ii8 The Bison 



Park, and it is altogether probable that this does 

 not number more than twenty-five or thirty. 



No doubt the extraordinary abundance of the 

 buffalo had something to do with the wasteful- 

 ness of the slaughter which followed the railroad 

 building into the buffalo range. Many people no 

 doubt really believed that in their time the buffalo 

 could not be exterminated. They seemed to rea- 

 son that as there always had been " millions of 

 buffalo " there always would be. Men killed buf- 

 falo for any foolish, childish reason that might 

 come into their heads, — to try their guns, to see 

 whether they could hit them, for fun ! 



How wantonly even some of the first traders 

 destroyed them is often shown by the few writ- 

 ings that have come down to us from those early 

 days. Henry, in his Journal of August, 1800, 

 tells of the way in which he and some of his men 

 passed the time while waiting for others of his 

 people to come up. He says, " We amused our- 

 selves by lying in wait, close under the bank, for 

 the buffalo which came to drink. When the poor 

 brutes came to within about ten yards of us, on a 

 sudden we would fire a volley of twenty-five guns 

 at them, killing and wounding many. We only 

 took the tongues. The Indians suggested that 



