THE AMERICAN BISONS. 153 



respecting this subject, and dated Fort Dodge, Kansas, July 16, 1875: "In 

 regard to the buffalo, I would say that when I first came to this post, in 

 1869, the buffaloes ranged in almost countless herds from about where the 

 town of Great Bend, on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, now is, 

 to Fort Lyon, Colorado, and from the Platte River to the Red River of Texas. 

 Throughout this range you might travel for days and scarcely ever be out 

 of sight of buffaloes. This condition remained up to the summer and au- 

 tumn of 1873, when the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe was completed to 

 this point. Buffalo-hunting for their hides then became quite an industry 

 in this neighborhood, and hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in this 

 vicinity, so that at the present time a buffalo is a rare sight within two hun- 

 dred miles of Fort Dodge." Dr. Tremaine gives the principal range of the 

 Southern Herd of buffaloes as being now south of the Kansas line, between 

 the North Fork of the Canadian and the Red River of Texas, and from about 

 the 100th meridian to the eastern border of New Mexico. " A few small 

 herds," he says, wander northward from the main body as far as the Platte 

 country, passing along near the eastern boundary of Colorado. Some are 

 also found further to the southward between the Red and Pecos Rivers. 

 He speaks of the herds as having become very much restricted in range 

 and as very much "thinned out." He says: "As regards their present 

 numbers, I was told by an officer of cavalry who had scouted last sum- 

 mer and winter through the region I have indicated, that during his 

 wanderings through this part of the country, which is now considered 

 the principal habitat of the Southern Herd, he saw fewer buffaloes than 

 he had seen in a trip from Fort Hays to Fort Dodge (eighty-six miles) in 

 1872." 



Recent reports from Kansas and Colorado agree in respect to the enor- 

 mous destruction of buffaloes throughout Kansas, incidentally referred to 

 above by Dr. Tremaine. While the range seems not to have been as yet 

 very materially circumscribed during the last four or five years, the reduc- 

 tion in numbers has been immense, and the vast herds existing there five 

 years since are now represented by only scattered remnants, so fearfully 

 have their ranks been depleted. 



The incessant persecution of the buffalo along the lines of the two great 

 Kansas railways has had the effect to crowd them southward and southwest- 

 ward into Western Texas. In this Indian-infested region, too remote from 

 railroads to render it feasible for the hunter to follow them for their hides 



