DOMESTICATION OF THE BUFFALO. yjj 



DOMESTICATION OF THE BUFFALO. 



By JOHN W. DAFOE. 



ONE of the most striking results due to the building of trans- 

 continental railroads is the approach to extinction of the 

 buffalo. Its vast range once extended from Great Slave Lake to 

 the northeastern provinces of Mexico, and in British territory 

 from the Rockies to wooded highlands six hundred miles west of 

 Hudson's Bay. In the United States, remains of buffaloes have 

 been found west of the Rockies in Oregon, in the Great Salt Lake 

 basin, and westward as far as the Sierra Nevada. Of the species 

 hison, two well-defined varieties are known, the prairie and the 

 wood or mountain buffalo. The latter, compared with the other, 

 is larger, coarser-haired, straighter-horned, and excessively shy. 

 This shyness, together with the protection its habitat of forest 

 affords it, have preserved its numbers in larger proportion than 

 those of its congener of the prairies. Although the buffalo is sav- 

 age of aspect and strong of limb, yet it is much less formidable 

 to a hunter than the so-called tame cattle of the Texan plains. It 

 is an expert and fearless climber, and only a very swift horse can 

 overtake it, yet its stupidity and lack of courage have had not a 

 little to do with the sweeping destruction which has overtaken it. 

 As long ago as 1825, Prof. Joel A. Allen tells us, in his valuable 

 monograph, " The History of the American Bison," it had been 

 exterminated throughout the whole region east of the Mississippi, 

 except for a limited area lying around the sources of that river. 

 This extermination was utterly wanton ; buffalo-hunting was 

 chiefly mere sport, and often the only portion of the carcass re- 

 moved was the tongue, much esteemed as a tidbit. In gainful hunt- 

 ing, it was rarely the buffalo's meat that was sought ; its robe was 

 the object of its relentless pursuit. This pursuit was immensely 

 facilitated by the Pacific Railroads, which at the same time 

 opened up new markets both for robes and meat. Colonel H. I. 

 Dodge, author of " The Plains of the Great West," estimates that, 

 in the three years ending with 1874, no fewer than 5,500,000 

 buffaloes were slaughtered. Mr. Miller Christy, who carefully 

 took a census of the species last year, finds their total number to 

 be but 1,100 or thereabout. So wantonly have the buffaloes been 

 slain that their very bones have become an article of commerce. 

 Regina, the seat of the territorial government of the Canadian 

 Northwest, is built on Pile-of-Bones Creek, so called from the 

 vast accumulation which encumbered its banks. Throughout the 

 whole Western prairie region the earth is pitted with buffalo- 

 wallows, often deep enough to long survive cultivation. These 



