262 Hunting Trips on the Prairie 



years ago the great herds, containing many mil- 

 lions of individuals, ranged over a vast expanse of 

 country that stretched in an unbroken line from 

 near Mexico to far into British America; in fact, 

 over almost all the plains that are now known as 

 the cattle region. But since that time their destruc- 

 tion has gone on with appalling rapidity and 

 thoroughness; and the main factors in bringing it 

 about have been the railroads, which carried hordes 

 of hunters into the land and gave them means to 

 transport their spoils to market. Not quite twenty 

 years since, the range was broken in two, and the 

 buffalo herds in the middle slaughtered or thrust 

 aside; and thus there resulted two ranges, the 

 northern and the southern. The latter was the 

 larger, but being more open to the hunters, was the 

 sooner to be depopulated; and the last of the great 

 southern herds was destroyed in 1878, though scat- 

 tered bands escaped and wandered into the desolate 

 wastes to the southwest. Meanwhile equally sav- 

 age war was waged on the northern herds, and five 

 years later the last of these was also destroyed or 

 broken up. The bulk of this slaughter was done 

 in the dozen years from 1872 to 1883; never before 

 in all history were so many large wild animals of 

 one species slain in so short a space of time. 



The extermination of the buffalo has been a veri- 

 table tragedy of the animal world. Other races of 

 animals have been destroyed within historic times, 

 but these have been species of small size, local dis- 

 tribution, and limited numbers, usually found in 



