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THE AMERICAIsr BISONS. 



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Extermination in Eastern DaJwta. — As late as 1850 General John Pope 

 stated that the buffalo ranged '' in immense herds between the Pembina and 

 Shayenne Elvers/' and were '^ found in great numbers, winter and summer, 

 along the Red Eiver/' being "frequently killed in the immediate vicinity of 

 the settlements at Pembina."* Mr. Henry M. Rice also states that in the 

 spring of 1847 a party of Red River hunters, numbering twelve hundred 

 carts, went in a body south to Devil's Lake, in Minnesota (now Dakota);! 

 while Mr. J. E. Fletcher states that twenty thousand buffaloes were at this 

 time annually killed in the country of the Sioux and Chippewa Indians, south 

 of the United States and British boundary, § mostly within the present Terri- 

 tory of Dakota. The Hon. H. H. Sibley has given an interesting account of 

 a buffalo-hunt in Eastern Dakota (then a part of Minnesota Territory) in 

 Schoolcraft's great work on the Indian Tribes of the United States, $ and in-, 

 corporates therewith a detailed account, furnished him by the Rev. Mr. 

 Belcourt,|| of the chase of the buffalo on the Pembina Plains. It contains 

 not only much valuable information respecting the peculiar modes of hunt- 

 ing pursued by the Red River hunters, but also important statistics re- 

 specting the rate of their destruction at the date of writing (1853). 



Mr. A. W. Tinkham, in the "Itinerary" of his route from St. Paul to Fort 



Union, in June and July, 1853, speaks of using the bois de vaehe for fuel on 

 Maple River, and reports killing his first buffalo on the Shayenne, one of the 

 chief tributaries of the Red River.- At this time, he says, large herds 

 roamed over the prairies of the Shayenne River, and extended as far 

 south as the South Fork of the Shayenne. He also met with recent in- 



dications of the buffalo on the 



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11 



Governor Stevens, in sxjeaking of the ab undance of the buffalo on the 

 Shayenne River/near Lake Zisne, the same year, says : "About five miles 



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* Report of an Exploration of the Territory of Minnesota. (Congressional Reports, Sl-st Congr., 1st 



Session, Senate Doc. No. 42, p. 27.) 



■ t Congress. Rep., 31st Congr., 1st Sess., House Ex. Doc, Vol YJJl, No. 51, p. 8. 



X Ibid., p. 41. . 



§ Sclioolcraft's History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Yol. lY, 



pp. 101-110. 



II The account given by Mr. Sibley as that furnished by Mr. Belcourt seems to be merely a translation 

 of Mr. Belcourt's account of buffalo-hunting by the Red River half-breeds originally contained in a letter 

 addressed by Mr. Belcourt to Major S. Woods, and dated " St. Paul, November 25, 1845." This docu- 

 ment was published by Major Woods in his Report of his Expedition to the Pembina Settlement in 

 1849 (Congressional Documents of the 31st Congress, 1st Session, House Doc. No. 51, pp. 44-52). 



H Pacific R. R. Explorations and Surveys, Vol. I, Governor Stevens's Report, pp. 252-258. 





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