The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1885-06-05
KILLED FOR THEIR HIDES.
THE BUFFALO SEEN NO MORE ON
WESTERN PLAINS.
Fully One Wilton of Thcpr SInugIb-
tered in Five Years-:UggcStive
Eigures-TrafffC in Their Bones,

tcTcu III H1Nc
Eigures-Traffic in Their Bones
A Montana letter to the New York
Sun says that the buffaloes were all right
until about seven years ago, when the
Indians were conquered, which opened
up the country and let the hide hunters
in. 1t took about seven years, begin
ming with 1870, to exterminate the buff
falo along the line of the Union Pacific
railroad, which in the good old times
could have been seen blackening the
Platte river bottom for miles. These
poor silly beasts were so easily killed,
and, from their abundance, offered so
rich a reward to the hide hunter, that
every idle fellow in that part of the
country could make good wages by butch
ering them. The Union Pacific railroad
split the herds in half, and left a moiety
to the north and a moicty to the south.
Those in Texas were soon used up by
sportsmen and professional hunters; but
the great northern herd fled to Wyoming
and Montana, where Sitting Bull and his
followers took charge of and protected
them until Uncle Sans soldiers began
chasing him around the country as well as
the bison. From 1875 TO 1880, fully l ,000,-
600 of these brutes were killed by soldiers
and other white men. l heard one en-
terprising pot hunter, on the Yellow
stone, who actually had a Calling gun
to help the slaughter along. He en-
ployed no less than thirty skinners to
tear the hides from the poor animals as
soon as they dropped, and each skinner
received a dollar for every hide he
brought in at might. The skinned carcass
es, as we'll as numberless unskinned,
were left to rot where they fell. In
short, the m%anipulatcr of the artillery
kept ahead of his employees and pro-
vided them with more than they could
attend to.
In those days the hide hunters began
to pay attention to other brutcs beside
bison. y 1880 the number of buffalo
bagged on the Yellowstone aggregated
about 100, 900. On the Missouri river
and its tributaries the same number
were secured, making about 200, 900 in
all. Sixty thousand antelope and deer
skins were secured the same year on the
Yellowstone and 107, 600 on the Mis-
souri,. In 1881 the Yellowstone coun-
try yielded about 140, 900 buffalo robes
and 73, 900 antelope and deer skins.
L IL NllSSOull IlNtl ulSIlIClN SNhI
100, 900 buffalo robes to market during
thc.'season of 1881, beside seventy odd
thousand antelope and deer skins.
From January to December, 1882, about
so, 900 buifaloes were killed near Miles
City and Glendive in Eastern Montana.
The whole Territory yielded somewhere
in the neighborhood of 1S5, coo robes.
The number of antelope, deer and elk
slaughtered that year is not accurately
known, but as it was a great year for
professional as well as unprofes-
sional sportsmcn, the actual number
OF game animals that either bit
the dust of the prairie or yielded up
their lives among the mountains must be
something awful to calculate. In Idaho
and Montana that season there were not
less than 5, 900 hunters scattered along
the line of the Northern Pacific.
In 1888 there was q marked falling off
in the supply of robes and skins. Never
theless, 100, 900 buffalo robes were
shipped from Glendive alone, and as
many more from other points along the
railroad. These, however, were a part
of the previous seasons slaughter. In
1854 there was no crop at all to speak
of, and in 1885, there can be none, as
there are no living bison in the North
west to furnish any more robes. In a
word, the buffalo is extinct. There may,
however, be a slight exception to this
as there are a few in the northern wilds
of the Yellowstone National park, a kind
of mountain buffalo, where the govern
ment protects them from humiliation by
stringent game laws and a corps of
gamekeepers. There is still another
small herd of these brutes in Northwest
ern Montana, in the valley of Milk river,
where j. G. Baker, the great cattle king
of that section, has them safely corraled
and carefully guarded by his cowboys. 1t
is purely Il speculative scheme on that
gentleman's part, however, as the poor
brutes are kept securely penned, and
will be finally slaughtered when there
is a corner in robes.
To sum the matter up, these figures OF
the hides and robes exported from this
section represent about two-thirds of the
actual number Of animals killed. Fully
one-third of all the great host decayed
with their robes around them. Not
more than two.thirds OF the skins were
saved. A traffic in their bones has sprung
up III "Ai a. ~ Ni VI thOi lSbA
up the great Buffalo cemeteries OF the
West, leaving not one remnant of a
great race Of animals in the country hat
was once their home. At nearly every
station on the railroad last year could be
seen piled up for shipment the chaotic
anatomy of thousands of buiTaloes.
Cattlemen were paid 50 and So a wagon
load for them. Cowboys with little else
to do, and even lazy Indians with an eve
to the almighty dollar, went into the
scavenger business and collected buffalo
bones for lucre. For months car load
after car load, to the number of thous-
ands, passed eastward to Minnesota, In
diana and Illinois, where they were
turned to account as fertilizers. Even
the skulls and bones that surveyors have
stood up as sighting points have been
picked up and carted off, such is the de-
mand for them. Delivered at the facto
ries the frames are worth $25 a ton, tho
freight charges ranging from S. to $40