THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 509 



carcasses, or bones. Such was the case in 1886 in the country lying 

 between the Missouri and the Yellowstone, northwest of Miles City. 

 Go wherever we might, on divides, into bad lands, creek-bottoms, or on 

 the highest, plateaus, we always found the inevitable and omnipresent 

 grim and ghastly skeleton, with hairy head, dried-up and shriveled 

 nostrils, half-skinned legs stretched helplessly upon the gray turf, and 

 the bones of the body bleached white as chalk. 



The year 1881 witnessed the same kind of a stampede for the north- 

 ern buffalo range that occurred just ten years previously in the south. 

 At that time robes were worth from two to three times as much as they 

 ever had been in the south, the market was very active, and the success- 

 ful hunter was sure to reap a rich reward as long as the buffaloes lasted. 

 At that time the hunters and hide-buyers estimated that there were 

 five hundred thousand buffaloes within a radius of 150 miles of Miles 

 City, and that there were still in the entire northern herd not far from 

 one million head. The subsequent slaughter proved that these esti- 

 mates were probably not far from the truth. In that year Fort Custer 

 was so nearly overwhelmed by a passing herd that a detachment of sol- 

 diers was ordered out to turn the herd away from the post. In 1882 

 an immense herd appeared on the high, level plateau on the north 

 side of the Yellowstone which overlooks Miles City and Fort Keogh 

 in the valley below. A squad of soldiers from the Fifth Infantry 

 was sent up on the bluff, aud in less than an hour had killed euough 

 buffaloes to load six four-mule teams with meat. In 188G there were 

 still about twenty bleaching skeletons lyiug in a group on the edge of 

 this plateau at the point where the road from the ferry reaches the level, 

 but all the rest had been gathered up. 



In 1882 there were, so it is estimated by men who were in the country, 

 no fewer than five thousand white hunters and skinners on the northern 

 range. Lieut. J. M. T. Partello declares that " a cordon of camps, from 

 the Upper Missouri, where it bends to the west, stretched toward the set- 

 ting sun as far as the dividing line of Idaho, completely blocking in the 

 great ranges of the Milk River, the Musselshell, Yellowstone, and the 

 Marias, aud rendering it impossible for scarcely a single bison to escape 

 through the chain of sentinel camps to the Canadian northwest. Hunt- 

 ers of Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado drove the poor hunted ani- 

 mals north, directly into the muzzles of the thousands of repeaters ready 

 to receive them. * * * Only a few short years ago, as late as 1883, 

 a herd of about seventy-five thousand crossed the Yellowstone River 

 a few miles south of here [Fort Keogh], scores of Iucliaus, pot-hunters, 

 aud white butchers on their heels, bound for the Canadian dominions, 

 where they hoped to find a haven of safety. Alas! not five thousand 

 of that mighty mass ever lived to reach the British border line." 



It is difficult to say (at least to the satisfaction of old hunters) which 

 were the most famous hunting grounds on the northern range. Lieu- 

 tenant Partello states that when he hunted in the great triangle bounded 



