Buffalo 273 



April 25th. Drowned Buffalo drift down River day 

 and night, 



"May 1st, 1801. The stench from the vast numbers of 

 drowned Buffalo along the river was intolerable.^" 



"2d. Two hunters arrived * * * from Grandes 

 Fourches. * * * They tell me the number of Buffalo 

 lying along the beach and on the banks above passes all 

 imagination. They form one continuous line and emit a 

 horrible stench. I am informed that every spring it is about the 

 same."'" 



The distance was 35 miles and a Buffalo every 10 yards 

 on each side would be within the terms of the description. 

 This would total over 20,000 carcasses. 



Dr. E. Coues, commenting on this in a footnote, says:^^ 



"This account is not exaggerated. John McDonnell's 

 Journal, when he was describing Qu'Appelle River, states 

 May 18, 1795: "Observing a good many carcasses of Buffalo 

 in the river and along the banks, I was taken up the whole 

 day in counting them, and, to my surprise, found I had 

 numbered when we put up at night 7,360, drowned and 

 mired along the river and in it. It is true, in one or two 

 places, I went on shore and walked from one carcass to another, 

 where they lay from three to five files deep. (Masson I, 1889, 

 p. 294.)" 



For generations the dwellers on the Missouri River were 

 familiar with the yearly flood that bore countless Buffalo hulks 

 to be packed away in the Mississippi mud, that in some far 

 geological day will be the rock, all stored and storied with 

 unnumbered bones. Now we know that all the northern 

 rivers made their death-trap every spring; and, since their 

 sum of length must have been not less than 20,000 miles, we 

 can form an estimate of the prodigious slaughter that was 

 caused by rotten ice. Clearly, the destruction by Nature's 

 own means was so great that the Buffalo can have done no 

 more than barely hold its own in the fight; and when the 

 rifle also came upon the scene, its doom was sealed. 



*^Ibid., p. 177. ^^ Ibid., p. 177. '■'Ibid., p. 174 



