ii6 The Bison 



Territory and in the waterless country of the 

 pan-handle of Texas. There, protected by the 

 drought, and so few in number as to present little 

 attraction to the skin hunter, a few lingered for 

 some years, until finally captured or destroyed by 

 Buffalo Jones in his expeditions after calves for 

 domestication. 



In the northern country the buffalo lingered 

 longer. The Northern Pacific Railroad, built as 

 far west as Bismarck on the Missouri River in 

 1873, stopped there for six or seven years, and it 

 was not until it had been continued well beyond 

 the Missouri that it again entered the buffalo 

 range and brought with it, as was inevitable, the 

 buffalo skinner. When he came, he did the work 

 he had done in the South, and did it as effec- 

 tively. But as the number of buffalo left in the 

 northern herd was small, it took only two or 

 three years to destroy them. 



After 1883, except for a band of about five 

 thousand which had been overlooked on one of 

 the Sioux reservations, there were no buffalo left 

 in the northern country except a few scatter- 

 ing individuals, which, hidden in out-of-the-way 

 places, had been overlooked by the hunters and 

 Indians, and so for a year or two were preserved 



