION, JANUARY 1, 1989.
Herd of Mr. S. L. Bedson, Stony Mountain, Manitoba. — In 1877 Mr. Bedson purchased 5 buffalo calves, 1 bull, and 4 heifers, for which he paid $1,000. In 1888 his herd consisted of 23 full-blood bulls, 35 cows, 3 half-breed cows, 5 half-breed bulls, and 17 calves, mixed and pure; making a total of 83 head. These were all produced from the original 5, no purchases having been made, nor any additions made in any other way. Besides the 83 head constituting the herd when it was sold, 5 were killed and I given away, which would otherwise make a total of 97 head produced since 1877. In November, 1988, this entire herd was purchased, for $50,000, by Mr. C. J. Jones, and added to the already large herd owned by that gentleman in Kansas.
Herd of Jr. C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kans. — Mr. Jones's original herd of 57 buffaloes constitute a living testimonial to his individual enterprise, and to his courage, endurance, and skill in the chase. The majority of the individuals composing the herd he himself ran down, ​
* Young Half-Breed (Buffalo-Domestic) Bull. — Herd of C. J. Jones, Garden City, Kansas.
* Drawn by Ernest E. Thompson.
​lassoed, and tied with his own bands. For the last five years Mr. Jones has made an annual trip, in June, to the uninhabited "panhandle," of Texas, to capture calves out of the small herd of from one hundred to two hundred head which represented the last remnant of the great southern herd. Each of these expeditions involved a very considerable outlay in money, an elaborate "outfit" of men, horses, vehicles, camp equipage, and lastly, but most important of all, a herd of a dozen fresh milch cows to nourish the captured calves and keep them from dying of starvation and thirst. The region visited was fearfully barren, almost without water, and to penetrate it was always attended by great hardship. The buffaloes were difficult to find, but the ground was good for running, being chietiy level plains, and the superior speed of the running horses always enabled the hunters to overtake a herd whenever one was sighted, and to "cut out" and lasso two, three, or four of its calves. The degree of skill and daring displayed in these several expeditions are worthy of the highest admiration, and completely surpass anything I have ever seen or read of being accomplished in connection with hunting, or the capture of live game. The latest feat of Mr. Jones and his party comes the nearest to being incredible. During the month of May, 1888, they not only captured seven calves, but also eleven adult cows, of which some were lassoed in full career on the prairie, thrown, tied, and hobbled! The majority, however, were actually "rounded up," herded, and held in control until a bunch of tame buffaloes was driven down to meet them, so that it would thus be possible to drive all together to a ranch. This brilliant feat can oul}-be appreciated as it deserves by those who have lately hunted buffalo, and learned by dear experience the extent of their wariness, and the difficulties, to say nothing of the dangers, inseparably connected with their pursuit.
The result of each of Mr. Jones's five expeditions is as follows: In 1884 no calves found; 1885, 11 calves captured, 5 died, 6 survived; 1886, 14 calves captured, 7 died. 7 survived; 1887, 36 calves captured, 6 died, 30 survived; 1888, 7 calves captured, all survived; 1888, 11 old cows captured, all survived. Total, 79 captures, 18 losses, 57 survivors. The census of the herd is exactly as follows: Adult cows, 11; three-year olds, 7, of which 2 are males and 5 females; two-year olds, 4, of which all are males; yearling, 28, of which 15 are males and 13 females; calves, 7, of which 3 are males and 4 females. Total herd, 57; 24 males and 33 females. To this, Mr. Jones's original herd, must now be added the entire herd formerly owned by Mr. Bedson.
Respecting his breeding operations Mr. Jones writes: "My oldest [bull] buffaloes are now three years old, and I am breeding one hundred domestic cows to them this year. Am breeding the Crallo way cows quite extensively; also some Shorthorns, Herefords, and Texas cows. I expect best results from the Galloways. If I can get the black luster of the ​latter and the fur of a buffalo, I will have a robe that will bring more money than we get for the arerage range steer."
In November, 1885, Mr. Jones purchased Mr. Bedson's entire herd. and in the following mouth proceeded to ship a portion of it to Kausas City. Thirty-three head were separated from the remainder of the herd ou the prairie near Stony Mountain, 12 miles from Winnipeg, and driven to the railroad. Sereral old bulls broke away en route and ran back to the herd, and when the remainder were finally corraled in the pens at the stock-yards they began to fight among themselves, and some fierce encounters were waged between the old bulls. The younger cattle were raised on the horns of their seniors, thrown in the air, and otherwise gored." While on the way to St. Paul three of the half-breed buffaloes were killed by their companions. Ou reaching Kansas City and uuloading the two cars, 13 head broke away from the large force of men that attempted to manage them, stampeded through the city, and finally took refuge iu the low-lands along the river. In due time, howerer, all were recaptured.
Since the acquisition of this northern herd and the subsequent press comment that it has evoked, Mr. Jones has been almost overwhelmed with letters of inquiry in regard to the whole subject of buffalo breed. ing, and has found it necessary to print and distribute a circular giving answers to the many inquiries that have been made.
Herd of Jr. Charles Allard, Flathead Indian Reservation, Jontana. — This herd was visited in the autumn of 1858 by Mr. G. O. Shields, of Chicago, who reports that it cousists of thirty-five head of pure-blood buffaloes, of which seren are calves of 1883, sis are yearlings, and six are two-year olds. Of the adult animals, four cows and two bulls are each fourteen years old, "and the beards of the bulls almost sweep the ground as they walk."
Herd of Hon. W.F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill"). — The celebrated "Wild West Show" has, erer since its organization, numbered amongst its leading attractions a herd of live buffaloes of all ages. At present this herd contains eighteen head, of which fourteen were originally purchased of Mr. H. T. Groome, of Wichita, Kausas, and have made a journey to London and back. As a proof of the indomitable persistence of the bison in breeding under most unfarorable circumstances, the fact that four of the members of this herd are calves which were boru iu 1888 in London, at the American Esposition, is of considerable interest.
This herd is now (December, 1838) being wintered on General Beale's farm, near the city of Washington. In 1886–87, while the Wild West Show was at Madison Square Garden, New York City, its entire herd of twenty buffaloes was carried off by pleuro-pneumonia. It is to be greatly feared that sooner or later in the course of its travels the present herd will also disappear, either through disease or accident.
Herd of Mr. Charles Goodnight, Clarendon, Texas. — Mr. Goodnight writes that he has been breeding buffaloes in a small way for the past ​ten years," but without giving any particular attention to it. At present his herd consists of thirteen head, of which two are three year old bulls and four are calves. There are seven cows of all ages, one of which is a half-breed.
Herd at the Zoological Society's Gardens, Philadelphia, Arthur E. Brown, superintendent. — This institution is the fortunate possessor of a small herd of ten buffaloes, of which four are males and six females. Two are calves of 1877. In 1886 the Gardens sold an adult bull and cow to Hon. W. F. Cody for $300.
Herd at Bismarck Grove, Kansas, owned by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fé Railroad Company. — A small herd of buffaloes has for several years past been kept at Bismarck Grove as an attraction to visitors. At present it contains ten bead, one of which is a very large bull, another in a four-year-old bull, sis are cows of various ages, and two are twoyear olds. In 1885 a large bull belonging to this herd grew so vicious and dangerous that it was necessary to kill him.
The following interesting account of this herd was published in the Kansas City Times of December 8, 1888:
“Thirteen years ago Colonel Stanton purchased a buffalo bull calf for $8 and two beifers for $25. The descendants of these three buffaloes now found at Bismarck Grove, where all were born, number in all ten. There were seventeen, but the rest have died, with the exception of one, which was given away. They are kept in an inclosure containing about 30 acres immediately adjoining the park, and there may be seen at any time. The sight is one well worth a trip and the slight expense that may attach to it, especially to one who has never seen the American bison in his native state.
“The present herd includes two fine bull calves dropped last spring, two heifers, five cows, and a bull six years old and as handsome as a picture. The latter has been named Cleveland, after the colonel's favorite Presidential candidate. The entire herd is in as fine condition as any beef cattle, though they were never fed anything but bay and are never given any shelter. In fact they don't take kindly to shelter, and whether a blizzard is blowing, with the mercury 20 degrees below zero, or the sun pouring down his scorching rays, with the thermometer 110 degrees above, they set their heads resolutely toward storm or sun and take their medicine as if they liked it. Hon. W. F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill," tried to buy the whole herd two years ago to take to Europe with his Wild West Show, but they were not for sale at his own figures, and, indeed, there is no anxiety to dispose of them at any figures. The rail. road company has been glad to furnish them pasturage for the sake of adding to the attractions of the park, in which there are also forty-three head of deer, including two as fine bucks as ever trotted over the national deer trail toward the salt-licks in northern Utah.
"While the bison at Bismark Grove are splendid specimens of their class, “Cleveland” is decidedly the pride of the herd, and as grand a ​creature as ever trod the soil of Kansas on four legs. He is just six years old and is a perfect specimen of the kings of the plains. There is royal blood in his veins, and his coat is filler than the imperial purple. It is not possible to get at him to measure bis stature and weight. He must weigh fully 3,000 pounds, and it is doubtful if there is to day living on the face of the earth a handsomer buffalo bull than he. “Cleveland's" disposition is not so ugly as old Barney's was, but at certain seasons he is very wild, and there is no one venturesome enough to go into the inclosure. It is then not altogether safe to even look over the high and heary board fence at him, for he is likely to make a run for the visitor, as the numerous holes in the fence where he has knocked off the boards will testify."
Herd of Jr. Frederick Dupree, Cheyenne Indian Agency, near Fort Bennett, Dakota. — This herd contains at present nine pure-blood buffaloes, five of which are cows and seven mixed bloods. Of the former, there are two adult bulls and four adult cows. Of the mixed blood animals, sis are half-breeds and one a quarter-breed buffalo.
Mr. Dupree obtained the nucleus of his herd in 1882, at which time he captured five wild calves about 100 miles west of Fort Bennett. Of these, two died after two months of captivity and a third was killed by an Indian in 1885.
Mr. D. F. Carlin, of the Indian service, at Fort Bennett, has kindly furnished me the following information respecting this herd, under date of November 1, 1888:
"The animals composing this herd are all in fine condition and are quite tame. They keep by temselves most of the time, except the oldest bull (sis years old), who seems to appreciate the company of domestic cattle more than that of his own family. Mr. Dupree has kept one half-breed bull as an experiment; he thinks it will produce a hardy class of cattle. His half-breeds are all black, with one exception, and that is a roan; but they are all built like the buffalo, and when young they grunt more like a log than like a calf, the same as a full-blood buffalo.
"Mr. Dupree has never lost a ſdomestic) cow in giving birth to a halfbreed calf, as was supposed by many people would be the case. There hare been no sales from this herd, although the owner has a standing offer of $650 for a cow and bull. The cows are not for sale at any price.
Herd at Lincoln Park, Chicago, Hr. W. P. Walker, superintendent. — This very interesting and handsomely-kept herd is composed of seven individuals of the following character: One bull eight years old, one bull four years old, two cows eight years old, two cows two years old in the spring of 1888, and one calf born in the spring of 1888.
Zoological Gardens, Cincinnati, Ohio. — This collection contains four bison, an adult bull and cow, and one immature specimen.
Dr. V. T. McGillicuddy, Rapid City, Dakota, has a herd of four pure buffaloes and one half-breed. Of the former, the two adults, a bull and ​cow seven years old, were caught by Sioux Indians near the Black Hills for the owner in the spring of 1882. The Indians drove two milch cows to the range to nourish the calves when caught. These have produced two calves, one of which, a bull, is now three years old, and the other is a yearling heifer.
Central Park Menagerie, New York. Dr. W. A. Conklin, director. — This much-visited collection contains four bison, an adult bull and cow, a two-year-old calf, and a yearling.
Mr. John H. Starin. Glen Island, near New York City. — There are four buffaloes at this summer resort.
The U. S. National Museum, Washington, District of Columbia. — The collection of the department of living animals at this institution contains two tine young buffaloes; a bull four years old in July, 1888, and a cow three years old in May of the same year. These animals were captured in western Nebraska, when they were calves, by II. R. Jackett, of Ogalalla, and kept by him on his ranch until 1888. In April, 1888, Hou. Eugene G. Blackford, of New York, purchased them of Mr. Frederick D. No well, of North Platte, Nebraska, for $400 for the pair, and presented them to the National Museum, in the hope that they might form the nucleus of a herd to be owned and exhibited by the United States Government in or near the city of Washington. The two animals were received in Ogalalla by Mr. Joseph Palmer, of the National Museum, and by him they were brought on to Washington in May, in fine condition. Since their arrival they have been exhibited to the public in a temporary inclosure on the Smithsonian Grounds, and have attracted much attention.
Mr. B. C. Winston, of Hamline, Minnesota, owns a pair of buffaloes, one of which, a young bull, was caught by him in western Dakota in the spring of 1886, soon after its birth. The cow was purchased at Eosseau, Dakota Territory, a year later, for $225.
Mr. I. P. Butler, of Colorado, Texas, is the owner of a young bull buffalo and a half-breed calf.
Mr. Jesse Huston, of Miles City, Montana, owns a line five-year-old bull buffalo.
Mr. L. F. Gardner, of Bellicood, Oregon, is the owner of a large adult bull.
Tke Riverside Ranch Company, south of Mandan, Dakota, owns a pair of full-blood buffaloes.
In Dakota, in the hands of parties unknown, there are four full-blood buffaloes.
Mr. James R. Hitch, of Optima, Indian Territory, has a pair of young buffaloes, which he has offered for sale for 6750.
Mr. Joseph A. Hudson, of Estell, Nebraska, owns a three-year-old bull buffalo, which is for sale.
In other countries there are live specimens of Bison americanus reported as follows: two at Belleview Gardens, Manchester, England; ​one at the Zoological Gardens, London; one at Liverpool, England (purchased of Hon. W. F. Cody in 1888); two at the Zoological Gar. dens, Dresden; one at the Zoological Gardens, Calcutta.
Statistics of full-blood buffaloes in captivity January 1, 1889.
| Number kept for breeding purposes | 216 |
| Number kept for exhibition | 40 |
| Total pure-blood buffaloes in captivity | 256 |
| Wild buffaloes under Government protection in the Yellowstone Park | 200 |
| Number of mixed-breed buffalo — domestics | 40 |
There are, without doubt, a few half-breeds in Manitoba of which I have no account. It is probable there are also a very few more captive buffaloes scattered singly here and there which will be beard of later, but the total will be a very small number, I am sure.
PART II.-THE EXTERMINATION.
I. 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 was 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 catalogued as follows:
(1) 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.
(2) The total and utterly inexcusable absence of protective measures and agencies on the part of the National Government and of the Western States and Territories.
(3) The fatal preference on the part of hunters generally, both white
* ↑ Davis' Spanish Conquest of New Mexico. 1569. P. 67.
* ↑ The Spanish Conquest of New Mexico. Davis. 1869. Pp. 206-7.
* ↑ Purchas: His Pilgrimes. (1625.) Vol. iv, p. 1763. "A letter of Sir Samuel Argoll touching his Voyage to Virginia, and actions there. Written to Master Nicholas Hawes, June, 1613."
* ↑ Westover Manuscript. Col. William Byrd. Vol. 1, p. 172.
* ↑ Vol. II, pp. 24, 25,
* ↑ Ib., p. 28.
* ↑ Charles Burr Todd's "Story of Washington, p. 18. New York, 1889.
* ↑ Long's Expedition to the Source of the St. Peter's River, 1823, 11, p. 26.
* ↑ Coll. Georgia Hist. Soc., I, p. 117.
* ↑ Ibid., I, p. 51.
* ↑ Hist. Coll. of Louisiana and Florida, B. F. French, 1359, first series, p. 2.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 88-91.
* ↑ Hist. Coll. of Louisiana and Florida, French, second series, p. 58.
* ↑ Mississippi as a Province, Territory, and State, p. 484.
* ↑ The American Bisons, Living and Extinct, p. 132.
* ↑ The American Bisons, pp. 129-130.
* ↑ Sabine, Zoological Appendix to "Franklin's Journey," p, 668
* ↑ Fauna Boreali-Americana, yoI. 1, p. 279-280,
* ↑ American Naturalist, xi, p. 624.
* ↑ J. A. Allen's American Bisons, p. 107.
* ↑ All who are especially interested in the life history of the buffalo, both scientific and economical, will do well to consult Mr. Allen's monograph, "The American Bisons, Living and Extinct," if it be accessible. Unfortunately it is a difficult matter for the general reader to obtain it. A reprint of the work as originally published, but omitting the map, plates, and such of the subject matter as relates to the extinct species, appears in Hayden's "Report of the Geological Survey of the Territories," for 1875 (pp. 443-557), but the volume has for several years been out of print. The memoir as originally published has the following titles: Memoirs of the Geological Surrey of Kentucky. | N. S. Shaler, Director. | Vol. I. Part II. | — | The American Bisons, || living and extinct. | By J. A. Allen. | With twelve plates and map. | — | University press, Cambridge: | Welch, Bigelow & Co. | 1876. Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, | at Harvard College, Cambridge, Mass. | Vol. IV. No. 10. | — | The American Bisons, | living and extinct. | By J. A. Allen. Published by permission of N. S. Shaler, Director of the Kentucky | Geological Survey. | With twelve plates and a map. | University press, Cambridge: | Welch, Bigelow & Co. | 1876. 4to., pp. i-ix, 1-246, 1 col'd map, 12 pl., 13 ll. explanatory, 2 wood-cuts in text. These two publications were simultaneous, and only differed in the titles. Unfortunately both are of greater rarity than the reprint referred to above.
* ↑ Lewis and Clark's Exped., ii, p. 395.
* ↑ On the plains of Dakota, the Rev. Mr. Belcourt (Schoolcraft's N. A. Indians, iv, p. 108) once counted two hundred and twenty-eight buffaloes, a part of a great herd, feeding on a single acre of ground. This of course was an unusual occurrence with buffaloes not stampeding, but practically at rest. It is quite possible also that the extent of the ground may have been underestimated.
* ↑ Plains of the Great West, p. xvi.
* ↑ Catlin's North American Indians, 11, p. 13.
* ↑ Our captive had, in some way, bruised the skin on his forehead, and in June all the hair came off the top of his head, leaving it quite bald. We kept the skin sell greased with porpoise oil, and by the middle of July a fine coat of black hair had growa out all over the surface that had previously been bare.
* ↑ North American Indians, 1, 235.
* ↑ Plains of the Great West, pp. 124, 125.
* ↑ Quadrupeds of North America, vol. ii, pp. 38, 39.
* ↑ In testimony whereof the following extract from a letter written by General Stewart Van Vliet, on March 10, 1897, to Professor Baird, is of interest: "My Dear Professor: On the receipt of your letter of the 6th instant I saw General Sheridan, and yesterday we called on your taxidermist and examined the buffalo bull be is setting up for the Museum. I don't think I have ever seen a more splendid specimen in my life. General Sheridan and I have seen millions of buffalo on the plains iu former times. I have killed hundreds, but I never killed a larger animal than the one in the possession of your taxidermist."
* ↑ Quadrupeds of North America, vol. 11, p. 44.
* ↑ Plains of the Great West, p. 144.
* ↑ Red River, Assinniboine and Saskatchewan Expedition, II, p. 104-105.
* ↑ Plains of the Great West, p. 144-147.
* ↑ Foot-note by William Blackmore: "The author is in error here, as in a point of the Tarryall range of mountains, between Pike's Peak and the South Park, in the autumn of 1871, two mountain buffaloes were killed in one afternoon. The skin of the finer was presented to Dr. Frank Buckland."
* ↑ North American Indians, vol. i, p. 249, 250.
* ↑ In the District of Columbia work-house we have a counterpart of this in the public bath-tub, wherein forty prisoners were seen by a Star reporter to bathe one after another in the same water!
* ↑ Travels in America in 1806. London, 1808.
* ↑ On page 243 of his "North American Indians," vol. I, Mr. Catlin declares pointedly that "these animals are truly speaking, gregarious, but not migratory; they graze in immense and almost incredible numbers at times, and roam about and over vast tracts of country from east to west and from west to east as often as from north to south, which has often been supposed they naturally and habitually did to accommodate themselves to the temperature of the climate in the different latitudes." Had Mr. Catlin resided continuously in any one locality on the great buffalo range, he would have found that the buffalo had decided migratory habits. The abundance of proof on this point renders it unnecessary to enter fully into the details of the subject.
* ↑ Our Wild Indians, p. 233, et seq.
* ↑ American Field, July 24, 1886, p. 78.
* ↑ Plains of the Great West, p. 125.
* ↑ By the Red River half-breeds only.
* ↑ On one occasion, which is doubtless still remembered with bitterness by many a Crow of the Custer Agency, my old friend Jim McNaney backed his horse Ogalalla against the horses of the whole Crow tribe. The Crows forthwith formed a pool, which consisted of a huge pile of buffalo robes, worth about $1,200, and with it backed their best race-horse, lie was forthwith "beaten out of sight" by Ogalalla, and another grievance was registered against the whites.
* ↑ "Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes, IV, p. 107.
* ↑ Westover MSS., I, p. 172.
* ↑ Quoted by Professor Allen, "American Bisons," p. 107.
* ↑ The American Bison, p. 197.
* ↑ For a full account of Mr. Wickliffe's experiments, written by himself, see Audubon and Bachman's "Quadrupeds of North America," vol. n, pp. 52-54.
* ↑ On nearly all the great cattle ranches of the United States it is absolutely impossible, and is not even attempted. — W. T. H.
* ↑ In summing up the total number of buffaloes and mixed-breeds now alive in captivity, I have been obliged to strike an average on this lot of calves "mixed and pure," and have counted twelve as being of pure breed and five mixed, which I have reason to believe is very near the truth.