aa aa a aN a a ici i hab aaa 
THE AMERICAN BISONS. 69 
given promise of improved breeds, and an attempt to propagate them in 
confinement by an enterprising stock-raiser, either as pure stock or as a mixed 
race, would undoubtedly prove remunerative. In the vicinity of the present 
range of the buffalo, tame individuals are frequently met with, which are 
reared and kept simply as pets or objects of curiosity, just as occasional 
specimens of the deer, elk, or pronghorn are kept. A young buffalo that 
was owned by the sutler at Fort Hays in 1871, then about two years old, 
proved to be a most eccentric and amusing beast. Through the attentions of 
visitors he acquired, among his other accomplishments, a great fondness for 
beer, of which he would sometimes partake to excess, when he would 
occasionally perform rather strange antics. He was usually inoflensive 
in his manners, though latterly his behavior to strangers was rather too 
familiar to be always agreeable, and gradually he became somewhat irritable 
in consequence of constant teasing. But on these occasions of inebriety he 
sometimes took it into his head to clear the so-called “ officers’ room” at the 
sutler’s, to which he was often admitted, of its occupants. On one of these 
occasions he is reported to have mounted a billiard-table, from which he was 
“not easily dislodged ; at another time he is said to have ascended the stairs 
leading to the second story, and was with great difficulty induced to descend 
again. His excesses, lack of proper care, and unnatural diet at length 
seemed to seriously impair his health, as he soon grew thin, and did not long 
survive. 
The herds of cattle that are driven from Texas to Wyoming and other 
Northern territories are sometimes accompanied by one or two young tamed 
buffaloes. Two two-year-old buffaloes thus reached Percy, Carbon County, 
Wyoming, in December, 1871, en route for Utah. One of them, however, 
was killed by some hunters near Percy, who claimed to have mistaken it for 
a wild animal, —a fate which not unfrequently befalls the tamed buffaloes 
of the frontier. The other was shipped westward by rail with the rest of 
the herd. These individuals mixed as freely with the domestic cattle as any 
other members of the herd, and were as easily managed, and had no greater 
fear of man than the others. 
‘The very young buffalo calf, when separated from its mother, often evinces 
the utmost stupidity and lack of discernment ; sometimes thrusting its nose 
into a tuft of herbage, it seems to imagine itself wholly hidden from view, and, 
in its fancied security, will stand and allow itself to be captured. A horse 
seems to possess for it a strange fascination, and it is very apt, when one is 
