188 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



F. Gerard, the well-known Cree interpreter, whose twenty-five years' experi- 

 ence in the Upper Missouri country, nearly every pari of which he had vis- 

 ited, together with his having been formerly an agent of the American Fur 

 Company, had given him much valuable information respecting nut only the 

 Cur trade hut the former range and the recent great decrease in numbers of 

 many of the larger mammals of that region. From him I learned that in 

 l s ">7 the trade in buffalo-robes at the principal posts on the Upper Missouri 

 was about as follows: At Fort Benton, the number received amounted to 

 3,600 hales, or 36,000 robes ; at Fort Union. 2,700 to 3.000 bales, or about 

 30,000 robes. At Forts Clarke and Berthoud, 500 bales at each post, or 

 about 1(1,000 robes; at Fort Pierre, 1,900 bales, or 10,000 robes; giving a 

 total for one year of about 75,000 robes, which he informed me was about the 

 annual average at that period. Allowing that the Indians retained only as 

 many more for their own use, and estimating as before that one robe rep- 

 resents the destruction of three buffaloes, gives lour hundred and fifty thou- 

 sand as the number killed by a portion only of the Upper Missouri Indians 

 in one third of a year, or over a million and a third annually. To this 

 number, as already noticed, musl be added the number killed by the Indians 

 to the northward and southward of this region, as well as the great numbers 

 destroyed by the Red River half-breeds and by white men. 



Respecting the number killed by the Red River hunters, I have met with 

 no satisfactory Statistics, but that il must have been immense is evident from 

 the number of persons engaged in their hunting expeditions. Mr. Ross, in 

 his history of the lied River Settlement, States that the number of carts as- 

 sembled for the first trip in 1820 was live hundred and forty. Subsequently 

 the Dumber regularly increased to one thousand two hundred and ten in 

 IS III. Iu his description of the hunt of this year, he states that the number 

 of hunters engaged was six hundred and twenty for two months, who were 

 accompanied by si\ hundred and fifty women, and three hundred and sixty 

 boys and girls, the party numbering alto-ether sixteen hundred and thirty 

 souls. The party was armed with seven hundred and forty guns, anil had 

 with them eleven hundred and fifty eight horses and five hundred and 

 eighty-six draught oxen, with other equipments in proportion. During the 

 firsl d.i\ of the hunt qo less than thirteen hundred and seventy-five buffalo 

 tongue- were brought into camp, and during the firsl two races not less than 

 twenty-five hundred animals were billed. Of these he estimates thai less 

 than one third were property utilized, as he considers that Beven hundred and 



