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THE AMEEICAN" BISOI^S. 



F. Gerardj the well-known Cree interpreterj whose twenty-five years' experi- 

 ence in the Upper Missouri country, nearly every part . of which he had vis- 

 ited, together with his having been formerly an agent of the American Fur 

 Company, had given him much valuable information respecting not only the 

 fur trade but the former range and the recent great decrease in numbers of 

 many of the larger mammals of that region. From him I learned that in 

 1857 the trade in buffalo-robes at the principal posts on the U|)per Missouri 

 was about as follow^s : At Fort Benton, the number received amounted to 



3, 



bales, or 36,000 robes; at Fort Union, 2,700 to 3, 



bales, or about 



30,000 robes. At Forts Clarke and Berthoud, 500 bales at each post, or 

 about 10,000 robes; at Fort Pierre, 1,900 bales, or 19,000 robes; giving a 



total for one year of about 75,000 robes, which he informed me was about the 

 annual average at that period. Allowing that the Indians retained only as 

 many more for their own use, and estimating as before that one robe rep- 

 resents the destruction of three buffaloes, gives four hundred and fifty thou- 

 sand as the number killed by a portion only of the Upper Missouri Indians 

 in one third of a year, or over a million and a third annually. To this 



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number, as already noticed^ must be added the number killed by the Indians 

 to the northward and southward of this region, as well as the great numbers 

 destroyed by the Bed Eiver half-breeds and by white men. 



Respecting the number killed by the Bed River hunters, I have met with 

 no satisfactory statistics, but that it must have been immense is evident from 

 the number of persons engaged in their hunting expeditions. Mr. Boss, in 

 his history of the Bed Biver Settlement, states that the number of carts as- 

 sembled for the first trip in 1820 was five hundred and forty. Subsequently 

 the number regularly increased to one thousand tw^o hundred and ten in 

 1840. In his description of the hunt of this year, he states that the number 

 of hunters engaged w^as six hundred and tw^enty for two months, who were 

 accompanied by six hundred and fifty women, and three hundred and sixty 

 boys and girls, the party numbering altogether sixteen hundred and thirty 

 souls. The party was armed with seven hundred and forty guns, and had 



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with them eleven hundred and fifty-eight horses and five hundred and 

 eighty-six draught oxen, w4th other equipments in proportion. During the 

 first day of the hunt no less than thirteen hundred and seventy-five buffiilo 

 tongues were brought into camp, and during the first two races not less than 

 twenty-five hundred animals w^ere killed. Of these he estimates that less 

 than one third w^ere properly utilized, as he considers that seven hundred and 



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