466 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



So long as the buffalo remained in large herds their numbers gave 

 each individual a feeling of dependence upon his fellows and of general 

 security from harm, even in the presence of strange phenomena which 

 he could not understand. When he heard a loud report and saw a little 

 cloud of white smoke rising from a gully, a clump of sage-brush, or the 

 top of a ridge, 200 yards away, he wondered what it meant, and held 

 himself in readiness to follow his leader in case she should run away. 

 But when the leader of the herd, usually the oldest cow, fell bleeding 

 upon the ground, and no other buffalo promptly assumed the leadership 

 of the herd, instead of acting independently and fleeing from the alarm, 

 he merely did as he saw the others do, and waited his turn to be shot. 

 Latterly, however, when the herds were totally broken up, when the 

 few survivors were scattered in every direction, and it became a case 

 of every buffalo for himself, they became wild and wary, ever ready to 

 start off at the slightest alarm, and run indefinitely. Had they shown 

 the same wariness seventeen years ago that the survivors have mani- 

 fested during the last three or four years, there would now be a hun- 

 dred thousand head alive instead of only about three hundred in a wild 

 and unprotected state. 



Notwithstanding the merciless war that had been waged against the 

 buffalo for over a century by both whites and Indians, and the steady 

 decrease of its numbers, as well as its range, there were several million 

 head on foot, not only up to the completion of the Union Pacific Rail- 

 way, but as late as the year 1870. Up to that time the killing done by 

 white men had been chiefly for the sake of meat, the demand for robes 

 was moderate, and the Indians took annually less than one hundred 

 thousand for trading. Although half a million buffaloes were killed by 

 Indians, half-breeds, and whites, the natural increase was so very con- 

 siderable as to make it seem that the evil day of extermination was yet 

 far distant. 



But by a coincidence which was fatal to the buffalo, with the build- 

 ing of three lines of railway through the most populous buffalo country 

 there came a demand for robes and hides, backed up by an unlimited 

 supply of new and marvellously accurate breech-loading rifles and fixed 

 ammunition. And then followed a wild rush of hunters to the buffalo 

 country, eager to destroy as many head as possible in the shortest time. 

 For those greedy ones the chase on horseback was "too slow" and too 

 unfruitful. That was a retail method of killing, whereas they wanted 

 to kill by wholesale. From their point of view, the still-hunt or " sneak" 

 hunt was the method par excellence. If they could have obtained Gat- 

 ling guns with which to mow down a whole herd at a time, beyond a 

 doubt they would have gladly used them. 



The still-hunt was seen at its very worst in the years 1871, 1872, and 

 1873, on the southern buffalo range, and ten years later at its best in 

 Montana, on the northern. Let us first consider it at its best, which in 

 principle was bad enough. 



