322 UNGULATA. 



burning plains of northeast Mexico, westward across the 

 Rocky Mountains into New Mexico, Utah and Idaho, and 

 northward across vast treeless wastes to the bleak and in- 

 hospitable shores of the Great Slave Lake itself. 



"Of all the quadrupeds that ever lived upon the 

 earth, probably no other species has ever marched in such 

 innumerable hosts as those of the American Bison. It 

 would have been as easy to count or estimate the number of 

 leaves in the forest, as to calculate the number of Bison 

 living at any time during the history of this species prior 

 to 1870. Even in Central Africa, which has been exceed- 

 ingly prolific in great herds of game, it is probable that all 

 the herds taken together on an equal area, would never 

 have more than equalled the total number of Bison in this 

 country fifty years ago." But as Captain Chittenden 

 says : ' Marvelous as were the numbers of the Buffalo, their 

 complete disappearance from the earth in less than a gen- 

 eration is more marvelous still. ' 



When the Union Pacific Railroad, in 1869, cut the 

 range of the Bison in two, the southern, or Texas, herd, in 

 the regions of the staked plains, numbered nearly four 

 million individuals; and there were over one and a half 

 million in the northern, or Yellowstone, herd on the upper 

 Missouri, and to the northward. It is estimated that over 

 three and one-half million of the southern herd were 

 slaughtered between 1872 and 1874, and by the end of 

 1875 this great herd had ceased to exist as a body ; the sur- 

 vivors, numbering about ten thousand, fleeing to the wild- 

 est parts of Texas where they were gradually exterminated. 



Of the northern herd those living in British Columbia 

 were the first to be exterminated; and before 1880, the 

 herds in Dakota and Wyoming had also been greatly re- 

 duced by the Sioux Indians, who ate the flesh, ornamented 

 their dress with the hair, and used the hides of the Bison 

 to make their lodges, boats, shields, beds, clothes, moccasins, 

 bow-strings, saddles and halters, and the hoofs, horn and 

 bones for manufacturing an endless variety of other arti- 

 cles . Trutly, as Captain Chittenden says : * ' more than the 

 horse to the Arab, the camel to the pilgrim in the desert, 

 the reindeer to the Laplander, the seal to the Eskimo or 

 the elephant to the Hindoo, was the Buffalo to the trans- 

 Mississippi Indian. History affords no other example 



