The Bison and Ox Family. 325 



stood still in apparent wonderment. Presently the 

 wounded animal fell, and the companions, smelling its 

 blood, gathered round it and tried to make it rise, and 

 even lick its wounds ; or they went on grazing, apparently 

 thinking that their companion had lain down to rest. 

 ^Meanwhile the hunter's rifle was busy, shot upon shot 

 was heard, and victim after victim fell, until either be- 

 cause there were no more to kill, or because he was sur- 

 feited with slaughter, he rose and surveyed his conquest. 



"The Buffalo was a difficult animal to kill. A ball 

 upon its shaggy head or neck fell off as from a panoply of 

 steel. Wounds in the nether portion of the body were 

 rarely fatal. It was only in the region of the heart that 

 the blow was sure, and the Indians and white hunters 

 sought out this region in all their attacks. The animal 

 was not ordinarily pugnacious or dangerous, and only when 

 smarting with its wounds would it turn upon its enemy. 

 But its rage at such times made it a formidable adversary, 

 and lucky was the hunter who could keep out of its way. ' ' 



With the opening of the Northern Pacific Railroad in 

 1880, the white man joined with the Indian in the final 

 work of destruction ; and by February 1883, the great 

 northern herd was also practically annihilated. 



Richard Lydecker, in his Royal Natural History, quotes 

 Mr. Hornaday as sajnng: "The systematic slaughter of 

 the Bisons for the sake of their flesh and hide began in 

 1830, and the ever increasing demand for ''buffalo robes," 

 as the dressed skins were termed, soon began to tell on their 

 numbers; but it Avas not until the completion of the Kan- 

 sas branch of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1871 that the 

 great slaughter commenced, which attained its height in 

 1873; when it is believed that every hide which came into 

 the market represented four Bisons killed. ' ' Some idea of 

 the wanton destruction of that time, due to the avarice of 

 the hunter and trapper and the reckless cruelty of the 

 sportsman, may be formed from the fact, that one of the 

 three roads penetrating the southern Bison country car- 

 ried, in 1873, nearly a quarter of a million skins, more 

 than a million and a half pounds of meat, and fully two 

 and a quarter million pounds of bones. 



Referring to the numerical strength of the American 

 Bison in 1866, Catlin in his "North American Indians" 



