122 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 



year, evidently in the month of April, as he purchased it 

 in May for his journey." 



The main part of the northern herd was to be found in 

 the United States. Here the Indians of the Northwestern 

 territories were waging a relentless war on the animals. 

 Hornaday computes that the number of buffalo slaughtered 

 annually by those tribes must have been about 375,000. 

 The destruction of the northern herd began in earnest in 

 1876 and became universal over the entire range four years 

 later. By this time the annual export of robes from the 

 buffalo country had diminished three-fourths. The con- 

 struction of the Northern Pacific Railway hastened the ex- 

 termination of the herd. White and Indian hunters killed 

 as long as there were buffaloes to kill. The hunting season 

 which began in 1882 and ended in February, 1883, com- 

 pleted the annihilation of the great northern herd, and only j 

 a few thousand head were left broken in straggling bands. 

 The last shipment of robes was made from the Dakota 

 Territory in 1884. In 1889 Hornaday, on the basis of all 

 available data, estimated that the number of buffalo run- 

 ning wild and unprotected, was 635 animals ! Was the de- 

 struction of an animal ever so completely brought about? 

 It furnishes what is undoubtedly the most striking and ap- 

 palling example of the fate of an animal existing in appar- 

 ently inexhaustible numbers when left exposed to unre- 

 stricted slaughter, and should be a serious lesson to the 

 people of the country for all time. That the buffalo had to 

 go in the face of advancing civilization was inevitable. It 

 occupied lands that were to furnish homes and occupation 



fifty, and probably one hundred, hunters immediately started for the town of 

 Maple Creek, as being the nearest railway station on the Canadian Pacific — 

 then the only railway in what is now the province of Saskatchewan. 



It is gratifying to note that, so far as known, these sportsmen were unsuc- 

 cessful, and this small herd survived for several years. It is believed that it 

 increased to twenty or twenty-five, but eventually it was exterminated by 

 Indians. The fact that it increased at all indicates that, had it received 

 adequate protection, its descendants might be Uving to-day. — J. W. 



