The age-herald., 1898-10-14
s;AAsIaa aS
A WoMAN's BUFFALO HERO.
How the Famous Goodnight Herd Gan
 to Have an Existence.
From the Kansas City Star.

From the Kansas City Star.
 It took just thirteen years E which te wipe out almost entirely that most magnih- cent characteristic of all American beasts, the bison. From 1868 to 1881 over 31,OOO,OGO buffaoes were wantonly and wickedly slaughtered on the great plains of the west. 2 Thousands upon thousands of the great brown shaggy beasts. were shot down, their tongues taken from them, and their carcasses left to rot to fatten prairie wolves. Others were later slaughtered for >tneir hides alone. Every year meat enough to feed the poor of the world was left to rot d., up in the sun. With the extinc- ton of the buffalo began the decline of the American Indian.
 When Texas was the widest spot almost in North America a young man went there from Illinois with his wife. He began to raise cattle when the buffalo still grazed before his door. In those days the vast plains of the Panhandle of Texas over flowed with buffalo. As he stood at the door he could see herds passing to the west or east. So great was their number that it often look the grazing herds several days to pass by. Now the only buffaloes in Texas are on the ranch of this man, whose name is Charles Goodnight.
 Soon the buffalo began to grow scarce and searcer and there was assurance that they would become extinct. Those who had wantonly destroyed them began to be alarmed. But it was too late. The last of the great herds had been chased over the edge of the precipice beyond which was ex- tinction.
 When Mrs. Goodnight realized the inev- itable wiping out of the buffalo she urged her husband to endeavor to preserve them. He set aside at her request 600 acres from his great ranch of 900 acres for a buffalo park. In a letter telling of his start as a buffalo raiser MT. Goodnight said:
 ''In the spring of 1879, to be exact, May 15, l, at my wife's request, started out to look for some young buffalo. At last I found a few young ones in Palo Duro canon, and 'roped' them from horseback. The month following, w. W. Dyer, my wife's brother, caught two young females. From this start we have herd of forty-five pure bred buffaloes. In 1884 I began to cross them with Rolled Angus and Galloway cattle and have herd of sixty of these cross-breeds. This year we have been fortunate in getting fifteen buffalo calves.
 It seems incomprehensible that they should have grown into such enormous herds as there were when I came to this country, and which, in fact covered all the western plains."
 MT. E. J. Davison of this city has recent ly returned from trip in Texas, at which time he visited the Goodnight ranch and photographed the buffalo there. Speaking of his trip MT. Davison said:
 .'The mangy, faded, ragged buffalo one sees in the zoo or circus and those running in comparative widness on the prairie are two entirely different animals. The wild buffalo is a dark, glossy brown, and his whlskers and leggings are coal black. The calves are cream-colored wi>1 the tips of the nose and ears and the hoof a glisten- ing black. They are beautiful little crea- lures and as frisky and playful as lot of farm calves. The dime novel to the con- trary, the buffalo does not below. When he is alarmed or angry he makes a queer rumbling sound in his thoat, not much | louder than the bleat of goat. The buff | faloes are very swift runners, and when they get started at a headlong pace noth- | ing can stop them In the summer they graze and take care of themselves on the | three square miles that comprise their park In the winter they are fed with what ranch- men call 'roughness," that is, coarse fod- der, cornstalks and hay.
 1.-The Goodnight ranch is vast place, in all 5000 acres. On this place Is a rail- road station and express and postoffice, as weil as a church and school house. There is no town, as MT. Goodnight would not be troubled with 1t. Goodnight, the station is called is thirty-eight miles east of Ama- rillo. on the Panhandle branch of the Santa Fe railroad. The church and school house are the especial care of Mrs Goodnight She was the first white woman to brave the dangers from the Indians and take up her abode in that part of the southwest Her interest in her buffalo herd is unfagging and. if the race of the typical American beast survives, it will be mainly owing to her efforts"