l^' s THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



This, tni). is aside from those killed in "wanton cruelty, miscalled sport, and 

 for food for the frontier resident-." 



Another report of about the Bame date, referring to a locality about one 

 hundred miles southeast of Fort Dodge, says : ••Thousands upon thousands 

 of buffalo hides are being brought here [Wichita. Kansas] by hunters. In 

 places whole acres of ground are covered with their hides, spread out. with 

 their fleshy side up, to dry. It is estimated that there are, south of the Ar- 

 kansas and west of Wichita, from one to two thousand men shooting buffalo 

 for their hides alone."* Another account! states that during the season of 

 L872— 73 not less than two hundred thousand buffaloes were killed in Kansas 

 merely lor their hides.:): It is also stated that in 1874, on "the south fork of 

 the Republican, upon one spot, were to he counted six thousand five hundred 

 carcasses of buffaloes, from which the hides only had been stripped. The meat 

 was not touched, but left to rot on the plains. At a short distance hundreds 

 more of carcasses were discovered, and. in fact, the whole plains were dotted 

 with the putrefying remains of buffaloes. It was estimated that there were 

 at least two thousand hunters encamped along the plains hunting the buffalo. 

 One party of sixteen stated that they hail killed twenty-eight hundred dur- 

 ing the past summer, the hides only being utilized." The same account says 

 that the extent of the slaughter of the buffalo for their hides was so great 

 that the market for them became glutted to such an extent that whereas a 

 few years before they were worth three dollars apiece at the railroad stations. 

 skins of bulls would now bring only a dollar, and those of cows and calves 

 Bixty and forty cents respectively . § While on the plains in 1871, 1 had an 

 opportunity of witnessing some of the evidences of the wholesale slaughter 

 of buffaloes lor their hides, as practised at that lime along the line of the 



Kansas Pacific Railway in Northwestern Kansas, where sometimes several 

 scores and even hundreds of decaying carcasses, from which nothing but the 

 hides had been taken, could he seen from a single point of view. During 

 the season of L871 meat and bides representing over twenty thousand indi- 

 viduals were shipped over the Kansas Pacific Railway. 



Mr. W. N. By ers, editor of the "Rocky Mountain New-,'' in referring to this 

 wholesale slaughter (in the letter previously quoted), characterizes it as 



t / Ort. 16, 1878. 



J <•' i \i c \|. i - in In- MS liat ono hundred and eight] thousand hides are reported 



to havi |..i--. .| over the Uchi Topeka, and 9 : done in a tingle Mason. 



I. I ■, . i. ionce and Industry foi 1874, p 



