502 EEPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



Tbe maiu body oi' the fugitives which survived the great slaughter of 

 1871-'74 continued to attract hunters who were very "hard up," who 

 pursued them, often at the risk of their own lives, even into the terrible 

 Llauo Estacado. In Montana in 1886 I met on a cattle ranch an ex- 

 buffalo-hunter from Texas, named Harry Andrews, who from 1874 to 

 187G continued in pursuit of the scattered remnants of the great south- 

 ern herd through the Pan-handle of Texas and on into the Staked Plain 

 itself. By that time the market had become completely overstocked 

 with robes, and the prices received by Andrews and other hunters was 

 only 65 cents each for cow robes and $1.15 each for bull robes, deliv- 

 ered on the range, the purchaser providing for their transportation to 

 the railway. But even at those prices, which were so low as to make 

 buffalo killing seem like downright murder, Mr. Andrews assured me 

 that he " made big money." On one occasion, when he " got a stand " 

 on a large bunch of buffalo, he fired one hundred and fifteen shots from 

 one spot, and killed sixty-three buffaloes in about an hour. 



In 1880 buffalo hunting as a business ceased forever in the South- 

 west, and so far as can be ascertained, but one successful hunt for robes 

 has been made in that region since that time. That occurred in the 

 fall and winter of 1887, about 100 miles north of Tascosa, Texas, when 

 two parties, one of which was under tbe leadership of Lee Howard, at- 

 tacked the only band of buffaloes left alive in the Southwest, and which 

 at that time numbered about two hundred head. The two parties killed 

 fifty-two buffaloes, of which ten skins were preserved entire for mount- 

 ing. Of the remaining forty-two, the heads were cut off and preserved 

 for mounting and the skins were prepared as robes.. The mountable 

 skins were finally sold at the following prices : Young cows, $50 to $60; 

 adult cows, $75 to $100; adult bull, $150. The unmounted heads sold 

 as follows : Young bulls, $25 to $30 ; adult bulls, $50 ; young cows, $10 

 to $12; adult cows, $15 to $25. A few of the choicest robes sold at 

 $20 each, and the remainder, a lot of twenty eight, of prime quality and 

 in excellent condition, were purchased by the Hudson's Bay Fur Com- 

 pany for $350. 



Such was the end of the great southern herd. In 1871 it contained 

 certainly no fewer than three million buffaloes, and by the beginning of 

 1875 its existence as a herd had utterly ceased, and nothing but scat- 

 tered, fugitive bands remained. 



7. The Destruction of the Northern Herd. — Until the building of the 

 Northern Pacific Railway there were but two noteworthy outlets for 

 the buffalo robes that were taken annually in the Northwestern Terri- 

 tories of the United States. The principal one was the Missouri River, 

 and the Yellowstone River was the other. Down these streams the 

 hides were transported by steam-boats to the nearest railway shipping 

 point. For fifty years prior to the building of the Northern Pacific 

 Railway in 1880-'82, the number of robes marketed every year by way 

 of these streams was estimated variously at from fifty to one hundred 



