The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1875-04-03
THE BUFFALO'S FUTURE.

1t Will not be many years before he will
be shut up in cage in which he cannot
turn round. His nose will be decorated
with a ring; and, perchance on the spot
over which millions of his ancestors have
roamed, some garrulous Snowman will poke
him through the bars, and describe him to
a Gaping crowd as rare and curious
beast. along with the hoppopotamus and
the kangaroo. Buffalo and Indian against
locomotive and land grant carpet Dagger is
an unequal contest. "Lo " can be made
to accept the situation; and in process of
time, his prediction for rings hirsute may
be changed to affection for rings official.
Buffalo is impervious to the Establishments
of red blankets breech leaders and bad
whisky. He will not be coaxed into cvili-
cation. Continued persecution has soured
his disposition. He will not even yield
respect able leather. He is poor eating; he
has nothing to tempt the greed of the
world save his stringy beef, his bones and
his hair, but these suffice. The white man
follows his path and exterminates him, in
order that coats may be buttoned knives
handled, hair combed, soil fertilized, and
shins protected from wintry blasts.
Bison is the founder of two new indus
tries; the first is bone picking. The bone
picker sallies forth from frontier town in
a wagon. He scours the prairies for a
cargo. If he comes on the CHASTITY relics
of an Indian scrimmage, that is clear gain,
for the osseous remains of the red citizen
help to complete his load. An Indian skull
is worth dollar and a quarter, for combs,
and an Indian thigh bone makes lovely
knife handles. The bone picker refuses
the fragments of women and children.
His is an uncouth sort of respect, which,
in the one case, is more potent than his
cupidity. A party of individuals thus
engaged is called an "outfit." The num-
Der of "outfits " annually sent forth indi-
cate business already extended to an
extraordinary degree. The books of the
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fee railroad
tons of bones. Middlemen do the ship
ping, and purchase the bone pcker's cargo
as fast as it is gathered, paying, at the
railway station, S. per ton. The price
tluctuates, however, and furnishes the local
population with the excitement of small
stock exchange, "bulls" lin skeleton) of
course predominating. The greater por-
ton of the bones after their reception in
the East, is ground into fertilizer. The
balance serves the usual industrial employ
ment of the material for buttons, combs,
etc.
Partly from the fact that hunting is out
of the bone picker's line. and partly be-
cause he can find plenty of skeletons scat
tered about the prairies, the buffalo is not
slaughtered directly for his bones. They
are an incidental and minor proft-a kind
of utilization Of otherwise waste material.
The bison carries his death warrant in his
shaggy skin. The quest of that fleece is
the business of the "hide hunter" Hide
hunting is another new industry: one not
to be long lived, for it exists through
decimating its own supplies.
When a party of aristocratic Britons
come over to try their new breech leaders
ON the buffalo afterwards to go home and
howl about the awful and useless slaughter
of the monarch of the prairies, by the
grasping Yankees), its path of destruction
is generally thckly strewn. My lord plants
a bullet in brute for sport. Skin he needs
not, and bones are hardly an object; so he
leaves the animal as it fell. The hide
hunter is on the trail, however, and the
skin is speedily stripped off, packed, and
the march continued in the tracks of the
sportsmen as long as the game lasts. He
does not disdain to follow in the wake of
the Indian parties, who seek the meat
alone, for Winters use; and when these
means fail, he projects small raids among
bhO hCiuS, duN oiouS htCiS VII hio oWu dCe
count, leaving the meat to decay, or selling
it for a trivial sum.
The estimated shipments of the result of
the hide hunters labors over the railroad
above named and the Kansas lines are
placed at 1875, 600 skins. That number of
buffaloes are exterminated in twelve
month. These hides are dressed, rolled,
and sent East, there recleansed and dried,
and put on the market. The hide hunter
gets about as much for his goods as the
farmer for the hides of ordinary cattle.
Strange it may appear, although the
meat is coarse and, except when young,
poorly favored, it is the staple of an i'm
mense trade. During the cold weather,
from November until April, it is estimated
that some two million pounds are shipped
to all parts of the country. 1t costs, in
Kansas, from $50 to $50 per ton, in bulk,
and retals for from six to eight cents per
pound. 1t is very nutritious however, and,
when jerked dried in the sun, not
unpalatable. The Indians eat it thus pre-
pared, and make delectable dish by the
addition of sauce of crushed grass
hoppers =. .
the conseling conviction that he is not to
be wasted. AS long as there is anything
to be made out of him, nobody will desert
him. If there is anything in him to util-
ize, beside flesh, hair, and bones some
body will, after it is found, be eager to
grab and found another new industry on
its employment. Nearly absent through
out Kansas, there is no refuge for him in
either Colorado or the Indian Territory.
The locomotive of advancing civilization
crowds him westward. Butting against
fate, he has long ago found useless, and
now he runs away where once he used to
meet his pursuers with lowered head. He
is doomed to extinction. His flesh will be
eaten, his hide worn out; and in future
ages, the labors of the present bone pickers
will, perhaps, prevent even the most indie
fatigable Marsh or Hayden Of the period
from reconstructiug his ugly personal ap-
peararce from his fossilized bones.