THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON, 505 



'The latest information I have been able to obtain in regard to the dis- 

 appearance of this northern band has been kindly furnished by Prof. 

 0. A. Kenaston, who in 1881, and also in 1883, made a thorough explo- 

 ration of the country between Winnipeg and Fort Edmonton for the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway Company. His four routes between the two 

 points named covered a vast scope of country, several hundred miles 

 in width. In 1881, at Moose Jaw, 75 miles southeast of The Elbow of 

 the South Saskatchewan, he saw a party of Cree Indians, who had just 

 arrived from the northwest with several carts laden with fresh buffalo 

 meat. At Fort Saskatchewan, on the North Saskatchewan River, just 

 above Edmonton, he saw a party of English sportsmen who had re- 

 cently been hunting on the Battle and Red Deer Rivers, between Ed- 

 monton and Fort Kalgary, where they had found buffaloes, and killed 

 as many as they cared to slaughter. In one afternoon they killed four- 

 teen, and could have killed more had they been more blood-thirsty. In 

 1883 Professor Kenaston found the fresh trail of a band of twenty-five 

 or thirty buffaloes at The Elbow of the South Saskatchewan. Excepting 

 in the above instances he saw no further traces of buffalo, nor did he 

 hear of the existence of any in all the country he explored. In 1881 

 he saw many Cree Indians at Fort Qu'Appelle in a starving condition, 

 and there was no pemmican or buffalo meat at the fort. In 1883, how- 

 ever, a little pemmican found its way to Winnipeg, where it sold at 15 

 cents per pound; an exceedingly high price. It had been made that 

 year, evidently in the month of April, as he purchased it in May for his 

 journey. 



The first really alarming impressiou made on our northern herd was 

 by the Sioux Indians, who very speedily exterminated that portion of 

 it which had previously covered the country lying between the North 

 Platte and a line drawn from the center of Wyomiug to the center of 

 Dakota. All along the Missouri River from Bismarck to Fort Benton, 

 and along the Yellowstone to the head of navigation, the slaughter 

 went bravely on. All the Indian tribes of that vast region — Sioux, 

 Cheyennes, Crows, Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, Assinniboines, Gros 

 Ventres, and Shoshones — found their most profitable business and 

 greatest pleasure (next to scalping white settlers) in hunting the buffalo. 

 It took from eight to twelve buffalo hides to make a covering for one 

 ordinary teepee, and sometimes a single teepee of extra size required 

 from twenty to twenty-five hides. 



The Indians of our northwestern Territories marketed about seventy- 

 five thousand buffalo robes every year so long as the northern herd 

 was large enough to afford the supply. If we allow that for every skin 

 sold to white traders four others were used in supplying their own 

 wants, which must be considered a very moderate estimate, the total 

 number of buffalos slaughtered annually by those tribes must have 

 been about three hundred and seventy-five thousand. 



The end which so many observers had for years been predicting 



