492 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



trip, and found them all rather thin in flesh. Plainsmen who claimed 

 to know, said that all the buffaloes we saw had wintered in that locality, 

 and had not had time to get fat. The annual migration from the south 

 had not yet begun, or rather had not yet brought any of the southern 

 buffaloes that far north." 



In a few years the tide of overland travel became so great, that the 

 buffaloes learned to keep away from the dangers of the trail, and many 

 a pioneer has crossed the plains without ever seeing a live buffalo. 



4. The division of the universal herd. — Until the building of the first 

 transcontinental railway made it possible to market the " buffalo prod- 

 uct," buffalo hunting as a business was almost wholly in the hands of 

 the Indians. Even then, the slaughter so far exceeded the natural in- 

 crease that the narrowing limits of the buffalo range was watched with 

 anxiety, and the ultimate extinction of the species confidently predicted. 

 Even without railroads the extermination of the race would have 

 taken place eventually, but it would have been delayed perhaps twenty 

 years. With a recklessness of the future that was not to be expected 

 of savages, though perhaps perfectly natural to civilized white men, who 

 place the possession of a dollar above everything else, the Indians 

 with one accord singled out the coivs for slaughter, because their robes 

 and their flesh better suited the fastidious taste of the noble redskin. 

 The building of the Union Pacific Eailway began at Omaha in 1865, 

 and during that year 40 miles were constructed. The year following 

 saw the completion of 265 miles more, and in 1867 245 miles were 

 added, which brought it to Cheyenne. In 1868, 350 miles were built, 

 and in 1869 the entire line was open to traffic. 



In 1867, when Maj. J. W. Powell and Prof. A. H. Thompson crossed 

 the plains by means of the Union Pacific Eailway as far as it was con- 

 structed and thence onward by wagon, they saw during the entire trip 

 only one live buffalo, a solitary old bull, wandering aimlessly along the 

 south bank of the Platte River. 



The completion of the Union Pacific Eailway divided forever the 

 buffaloes of the United States into two great herds, which thereafter 

 became known respectively as the northern and southern herds. Both 

 retired rapidly and permanently from the railway, and left a strip of 

 country over 50 miles wide almost uninhabited by them. Although 

 many thousand buffaloes were killed by hunters who made the Union 

 Pacific Eailway their base of operations, the two great bodies retired 

 north and south so far that the greater number were beyond striking- 

 distance from that line. 



5. The destruction of the southern herd. — The geographical center of 

 the great southern herd during the few years of its separate existence 

 previous to its destruction was very near the present site of Garden 

 City, Kansas. On the east, even as late as 1872, thousands of buffaloes 

 ranged within 10 miles of Wichita, which was then the headquarters 



