OXEN. 195 



as 1870 there were certainly several million head still living. During the period 

 from 1730 to 1830 the desultory warfare had, however, completely driven away 

 the bison from the eastern portion of the United States, and also from the districts 

 to the westward of the Rocky Mountains, where they were never very numerous. 

 With the year 1830, Mr. Hornaday considers, began the era of the systematic 

 slaughter of the bison for the sake of its flesh and hides ; and the ever-increasing 

 demand for " buffalo-robes," as the dressed skins are termed, soon began to tell on 

 its numbers. Up to the year 1869 the bison occupied one large and continuous 

 area ; but the completion in that year of the Union Pacific Railway cut this area 

 in twain, and at the same time divided the great herd into a northern and southern 

 moiety. The headquarters of the southern herd were somewhere about the situation 

 where Garden City, Kansas, now stands. Although the area occupied by this herd 

 was greatly inferior in size to that of the northern herd, yet the number of bison on 

 it was vastly greater, being estimated in 1871 as at least three, and probably nearly 

 four, millions. That year saw the completion of the Kansas branch of the Union 

 Pacific, and the great slaughter which thereupon commenced attained its height in 

 1873. At the latter date the destruction of these animals was so wasteful and so 

 wanton that it is believed every hide which came into the market represented four 

 individuals killed. The destruction was of course greatest along the lines of 

 railways, and on one of the three railways penetrating the southern bison-country, 

 nearly a quarter of a million skins, more than a million and a half pounds of 

 meat, and fully two and a quarter millions of pounds of bones, were carried during 

 the year in question. At this time the whole country was poisoned with the 

 effluvia from the decaying carcases ; and it was a common practice to drive away 

 the animals w T hen they came to drink till they became so maddened with thirst 

 that they would come within easy shooting distance. Mr. Hornaday states that it 

 is probably a safe estimate to say that not " fewer than fifty thousand bison have 

 been killed for their tongues alone, and the most of these are undoubtedly charge- 

 able against white men, who ought to have known better." Over three and a half 

 million individuals are estimated to have been slaughtered in the southern herd 

 between 1872 and 1874. In the latter year the hunters became alarmed at the 

 great diminution in the number of the bison, and by the end of 1875 the great 

 southern herd had ceased to exist as a body. The main body of the survivors, 

 some ten thousand strong, fled into the wilder parts of Texas, where they had 

 been gradually shot down, till a few years ago some two or three score remained 

 as the sole survivors of the three or four millions of the great southern herd ; and 

 in the year 1880 bison-shooting was finally abandoned, as being no longer a profit- 

 able trade. 



With regard to the northern herd, of which the number in 1870 was approxi- 

 mately estimated at a million and a half, distributed over a very wide tract of 

 country, it appears that the portion living in British North America was the first 

 to be exterminated. Before the year 1880 the numbers of the herd had been 

 greatly reduced in Dakota and Wyoming by the Sioux Indians ; but the commence- 

 ment of the final destruction was heralded by the opening in that year of the 

 Northern Pacific Railway, which traversed the heart of the bison-country. The 

 herd was, indeed, hemmed in on three sides by Sioux armed with breech-loading 



