THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 441 



buffalo robes and hides was about $310,000, and this, too, long after 

 the great southern herd had ceased to exist, and when the northern herd 

 furnished the sole supply. It thus appears that during the course of 

 eight years business (leaving out the small sum paid out in 1884), on 

 the part of the Messrs. Boskowitz, and four years on that of Mr. Joseph 

 Ullman, these two firms alone paid out the enormous sum of $1,233,070 

 for buffalo robes and hides which they purchased to sell again at a 

 good profit. By the time their share of the buffalo product reached 

 tbe consumers it must have represented an actual money value of about 

 $2,000,000. 



Besides these two firms there were at that time many others who 

 also handled great quantities of buffalo skins and hides for which they 

 paid out immense sums of money. In this country the other leading 

 firms engaged in this business were I. G. Baker & Co., of Fort Benton ; 

 P. B. Weare & Co., Chicago ; Oberu, Hoosick & Co., Chicago and Saint 

 Paul; Martin Bates & Co., and Messrs. Shearer, Nichols & Co. (now 

 Hurlburt, Shearer & Sanford), of New York. There were also many 

 others whose names I am now unable to recall. 



In the British Possessions and Canada the frontier business was 

 largely monopolized by the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, although the 

 annual "output" of robes and hides was but small in comparison with 

 that gathered in the United States, where the herds were far more 

 numerous. Even in their most fruitful locality for robes — the country 

 south of the Saskatchewan — this company had a very powerful com- 

 petitor in the firm of I. G. Baker & Co., of Fort Benton, which secured 

 the lion's share of the spoil and sent it down the Missouri River. 



It is quite certain that the utilization of the buffalo product, even so 

 far as it was accomplished, resulted in the addition of several millions 

 of dollars to the w r ealth of the people of the United States. That the 

 total sum, could it be reckoned up, would amount to at least fifteen 

 millions, seems reasonably certain; and my own impression is that 

 twenty millions would be nearer the mark. It is much to be regretted 

 that the exact truth can never be known, for in this age of universal 

 slaughter a knowledge of the cash value of the wild game of the United 

 States that has been killed up to date might go far toward bringing 

 about the actual as well as the theoretical protection of what remains. 



UTILIZATION OF THE BUFFALO BY WHITE MEN. 



Robes. — Ordinarily the skin of a large ruminant is of little value in 

 comparison with the bulk of toothsome flesh it covers. In fattening 

 domestic cattle for the market, the value of the hide is so insignificant 

 that it amounts to no more than a butcher's perquisite in reckoning 

 up the value of the animal. With the buffalo, however, so enormous 

 was the waste of the really available product that probably nine-tenths 

 of the total value derived from the slaughter of the animal came from 

 his skin alone. Of this, about four -fifths came from the utilization of 



