176 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



other tributaries of the Arkansas, they were as numerous when these parts 

 were first visited by the early explorers as they have ever been since, and 

 that subsequent travellers have always found them in immense numbers at 

 all these points, the plains there literally swarming with them. 



In this connection two questions naturally arise, especially in the minds 

 of those not fully conversant with the subjeel : Have the buffalo really 

 decreased to the extent these statements imply? or have they simply been 

 driven in by the "encroachments of civilization" and concentrated upon a 

 smaller area? Not a few otherwise intelligent persons, on visiting Western 

 Kansas or Northern Texas and seeing the herds which there recently liter- 

 ally blackened the plains, at once adopt the latter hypothesis, and proclaim 

 that this vast amount of talk about the decrease of the buffalo is all 'non- 

 sense"; that they are jusl as numerous as ever, and are not at all decreas- 

 ing; that the extermination of the wolves and the Indians more than com- 

 pensates for the slaughter made by the professional hunters and by the 

 numerous sporting parties from the East.* The hunters often adopt the 

 same theory, from the most evident reason of self-interest, fearing that some 

 restrictions, which will act unfavorably upon their business, may lie placed 

 upon the wholesale anil indiscriminate slaughter now carried on; yet the 

 more candid are willing to admit that, at the present rate of destruction, the 

 buffalo can last but a few years longer. That such is the truth is evident on 

 a moment's reflection, when one lias a full knowledge of the facts. Lett 

 than fifty years ago the buffaloes swarmed in as great — or certainly in very 

 nearly as greal — numbers as at the present time, not only over the regions 

 they now frequent, but af the same linn over the Laramie Plains, overmuch 

 of the Green River Plateau, over the bead-waters of the Colorado and 

 Columbia Rivers, over the plains of the Yellowstone, and especially over the 

 vasl plains of the Red River of the North and the Grand Coteau de Mis- 

 souri; throughout all of which region they have been gradually extermi- 

 nated, leaving nothing to mark their former presence hut their rapidly crum- 

 bling Bkeletal remain- and their well-worn trails. Over much of this region 



* In Genera) Mi i MS noti ■ " 'I" bnfl ilo, already quoted, \\<- ~.>\ ~ " It is :i question whether tl»' 

 I ippi have diminished or increased in numbers to this time," and quotes General 

 Sheridan's opinion in confirmation of this view. II General Sheridan, the year after the Grand 



Duke <>f Russia hunted with him on the Kansas Pacific, told mo that In- thought there were probably »""'' 

 buffalo that year than then hadeverl II'- hail travelled through seventy miles of buffalo, II' 1 



thought the killing by strychnine of wolves tin- the hides had saved man} ImfTidn calves, and the hostilities 

 with Indians bad prevented them from banting as I'm I 



