THE AMERICAN BISONS. 217 
pursuits.”* He adds that the buffalo is very intractable, and is not known 
to have been domesticated by the Indians.t 
Sibley observes, in speaking of the buffalo of the Red River of the North, 
that “in spring the calves are easily weaned, and when trained to labor 
become quite useful. One farmer, who had broken a bull to the plough, 
performed the whole work of the field with his aid alone.” ¢ 
Mr. Robert Wickliffe, in a letter addressed to Messrs. Audubon and Bach- 
man, dated Lexington, Kentucky, November 6, 1843, has quite fully recorded 
the results of his own efforts at domesticating the buffalo. He says: “The 
herd of buffalo I now possess have descended from one or two cows that I 
purchased from a man who brought them from the country called the Upper 
Missouri; I have had them for about thirty years, but from giving them 
away and the occasional killing of them by mischievous persons, as well as 
other causes, my whole stock does not exceed ten or twelve. I have some- 
times confined them in separate parks from other cattle, but. generally they 
herd and feed with my stock of farm cattle... .. On getting possession of 
the tame buffaloes I endeavored to cross them as much as I could with my 
common cows, to which experiment I found the tame bull unwilling to 
accede, and he was always shy of the buffalo cow, but the buffalo bull was 
willing to breed with the common cow. 
“From the domestic cow I have crossed half-breeds, one of which was a 
heifer; this I put with a domestic bull, and it produced a bull calf. This I 
castrated and it made a very fine steer, and when killed produced very fine 
beef. I bred from the same heifer several calves, and then, that the experi- 
ment might be perfect, I put one of them to the buffalo bull, and she brought 
‘me a bull calf, which I raised to be a very fine large animal, perhaps the 
only one in the world of his blood, namely, a three-quarter, half-quarter, and 
a half-quarter of the common blood. After making these experiments, I 
have left them to propagate their breed themselves, so that I have only had 
a few half-breeds, and they always proved the same, even by a buffalo bull. 
The full-blood is not as large as the improved stock, but as large as the ordi- 
nary stock of the country. The crossed or half-blood are larger than either 
* Gallatin (Albert), A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America; Trans. Amer. Antiquarian 
Soc., Vol. II, p. 139, footnote. 
+ Dr. Woodhouse states that he had seen “a few of these animals tamed in the Creek nation, running 
with the common cattle.” — Sirgreaves’s Report of an Exped. down the Zuii and Colorado Rivers, p. 57. 
t Sibley (H. H.), in Schooleraft’s History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United 
States, Vol. IV, p. 110. 
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