k 





I 



THE AMEEICAN BISONS, 



177 



J 



\ 



f 

 T 



secure 



they have been not merely driven out and pressed on to some more 

 retreat; but actually exterminated^ the vast majority, ^e% MM on tJie sjjot^ as 

 we have seen was the case east of the Mississippi during the last quarter 

 of the eighteenth century. 



This shows with the utmost certainty what is to be the destiny of this 

 former " monarch of the prairies/' unless rigidly protected by legal restric- 

 tions, definhig not only the seasons at which the animals may be killed, but 

 also protecting the young and the bearing females. At the present time, as 

 well as heretofore, those animals are most sought after on which the perpetu- 

 ation of the race depends, — the young animals of both sexes and the cows. 

 The older bulls are alike generally useless both to the Indian and the white 

 hunter. The skins of cows are alone used by the Indians in furnishing 



and middle-aged cows are regarded- 



themselves with robes; the young 

 as especially desirable by the white hunters, since they afibrd the best 

 meat for the market, although along with them are killed yearlings, and 

 two- and three-year-olds of both sexes; but bulls older than five or six 

 years are not generally desired, though many have of late years been 

 killed merely for their hides. The hunting season being chiefly in the fall 

 and winter, the cows are then with young, and thus two animals are killed 



m securmg one. 



of the Bivfft 



ome idea of the havoc re- 



cently made with the buffalo:^ in Kansas can be formed from the following 

 well-attested statements. At the time of the completion of the Atchison, To- 

 peka, and Santa Fe Railroad to Dodge City, which occurred September 23, 

 1872, the principal trade of the town consisted in the "outfitting of hunters. 



and exchange for their game." The number of hides shipped during a 

 period of three months, beginning with this date (Sept. 23), is reported to 

 have been 43,029, and the shipment of meat for the same time 1,436,290 

 pounds.^ The forty-three thousand hides of course represent forty-three thou- 

 sand dead buffaloes, and the one million and a half pounds of meat — the 



r 



saddles only being saved — represent at least six or seven thousand more, 

 making a total of at least fifty thousand killed in three months. The same 

 authority states that the returns for the January following exceeded those 

 of the preceding months by over one hundred mid f fly per cent ^ thus making 

 the number of buffaloes killed merely "around Fort Dodge and the neigh- 



L 



borhood," for this period of four months, exceed one hundred thousand! 



* Forest and Stream, Februaiy, 1873. 



