THE AMERICAN BISONS. 217 



pursuits."* He adds that the buffalo is very intractable, and is not known 

 to have been domesticated by the Indians.! 



Sibley observes, in speaking of the buffalo of the Red River of the North, 

 that " in spring the calves are easily weaned, and when trained to labor 

 become quite useful. One farmer, who had broken a bull to the plough, 

 performed the whole work of the field with his aid alone." $ 



Mr. Robert Wickliffe, in a letter addressed to Messrs. Audubon and Bach- 

 man, dated Lexington, Kentucky, November 6, 1843, has quite fully recorded 

 the results of his own efforts at domesticating the buffalo. He says : " The 

 herd of buffalo I now possess have descended from one or two cows that I 

 purchased from a man who brought them from the country called the Upper 

 Missouri ; I have had them for about thirty years, but from giving them 

 away and the occasional killing of them by mischievous persons, as well as 

 other causes, my whole stock does not exceed ten or twelve. I have some- 

 times confined them in separate parks from other cattle, but generally they 



herd and feed with my stock of farm cattle On getting possession of 



the tame buffaloes I endeavored to cross them as much as I could with my 

 common cows, to which experiment I found the tame bull unwilling to 

 accede, and he was always shy of the buffalo cow, but the buffalo bull was 

 willing to breed with the common cow.' 



" From the domestic cow I have crossed half-breeds, one of which was a 

 heifer ; this I put with a domestic bull, and it produced a bull calf. This I 

 castrated and it made a very fine steer, and when killed produced very fine 

 beef. I bred from the same heifer several calves, and then, that the experi- 

 ment might be perfect, I put one of them to the buffalo bull, and she brought 

 me a bull calf, which I raised to be a very fine large animal, perhaps the 

 only one in the world of his blood, namely, a three-quarter, half-quarter, and 

 a half-quarter of the common blood. After making these experiments, I 

 have left them to propagate their breed themselves, so that I have only had 

 a few half-breeds, and they always proved the same, even by a buffalo bull. 

 The full-blood is not as large as the improved stock, but as large as the ordi- 

 nary stock of the country. The crossed or half-blood are larger than either 



* Gallatin (Albert), A Synopsis of the Indian Tribes of North America; Trans. Amer. Antiquarian 

 Soc, Vol. II, p. 139, footnote. 



t Dr. Woodhonse states that he had seen " a few of these animals tamed in the Creek nation, running 

 with the common cattle."— Sitoreaves's Report of an Expert, down the Zuni ami Colorado Hirers, p. 57. 



t Sibley (II. H.), in Schoolcraft's History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United 

 States, Vol. IV, p. 110. 



