47 



much more uncertain than formerly. Although the number of buffalo 

 to be met with in this portion of Kansas is still almost beyond con- 

 ception, the country sometimes seeming alive with them as far as the 

 eye can reach, their diminution is rapid, and at the present rate of 

 destruction a few years will suffice to exterminate them wholly. 

 Since the completion of the Kansas Pacific Railway, some four years 

 since, this line of communication with the east lias not only opened 

 up an unlimited demand for the products of the buffalo, but has af- 

 forded to the hunters a most convenient base from which to carry on 

 their operations. The result is already apparent in the diminished 

 and demoralized state of the herds in northwestern Kansas, which 

 already so much affects the success of the hunters that they have of 

 late in great part abandoned this portion of the country for the more 

 promising field newly opened up to them along the line of the Atchisou, 

 Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. 



Aside from the tens of thousands killed in winter for shipment in a 

 frozen state to the eastern markets, other thousands are killed merely 

 for their hides, which scarcely repay the labor of gathering, their car- 

 casses being left to decay on the ground where they are killed. Hun- 

 dreds, and probably thousands, are also killed in mere wantonness, 

 or to gratify the ambition of eastern sportsmen and tourists. The 

 buffalos are thus perpetually harassed, and driven from place to place 

 throughout the year. All ages are alike destroyed, those too old to be 

 of any value for their flesh being slaughtered for their hides, and the 

 younger animals for their "saddles." The younger animals, and par- 

 ticularly the young cows, are especially sought for their meat. The 

 latter being mostly with young, two animals are thus destroyed instead 

 of one, which, with the destruction of yearlings and two- and three- 

 year-olds, greatly checks the natural increase of the herds, and greatly 

 hastens their extermination. Unless vigorous government interfer- 

 ence shall put a check upon this wholesale, shortsighted slaughter, 

 much of which is really heedless, the buffalo will soon be known here 

 only as a thing of the past, as it now is in the vast region east of the 

 Mississippi, where this animal once lived in countless numbers. 



Respecting the whole number now annually killed in Kansas, it is 

 almost impossible to obtain reliable statistics. Through the kindness 

 of Mr. W. T. Bowcu, General Superintendent of the Kansas Pacific 

 Railway, I have learned that the meat and hides shipped to eastern 

 cities over this road during the year 1871 represented about twenty 

 thousand individuals. In the fall of 1872 forty-three thousand hides 

 are reported to have been shipped from Fort Dodge alone, besides 

 about a million and a half pounds of meat. The grand total killed in 

 the season of 1872-3, in the immediate vicinity of Fort Dodge, is 

 stated to be not less than one hundred thousand! 



