526 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



of the buffalo in supplying all these wants of the red man, and it costs 

 several millions of dollars annually to accomplish the task. 



The following are the tribes which depended very largely — some al- 

 most wholly — upon the buffalo for the necessities, and many of the 

 luxuries, of their savage life until the Government began to support 

 them : 



Sioux 30,561 



Crow .' 3,226 



Piegan, Blood, and Blackfeet 2, 026 



Cheyenne 3,477 



Gros Ventres 856 



Arickaree 517 



Mandan 283 



Bannack and Shoshone 2,001 



Nez Perce" 1,460 



Assinniboine 1, 688 



Kiowas and Comanches 2, 756 



Arapahoes 1, 217 



Apache 332 



Ute 978 



Omaha 1,160 



Pawnee 998 



Winnebago 1,222 



Total 54,758 



This enumeration (from the census of 1886) leaves entirely out of con- 

 sideration many thousands of Indians living in the Indian Territory 

 and other portions of the Southwest, who drew an annual supply of 

 meat and robes from the chase of the buffalo, notwithstanding the fact 

 that their chief dependence was upon agriculture. 



The Indians of what was once the buffalo country are not starving 

 and freezing, for the reason that the United States Government supplies 

 them regularly -with beef and blankets in lieu of buffalo. Does any one 

 imagine that the Government could not have regulated the killing of 

 buffaloes, and thus maintained the supply, for far less money than it 

 now costs to feed and clothe those 54,758 Indians ? 



How is it with the Indians of the British Possessions to-day ? 



Prof. John Macoun writes as follows in his " Manitoba and the Great 

 Northwest," page 342 : 



"During the last three years [prior to 1883] the great herds have 

 been kept south of our boundary, and, as the result of this, our Indians 

 have been on the verge of starvation. When the hills were covered 

 with countless thousands [of buffaloes] in 1877, the Blackfeet were 

 dying of starvation in 1879." 



During the winter of 1886-'87, destitution and actual starvation pre- 

 vailed to an alarming extent among certain tribes of Indians in the 

 Northwest Territory who once lived bountifully on the buffalo. A ter- 

 rible tale of suffering in the Athabasca and Peace River country has 

 recently (1888) come to the minister of the interior of the Canadian 

 government, in the form of a petition signed by the bishop of that dio- 

 cese, six clergymen and missionaries, and several justices of the peace. 

 It sets forth that " owing to the destruction of game, the Indians, both 

 last winter and last summer, have been in a state of starvation. They 

 are now in a complete state of destitution, and are utterly unable to pro- 

 vide themselves with clothing, shelter, ammunition, or foodfor the coming 

 winter." The petition declares that on account of starvation, and con- 



