506 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



really began (with the northern herd) in 1876, two years after the great 

 annihilation which had taken place in the South, although it was Dot 

 uutil four years later that the slaughter became universal over the en- 

 tire range. It is very clearly indicated in the figures given in a letter 

 iroin Messrs. I. G. Baker & Co., of Fort Benton, Montana, to the writer, 

 dated October 6, 1887, which reads as follows : 



" There were sent East from the year 1876 from this point about sev- 

 enty-five thousand buffalo robes. In 1880 it had fallen to about twenty 

 thousand, in 1883 not more than five thousand, and in 1884 none 

 whatever. We are sorry we can not give you a better record, but the 

 collection of hides which exterminated the buffalo was from the Yellow- 

 stone country on the Northern Pacific, instead of northern Montana." 



The beginning of the final slaughter of our northern herd may be dated 

 about 1880, by which time the annual robe crop of the Indians had 

 diminished three-fourths, and when summer killing for hairless hides 

 began on a large scale. The range of this herd was surrounded on three 

 sides by tribes of Indians, armed with breech-loading rifles and abun- 

 dantly supplied with fixed ammunition. Up to the year 1880 the Indi- 

 ans of the tribes previously mentioned killed probably three times as 

 many buffaloes as did the white hunters, and had there not been a white 

 hunter in the whole Northwest the buffalo would have been extermi- 

 nated there just as surely, though not so quickly by perhaps ten years, 

 as actually occurred. Along the north, from the Missouri Eiver to the 

 British line, and from the reservation in northwestern Dakota to the 

 main divide of the Rocky Mountains, a distance of 550 miles as the 

 crow flies, the country was one continuous Indian reservation, inhab- 

 ited by eight tribes, who slaughtered buffalo in season and out of sea- 

 son, in winter for robes and in summer for hides and meat to dry. In 

 the Southeast was the great body of Sioux, and on the Southwest the 

 Crows and Northern Cheyennes, all engaged in the same relentless 

 warfare. It would have required a body of armed men larger than the 

 whole United States Army to have withstood this continuous hostile 

 pressure without ultimate annihilation. 



Let it be remembered, therefore, that the American Indian is as much 

 responsible for the extermination of our northern herd of bison as the 

 American citizen. I have yet to learn of an instance wherein an Indian 

 refrained from excessive slaughter of game through motives of economy, 

 or care for the future, or prejudice against wastefulness. From all ac- 

 counts the quantity of game killed by an Indian has always been limited 

 by two conditions only — lack of energy to kill more, or lack of more 

 game to be killed. White men delight in the chase, and kill for the 

 " sport " it yields, regardless of the effort involved. Indeed, to a genu- 

 ine sportsman, nothing in hunting is "sport" which is not obtained at 

 the cost of great labor. An Indian does not view the matter in that 

 light, and when he has killed enough to supply his wants, he stops, 

 because he sees no reason why he should exert himself any further. 



