THE BUFFALO. 285 



or dressed as robes at any season. Probably not more than one-third of 

 the skins are taken from the animals killed, even when they are in good season, 

 the labor of preparing and dressing the robes being very great; and it is seldom 

 that a lodge trades more than twenty skins in a year. It is during the sum- 

 mer months and in the early part of autumn that the greatest number of 

 Buffaloes are killed, and yet at this time a skin is never taken for the purpose 

 of trade. 



What a record of slaughter is this ! 



Next in order came the invention and development- of 

 the modern breech-loading rifle, the highest type of which, 

 in the estimation of the successful Buffalo-hunter, was, 

 unquestionably, the heavy-barreled, double-triggered Sharp. 

 It is often remarked by western hunters that the Sharp rifle 

 exterminated the Buffalo. 



And finally came the last factor in the problem of the 

 extinction of the Bison — the building of the Pacific rail- 

 roads. This opened up the very heart of the Buffalo-range 

 to the last of the scavengers — the indefatigable skin-hunter. 

 It also checked the wanderings of the herds, and limited 

 the area of their range. 



An intelligent Sioux Indian, of the Santee tribe, with 

 whom the writer became acquainted while trapping furred 

 animals in Dakota, twenty years ago, after describing to 

 him the last Buffalo-chase he ever enjoyed, during which 

 a wandering band of forty-seven Buffaloes were all slain, 

 added: 



" I told the other Indian boys, then, that the railroad was 

 now built across the plains, which would stop the march of 

 the Buffaloes, and that if we lived for a hundred years we 

 would never see them here again." 



Many able assistants in the final work of the skin- 

 hunters were found in the crowds of settlers along the 

 frontier, who hunted for meat. Nothing but the hams of 

 the Buffaloes were brought into the settlements by the fall 

 hunting-parties, and at times the choicest meat went begging 

 at five cents a pound. 



The favorite method of the skin-hunter was to crawl 

 within rifle-shot of a herd, and, while lying prone upon the 

 earth, to open fire with his heavy rifle, with its heavy ball 



