The Bison or American Buffalo. 231 



stroyed by the settlers, but by the railways and the skin 

 hunters. 



After the ending of the Civil War, the work of con- 

 structing trans-continental railway lines was pushed foward 

 with the utmost vigor. These supplied cheap and indis- 

 pensable, but hitherto wholly lacking, means of transpor- 

 tation to the hunters ; and at the same time the demand 

 for buffalo robes and hides became very great, while the 

 enormous numbers of the beasts, and the comparative ease 

 with which they were slaughtered, attracted throngs of ad- 

 venturers. The result was such a slaughter 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 

 American continent ; and no herd of a hundred individ- 

 uals has been in existence since 1884. 



The first great break followed the building of the Union 

 Pacific Railway. All the buffaloes of the middle region 

 were then destroyed, and the others were split into two 

 vast sets of herds, the northern and the southern. The 

 latter were destroyed first, about 1878 ; the former not until 

 1 883. My own chief experience with buffaloes was obtained 

 in the latter year, among small bands and scattered individ- 

 uals, near my ranch on the Little Missouri ; I have related 

 it elsewhere. But two of my kinsmen were more fortunate, 

 and took part in the chase of these lordly beasts when the 

 herds still darkened the prairie as far as the eye could see. 



