Camping and Hunting in the Shoshone 



buffalo too, especially in the northern part 

 of the continent. On the great plains 

 of the Saskatchewan both were abundant. 

 The buffalo were not the poor, skin-and- 

 bone, mangy remnant of a noble race that 

 survived even till 1884, hoof-worn with 

 perpetual and rapid journeying, ceaselessly 

 seeking a rest they could nowhere attain. 

 Then the great herds moved leisurely, and 

 leisurely the plain-Indian moved in their 

 wake. Millions of buffalo there were 

 that had never heard the deadly crack of 

 the skin-hunter's rifle ; and there at least 

 remained in those northern lands some 

 thousands of Indians who had never tasted 

 the deadlier whiskey of the free-traders, 

 as the men were called who pushed their 

 way into the great territories where none 

 but the Hudson Bay Company had hith- 

 erto come. (Let me say, for the honor 

 of the Hudson Bay Company, in those 

 years at least, that they never, on any 

 condition whatever, supplied liquor to the 

 Indians.) I have said I shall always be 

 thankful I saw the buffalo in their glory, 

 and saw the Indian, too, as he was — not 

 the ideal Indian, I need scarcely say, bur 

 yet certainly not the debased hanger-on of 

 a frontier civilization that he is to-day. 

 To enjoy an old-fashioned buffalo-run 



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