The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-04-07

1
bition TO move in a vigorous. energeti
way that was essentially the chic
| characteristic of the buffalo of pionee
days The superintendent of the parl
has instructions. and he follows then
with the precision of a military auto
crat who has nothing else to do, T.
! protect the buffalo herd. Tourists ar
| prevented from approaching their pre-
serve closely; they are left unmolesteC
by the soldiers who patrol the park. II
spite of these favorable conditions tn,
! herd is seldom up to the numerical
standard, and showing of increase i:
rare
| Charles Allard tried a novel scheme il
| the way of preserving the buffalo herd:
of the north. In the beautiful Flathea6
! lake is an island far removed from
| either shore On this island Allard KEPT
his buffaloes, but the family did not
grow. He crossed the breed with va
rious bloods of cattle and brought into
life a great number of cataloes. But
the cataIo is not similar to the buf.
AeAAO W al uBpAtNlcabAt uNSAtCs DBllltN lid
alike in appearance. the buffalo and the
catalo are i'm instinct and charac-
teTistics as widely apart as the horse
and the zebra. The Allard herd is now
a part of the herd in the Indian terri
tory, which is doubtless the largest in
the world
Michael Pablo, the man mentioned in
this mornings dispatch and described
as the owner OF the largest herd of
buffalOes in the world" is a wealthy
Some say he is not an Indian, but he
is for all practical purposes. for he en-
joys tribal rights and exemptions from
taxation and all that. He owns thou
sands of head of horses and cattle. 1t
is doubtful whether he owns 500 head OF
buffaloes, but he owns herd of con-
siderable size. These are the animals
the Canadian government proposes to
buy. 1t is little short of crime to let
them go; It would be the part of wis
dow to reduce the appropriation for the
jamestown exposition, or the rivers and
harbors by a hundred thousand dollars
and put it into buffalo-presently there
will be none of this magnificent family
left to invest in.
on the northern plains and in the
middle western states and in our own
state there are to this day to be seen in
great numbers the skulls of buffaloes
that succumbed in the struggle for ex-
istence when, by hundreds of thousands,
they roamed the vast stretches of coun-
try. There is to be seen, too, not a
few buffalo wallOws, curious holes ir
the ground paved and horned and
nosed out with mathematical precision
and with due regard for symmetry. 1t
is a truth, sometimes doubted and ridi-
culed, that the smaller deniZens of the
plains. wolves, coyotes, ground squirrels
and even rattlesDakes, depend on these
old watering places of the buffalo for
their drink during large part of the
season. The wallows, however, are fast
disappearing. The winds fill them with
sand and the action of the elements
crumbles their walls, so that in most
cases there is little left to remind one
that once they served the purpose of
the magnificent buffalo bull and his
mates and their children.
Unquesticnably a history of the De
cline and Fall of the American Bison"
would be quite as interesting and quite
as fascinating as Mr.. Gibbons Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire" There
is more real western romance and stir
ring reality attached to the western
buffalo than there is to Caesar. Let
US keep them if we can.