San Marcos free press. [volume] (San Marcos, Tex.) 1877-1892, 1882-06-29
THE DOOM OF THE BUFFALO.
wholesale Slaughter Thinning Out the Herds-ho"
the White Man Kills His Game.
Philadelphia Times.

building of q single transcontinenta
railroad line, now rapidly progressing
is resulting in the wholesale slaughte
of the buffalo in lis last available 70
treats, and the time cannot now be more
than few years distant when the un
conth wild bovine who furnishes meat
clothing and shelter to the Indians vii
be extinct in the United States. ID
will inger awhile longer in British
America and then go to join the nam
moth and the mastodon. The Northern
Pacific railroad penetrates his best feed
ing grounds. Hunters can leave the
road at dozen points, equipped fol
slaughter on a large scale, and reach
the herds by few hours travel. There
is no new region less accessible to which
the animal can fall back and find sub
sistence. The railroad is his death
blow. Last winter it was estimated
that 225, 1000 buffalo were killed in the
Yellowstone Valley and the belt OF
country lying between it and the Upper
Missouri. Old hunters with whom l
have talked say that five years will fin"
ish the business. The facility with
which outfits can be procured and the
feeding grounds reached from the new
railroad towns, and the comparative
cheapness of transportation for the
hides to eastern markets has caused o
great increase in the ranks of the men
who make buffalo killing trade during
the winter months. Large numbers OF
the animals are killed by the Sioux,
Cheyennes, Grows and other Indian
tribes, but the greatest destruction is by
skillful white men, who 60 at the work
in an intelligent, systematic way for all
the money there is in it.
BUFFALO HUNTING.
The Indians kill the year round for
meat, but the white hunters only 60 out
in the winter, when the hides have a
fur-like quality and can be converted
into buffalo robes. A skin taken in
the summer is only good for leather.
A buffalo hunting outfit usually con-
sists of one or two hunters, two skin
ners to each hunter, two or three teams
and wagons, cook and stock of am
munition and provisions. One man,
usually a practical hunter, owns the
outfit and pays the other men monthly
salary. Arrived upon the range, dug
out is constructed by cutting an open
ing in a side hill, roofing it with hides
or with boughs and dirt. This is the
home eff the party. A sheet-iron stove
or a fireplace of stones and mud warns
the burrow and hide serves for the
door. The hunters scour the country
on their horses for signs of the proxim-
ity of a herd. When they discover
such signs they do not gallop on, find
the herd, dash among. them and kill
right and left. That is the way buffalo
hunting is done in the pictures in the
school biographies, and it is the way
;he Indians who are after meat often
aunt. The white man is too smart. He
wants to kill as many animals as posi-
Die without stampeding the herd. First
le caches" his horse, concealing him
n "coolie" or gully-(the right word
s the French coalee, but western usage
las corrupted it into coolie.) If the
,uffaloes should get wind of the horse
hey would take the alarm and make
IF. The hunter then cautiously gets
round to leeward of the herd, getting
heir wind" as he says. Then he ap-
,roaches very slowly, crawling over the
round and lodging behind hummocks
o escape their notice. If they see him
10 lies perfectly still in the grass, which
is brown canvass clothing resembles
losely in color. Seeing nothing move
he wary animals soon think they were
in suspecting the presence of
Il enemy and go on grazing.
WHOLESALE SLAUGHTER.
The hunter crawls up little closer
nd SO works forward until he gets a
God position-in depression in the
round or behind a little rise-for
nooting. Then he watches the herd
or a few minutes, to learn which ami
lal is the leader. Every herd, large or
mall, has a captain, who directs its
and to whom all turn for /