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192 



THE AMEEICAIT BISON'S. 



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The bufFaloeSy in common with deer and elks, have also often been invalu- 

 able to the pioneer settler, insuring him food during the first few years at 

 least of his frontier hfe. As already noticed, Boone and his party subsisted 

 almost wholly during their first winter in Kentucky on the flesh of this ani- 

 mal, and throughout the prairie portions of the country, from lUinois west- 

 ward to the Rocky Mountains, the buffalo has subserved a most important 

 purpose in the westward progress of civilization. The vast influx of settlers 

 that follows the opening of new railroads across the Plains, such as that 

 which still sets into the valley of the Arkansas along the line of the Atchi- 

 son, Topeka, and Santa Fe Eailroad, thus find a sure subsistence until tliey 

 can open up and improve their farms ; and, as one writer has remarked, '' by 

 the time the last buffalo has disappeared from Kansas, the frontier will be 

 subdued to civihzation and be self-supporting." 



From lack of speedy and cheap means of transportation the consumption of 

 buffalo meat was, until recently, necessarily limited to the people living near 

 or within its actual range, and to parties traversing the country it inhabited. 

 Upon the opening of the Kansas railways, however, many car-loads, as 

 already shown by the above-given statistics, were shipped during winter to 

 the Eastern cities. While Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and the other 

 larger cities of the Mississippi Valley fonned the principal markets for its 

 sale, it was also sent in large quantities to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, 



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Baltimore, and the other chief cities of the East* When arriving in good 

 condition, as w\as usually the case, it rivals beef and venison in cheapness, if 

 not in quality, besides having the special feature of novelty. 



The meat of the bufilxlo is often spoken of as being dry and tough, and far 

 inferior in quality to bee£ This is in a measure true, the flesh of middle- 

 aged and elderly bulls being of this character, that of old bulls being eaten 

 only when none other can be obtained. The flesh of a young fat cow, or of 

 a yearling or two-year-old bull, however, is not surpassed by the finest beef, 

 from which it cannot usually be distinguished. 

 spent on the Kansas plains in 1871-72, 1 ate it daily, and would never ask 



During some two months 



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'^' As already noticed, upward of one million pounds were shipped, as saddles, over the Kansas Pacific 

 Railway during the winter of 1871 - 72, besides hundreds of barrels of tongues and cured *'hams" during 

 the same period. Since that time the shipments over this road have greatly diminished, but the reduc- 

 tion was for a year or two more than balanced by the additional shipments over the Atchison, Topeka, 

 and Santa Fe road, which in 1873 were over one and a half million (1,617,600) pounds. In 1874, how- 

 ever, the shipment was less than half this amount, there having been already a marked decline in the 

 amount of buffalo products transported over this road also. 





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