Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1885-06-04

aggregated about 100000. On che
Missouri river and Its tributaries the
| same number were secured, making
about 200, 900 in all. Sixty thousand
antelope and deer skins wer secured
the same year on the Yellowstone ana
100, 900 on the Missouri. Ia 1881 ths
Yellowstone country yielded abuut
lao, 900 buffalo robes and 70. 900 an
telop and deer skins. The Missouri
river districts sent nearly 100, 00G
buffalo robes to market during the
season of 1881, besides seventy-odd
thousand antelope and deer skins.
From January to December, 1882,
about $4,000 buffaloes were killed near
Miles City and Glendlye in eastern
Montana. The whole territory yield
ed somewhere in the neighborhood OF
1876, 600 robes. The number of antel-
ope, deer, and elk slaughtered that
year is not accurately known, but as
it was great year for professional as
well as unprofessional sportsmen, 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
five thousand hunters scattered along
the line Of the Northern Pacific.
In 1888 there was a marked falling
off in the supply Of robes and skins.
Nevertheless, 100, 060 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 1884 there was 40 crop
at all to speak of, and III 1885 there
can be none, as there are no living
bison In the northwest to furnish any
more robes. In a word, the buffalo
is extinct. There may, however, be
slight exception to this, as there are
a few IN the northern wilds of the
Yellowstone National park, kind Of
mountain buffalo, where the govern
ment protects them from annih1iation
by stringent game laws and a corps of
gamekeepers. There is still another
small herd of these brutes IN North
western Montana, in the valley of
Milk river, J. 6. Baker, the great
cattle king OF that section, has them
safely corralled and carefully guarded
by his cowboys. It is purely specu-
lative scheme on that gentleman's
part, however, as the poor brutes are
securely peHned, 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 kill
ed. Fully one-third of all the great
host decayed with their robes around
them. No more than two-thirds of
the skins were saved. A traffic in
their bones has sprung up, which will,
in year or two, clean up the great
buffalo cemeteries of the west, leaving
not one remnant of a great race of
animals in the country that was once
their home. At nearly every station
on the railroad last ear could be seen
piled up for shipment the chaotic an
atOmy OF countless thousands of buf-
faloes. Cattlemen were paid 50 and
S. a wagon load for them. Cowboys
with little else to do, and even lazy
Indians with an eye 10 the almighty
dollar, went into the scavenger bust
ness and collected buffalo bones for
lucre. For months car load after car
load, to the number of thousands,
passed eastward to Minnesota,
Indiana, Illinois, where they
were turned to account as fer
tllizers. Even the skulls and
bones that surveyors have stood up as
sighting points have been picked up
and carried off, such is the demand
for them. Delivered at the factories
the frames are worth $25 ton, the
freight charges ranging from s. to SO
per ton. Horns alone bring $40 ton,
and are extensively used by makers
of umbrellas and fans. From a por-
ton of the bead glue is obtained, and
the neck bones and shoulder blades
are worked up into the popular buf-
falo horn buttons. A great many OF
our buffalo bones, horns, and hoofs
are annually shipped to England.
and, after being turned over once or
twice by the cutlery factories of Shelf
field, come back to us in the shape of
fine knife handles and ether articles
Of finished cutlery. England also i'm
ports great quantities of beef shanks
for the manufacture of fertilizers.
There may be few herds north OF
the international boundary line in the
Canadian northwest, but either Riel's
sharpshooters Or Middleton's militia,
or both together. will make short
work of them before many months.
There is no use of enacting any saw
ing laws for their protection III our
country now, as there are none to
protect, The harvest of skins has
ended. The American bison is az
extinct animal. But if they can, let
them take comfort in the reflection
that, even though slaughtered and
swept from existence by the white
race, they have been of some use as
buttons, fans. umbrellas, and the like
to the generation of man and women
that is dying with them.