BUFFALO. 



143 



Eailroad, live in lodges of cotton cloth furnished by the 

 Indian Bureau. They use much civilised clothing, bedding, 

 boxes, ropes, &c. For these luxuries they pay in robes ; 

 and as the buffalo range is far from wide, and their yearly 

 ' crop ' small, more than half of it goes to market. 



The wilder Indians of the Upper Missouri yet use many 

 skins, though their contact with whites has given them 

 a taste for civilised luxuries for which robes must be paid. 



I have no personal knowledge of the proportion, but 

 am informed, by persons who profess to know, that about 

 one robe is sent to market for every five skins. 



The yearly crop of robes already estimated represents 

 their dead buffalo as follows : 



Kiowas, Comanches, Cheyennes, Arrapahoes, Indians 



whose crop goes over A. T. and S. Fe R. . 

 Sioux at Agencies Union Pacific Railroad 

 Indians of Upper Missouri ..... 



In three years, 1872-73-74 



Add total killed by whites in those years . 



Sent to 

 market 



19,000 

 10,000 

 55,000 



Represent 

 dead buffalo 



114,000 



16,000 



275,000 



Total 



405,000 



1,215,000 

 3,158,730 



4,373,730 



Making the enormous, almost incredible, number of 

 nearly four and a half millions of buffalo killed in 

 the short space of three years. Nor is this all. No 

 account has been taken of the immense number of 

 buffalo killed by hunters, who came into the range from 

 the wide frontier, and took their skins out by waggons ; of 

 the immense numbers killed every year by hunters from 

 New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and the Indian territory ; 

 of the numbers killed by the Uetes, Bannocks, and other 

 mountain tribes, who make every year their fall hunt on 

 the plains. 



Nothing has been said of the numbers sent from the 

 Indian territory, by other railroads than the Atchison, 



