120 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 



ditional swarms of white hunters rendered possible. This 

 railroad divided the original great body of buffalo into 

 southern and northern herds. That was the beginning of 

 the end. Although the range of the northern herd was 

 about twice as extensive as that of the southern, the latter 

 contained probably twice as many buffaloes. Hornaday 

 estimates that in 1871 the southern herd contained about 

 3,000,000 animals, although most estimates give a higher 

 total than this. 



The slaughter of the southern herd began in 1871, and 

 reached its height two years later. From 1871 to 1873 the 

 wastefulness was prodigious. The number of skins that 

 were marketed bore no indication of the enormous slaughter. 

 In four short years the great southern herd was wiped out 

 of existence, and by 1875 it had ceased to exist. 



By the time the destruction of the northern herd com- 

 menced in earnest, buffaloes in Canada had already become 

 very scarce. The remnants of our former herds were assidu- 

 ously hunted by the Indians as they constituted their main 

 supply of food. As Hornaday states: ''The herds of British 

 America had been almost totally exterminated by the time 

 the final slaughter of our northern herd was inaugurated 

 by the opening of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1880. 

 The Canadian Pacific Railway played no part whatever in 

 the extermination of the buffalo in the British possessions, 

 for it had already taken place. The half-breeds of Mani- 

 toba, the Plains Crees of Qu'Appelle and the Blackfeet of 

 the South Saskatchewan country swept bare a great belt of 

 country stretching east and west between the Rocky Moun- 

 tains and Manitoba. The Canadian Pacific Railway found 

 only bleaching bones in the country through which it passed. 

 The buffalo had disappeared from that entire region before 

 1879 and left the Blackfeet Indians on the verge of star- 

 vation. A few thousand buffaloes still remained in the 

 country between the headwaters of the Battle River, be- 



