484 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



herd, which is at once driven pell-mell to and over the precipice. 

 Meanwhile a number of Indians have taken their way by means of 

 routes known to them, and succeed in reaching the canon through 

 which the crippled buffalo are running- in all directions. These are 

 quickly killed, so that out of a very considerable band of buffalo 

 but few escape, many having been killed by the fall and others dis- 

 patched while limping off. This mode of hunting is sometimes in- 

 dulged in by harum-scarum white men, but it is done more for deviltry 

 than anything else. I have never known of its practice by army officers 

 or persons who professed to hunt buffalo as a sport." 



VI. Hunting on Snoivslioes. — "In the dead of the winters," says Mr. 

 Catlin,* "which are very long and severely cold in this country, where 

 horses can not be brought into the chase with any avail, the Indian 

 runs upon the surface of the snow by aid of his show-shoes, which buoy 

 him up, while the great weight of the buffaloes sinks them down to the 

 middle of their sides, and, completely stopping their progress, insures 

 them certain and easy victims to the bow or lance of their pursuers. 

 The snow in these regions often lies during the wiuter to the depth of 

 3 and 4 feet, being blown "away from the tops and sides of the hills in 

 many places, which are left bare for the buffaloes to graze upon, whilst 

 it is drifted in the hollows and ravines to a ver}^ great depth, and ren- 

 dered almost entirely impassable to these huge animals, which, when 

 closely pursued by their enemies, endeavor to plunge through it, but 

 are soon wedged in and almost unable to move, where they fall an easy 

 prey to the Indian, who runs up lightly upon his snow-shoes and drives 

 his lance to their hearts. The skins are then stripped off, to be sold to 

 the fur traders, and the carcasses left to be devoured by the wolves. 

 [Owing to the fact that the winter's supply of meat was procured and 

 dried in the summer and fall months, the flesh of all buffalo kdled in 

 winter was allowed to become a total loss.] This is the season in which 

 the greatest number of these animals are destroyed for their robes; 

 they are most easily killed at this time, and their hair or fur, being 

 longer and more abundant, gives greater value to the robe." 



IV. Progress of the Extermination. 



1. The Period of Desultory Destruction, from 1730 to 1830. 



The disappearance of the buffalo from all the country east of the 

 Mississippi was one of the inevitable results of the advance of civiliza- 

 tion. To the early pioneers who went forth into the wilderness to 

 wrestle with nature for the necessities of life, this valuable animal 

 might well have seemed a gift direct from the hand of Providence. 

 During the first few years of the early settler's life in a new country, 

 the few domestic animals he had brought with him were far too valua- 



* North American Indians, I, 253. 



