The American Buffalo. 349 



for tlie very necessaries of life upon the buffalo, these facts come 

 home with stern reality. His existence is bound up inseparably 

 •with that of the race of buffalo, and every consideration of 

 humanity to the one prompts a care over the other." 



*' If it were possible to enforce game-laws, or any other laws on 

 the prairies, it would be well to attach the most stringent penal- 

 ties against the barbarous practice of killing buffalo merely for the 

 sport, or perhaps for the sake of the tongue alone. Tliousanda 

 are killed every year in this way. After all, however, it is, per- 

 haps, the Indian himself who commits the mischief most wan- 

 tonly, A frequent mode of hunting the buffalo by them consists 

 in making a "surround." This is done by enclosing a large herd 

 and driving them over a precipice upon the rocks, or into one of 

 the profound ravines w^hich intersect the prairies in various direc- 

 tions. In this way thousands are sometimes killed in a single day. 

 Fires in prairies, too, do their share in the work of destruction, 

 cither by their immediate agency or by driving the maddened 

 animals into the ravines just referred to." 



Mr. Picotte, an experienced partner of the American Fur Com- 

 pany, estimated the number of buffalo robes sent to St. Louis in 

 1850 at 100,000. Supposing each of the 00,000 Indians on the 

 Missouri to use. ten robes for his wearing apparel every year, be- 

 sides those for new lodges and other purposes, by the calculation 

 of Mr. Picotte we shall have an aggregate of 400,000 robes. We 

 may suppose 100,000 as the number killed wantonly, or destroyed 

 by fire or other causualties, and we will have the grand total of 

 half a million of buffalo destroyed every year. This, too, does not 

 include the numbers slaughtered on Red River, and other gather- 

 ing points. 



It is, perhaps, unnecessary to state that the American bison is 

 not found in the Old World. A European species of the same 

 genus. Bos, and closely allied, is the Bos urus, aurochs of Ger- 

 many, urus of CjEsar, bonossus of Aristotle, and bison of Pausanius 

 and Pliny. This species, once of rather wide range, is now cor, 

 fined to the country between the Caspian and the Black Sea, where 

 it is protected from injury by the severest legislative enactments. 

 Other species are found in various other parts of the world. 



The skins of the American buffalo are dressed as follows : "After 

 being taken oft* the animal, they are hung on a post, and the ad- 

 hering flesh taken off with a bone toothed something like a saw. 

 This is performed by scraping the skin downward, requiring much 



