74 GAME ANIMALS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



game in any section of the country where its wanton and unneces- 

 sary disturbance is prevented. 



As things stand at present, the country where game most 

 abounds is that which is now, or has lately been, infested by hos- 

 tile Indians. The red fiends know enough to preserve their game 

 from excessive and continual persecution, and it is where the white 

 man dare not go that it is found most abundant and most unsus- 

 picious. The Indians are the only real preservers of game in the 

 West. 



When the buffaloes were driven a few years since from the 

 plains of Kansas and Nebraska, they appear to have separated 

 into two grand divisions, the smaller one pushing down into the 

 Indian Territory, and the larger division into North Wyoming 

 and Montana. When on the Yellowstone, in the month of 

 November, 1882, we met many parties who had come from 

 Minnesota and points east to spend the entire winter in hunt- , 

 ing buffaloes, simply for their skins and heads. These parties 

 came prepared with complete outfits for a three months' cam- 

 paign ; it was estimated that in the country_between the Yellow- 

 stone and the Little Missouri there were then fully one hundred 

 thousand buffalo, and of this number it has since been computed 

 that these skin-hunters, together with the Indians, must have 

 shot down fully twenty thousand. The war of extermination was 

 again waged during the past winter (1883), the whole Yellowstone 

 region being overrun with skin-hunters. Meanwhile, Congress 

 quietly looked on, and no amount of appeals were able to secure 

 the necessary legislation for holding in check these buffalo ex- 

 terminators. A regiment of soldiers might very properly be 

 sent to exterminate them. They could, perhaps, do better serv- 

 ice in fighting the skin-hunters than the red skins. We fear 

 that unless something is done at the reassembling of Congress 

 this coming autumn, those who wish to see the buffalo in its 

 wild state will have to make a trip to Montana very soon. The 

 buffaloes remaining in the Indian Territory are very insignificant 

 in numbers, 



