8 HUNTING THE GRISLY. 



population of French Metis, or Half-breeds, 

 on the Red River, as well as to those daunt- 

 less and archtypical wanderers, the white 

 hunters and trappers. Their numbers slowly 

 diminished, but the decrease was very gradual 

 until after the Civil War. They were not de- 

 stroyed by the settlers, but by the railways 

 and the skin hunters. 



After the ending of the Civil War, the work 

 of constructing trans-continental railway lines 

 was pushed forward with the utmost vigor. 

 These supplied cheap and indispensable, but 

 hitherto wholly lacking, means of transpor- 

 tation to the hunters ; and at the same time 

 the demand for buffalo robes and hides be- 

 came very great, while the enormous numbers 

 of the beasts, and the comparative ease with 

 which they were slaughtered, attracted throngs 

 of adventurers. The result was such a slaugh- 

 ter of big game as the world had never before 

 seen ; never before were so many large animals 

 of one species destroyed in so short a time. 

 Several million buffaloes were slain. In fifteen 

 years from the time the destruction fairly 

 began the great herds were exterminated. In 

 all probability there are not now, all told, five 

 hundred head of wild buffaloes on the Ameri- 

 can continent; and no herd of a hundred 

 individuals has been in existence since 1884. 



The first great break followed the building 

 of the Union Pacific Railway. All the buffa- 

 loes of the middle region were then destroyed, 

 and the others were split into two vast sets of 

 herds, the northern and the southern. The 



