NORTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES 341 



was slaughtered when, huddled together in the deep snow in 

 a great hollow known as the "Sink" in the White Mountains 

 of Union County, they were rendered nearly helpless. In the 

 following year a bull, a cow, and a calf were seen in the same 

 county, and the bull was killed the following year; it was be- 

 lieved to be the last wild buffalo to be shot in the State. The 

 cow and calf were hunted but eventually disappeared, and 

 with that the bison became extinct in Pennsylvania. The 

 story of the buffalo in West Virginia is very similar, but they 

 persisted a little longer. According to Garretson (1938), "the 

 last buffalo killed in Kanawha County, West Virginia, was in 

 1815, on the waters of the Little Sandy Creek of Elk River, 

 about twelve miles from Charleston. It is also recorded that 

 as late as 1 825 a buffalo cow and her calf were killed at Valley 

 Head, near the source of Tygart's River, and these are be- 

 lieved to be the last buffalo killed in the East. " Thus by 1825, 

 with the rapid opening up of the Middle West, and the 

 slaughter of these animals by the settlers, the buffalo had be- 

 come practically extinct east of the Mississippi, although a few 

 stragglers were killed in Wisconsin as late as 1833 (Cory, 1912). 



With the transcontinental Purveys followed by the trans- 

 continental railways in the two or three decades after 1830, 

 added to the expansion of the fur trade in the West, the slaugh- 

 ter of the vast herds beyond the Mississippi began in earnest. 

 "As early as 1840 the American Fur Company sent 67,000 

 robes to St. Louis and in 1848, 110,000 robes were received, 

 also 25,000 tongues." The skins of cows only were used for 

 robes, for those of bulls were too heavy. Hayden, of the U. S. 

 Geological Survey, who visited "the upper Missouri country 

 in 1850-1860, estimated the number of buffalo killed every 

 year to be about 250,000 of which 100,000 were for robes" 

 (Garretson). The railroad companies, advancing their lines 

 across the western country, employed hunters to keep their 

 camps supplied with buffalo meat, and the hunters likewise 

 shipped back incredible quantities of tongues and hides for 

 sale in the East. 



After the Civil War the army posts on the Plains increased 

 in number, and hunters on contract supplied the camps with 

 meat. In the seventies bison were recklessly slaughtered by 

 the hundreds of thousands, and for every one utilized Hornaday 

 (1889) believes two were wasted. Only the best hides and the 



