188 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
¥. Gerard, the well-known Cree interpreter, whose twenty-five years’ experi- 
ence in the Upper Missouri country, nearly every part of which he had vis- 
ited, together with his having been formerly an agent of the American Fur 
Company, had given him much valuable information respecting not only the 
fur trade but the former range and the recent great decrease in numbers of 
many of the larger mammals of that region. From him I learned that in 
1857 the trade in buffalo-robes at the principal posts on the Upper Missouri 
was about as follows: At Fort Benton, the number received amounted to 
3,600 bales, or 36,000 robes; at Fort Union, 2,700 to 3,000 bales, or about 
30,000 robes. At Forts Clarke and Berthoud, 500 bales at each post, or 
about 10,000 robes; at Fort Pierre, 1,900 bales, or 19,000 robes; giving a 
total for one year of about 75,000 robes, which he informed me was about the 
annual average at that period. Allowing that the Indians retained only as 
many more for their own use, and estimating as before that one robe rep- 
resents the destruction of three buffaloes, gives four hundred and fifty thou- 
sand as the number killed by a portion only of the Upper Missouri Indians 
in one third of a year, or over a million and a third annually. To this 
number, as already noticed, must be added the number killed by the Indians 
to the northward and southward of this region, as well as the great numbers 
destroyed by the Red River half-breeds and by white men. 
Respecting the number killed by the Red River hunters, I have met with 
no satisfactory statistics, but that it must have been immense is evident from 
the number of persons engaged in their hunting expeditions. Mr. Ross, in 
his history of the Red River Settlement, states that the number of carts as- 
sembled for the first trip in 1820 was five hundred and forty. Subsequently 
the number regularly increased to one thousand two hundred and ten in 
1840. In his description of the hunt of this year, he states that the number 
of hunters engaged was six hundred and twenty for two months, who. were 
accompanied by- six hundred and fifty women, and three hundred and sixty 
boys and girls, the party numbering altogether sixteen hundred and thirty 
“souls. The party was armed with seven hundred and forty guns, and had 
with them eleven hundred and fifty-eight horses and five hundred and 
eighty-six draught oxen, with other equipments in proportion. During the 
“first day of the hunt no less than thirteen hundred and seventy-five buffalo 
tongues were brought into camp, and during the first two races not less than 
twenty-five hundred animals were killed. Of these he estimates that less 
than one third were properly utilized, as he considers that seven hundred and 
