The Wapiti and his Antlers. 73 



Ward in the second edition of his " Records," in which he says that 

 the wapiti is to be found in the Alleghany regions of Pennsylvania, 

 Virginia, North Wisconsin (?), Minnesota, &c. It seems hardly 

 credible that in a text book of this sort, written A.D. 1896, there 

 should appear such an incorrect statement as that wapiti still inhabit 

 the Alleghany Mountains of Pennsylvania, or the Virginia hills, 

 where they became extinct in the first quarter of the present 

 century. 



Caton, the best authority possible, states that in the woods of 

 North Illinois, a region many hundreds of miles further west, and 

 one which became settled up a century or two later than Virginia, 

 the last wapiti was seen in 1820, or thereabouts. 



From Wisconsin and Minnesota the wapiti has, I am informed, 

 also long disappeared. 



A few remarks concerning an historical landmark made of 

 wapiti antlers may not be out of place. Prince Wied, in most 

 respects a painstaking and observant investigator of early days, has 

 left us, in his interesting account of his travels in what is now 

 Dacota and Montana, a somewhat brief account of the famous 

 Elkhorn Pyramid on the Prairie a la Corne de Cerf. It was one 

 of the early historical landmarks on the banks of the Missouri when 

 fur-traders and trappers were the only whites who visited the trans- 

 Missourian West. Composed, so he says, of certainly more than 

 1000 pairs of wapiti antlers, the pyramid was about i8ft. high and 

 1 5 ft. in diameter when he saw it in 1832. His account of its origin 

 varies triflingly from other contemporary reports, according to 

 which it was the result of a certain famous fall hunt by a Sioux 

 hunting party, armed, it must be remembered, not with flintlocks, 

 but with the less effective bow and arrow. According to Prince 

 Wied, the antlers were contributed by different hunting parties at 

 different times as offerings to ensure " good medicin " on future 

 occasions. He also remarks that the strength of the party making 

 the offering was marked in red strokes on the antlers. Long after 

 it had disappeared many a camp-fireside legend busied itself with 

 this curious pyramid, increasing its altitude, it is needless to say, to 



