THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 443 



tie distance, quite black, in sharp contrast with tbe ghastly whiteness 

 of tbe perfect skeletons behind them, which gives such a weird and 

 ghostly appearance to the lifeless prairies of Montana where the bone- 

 gatherer has not yet done his perfect work. The skulls of the cows and 

 young buffaloes are as clean and bare as if they had been carefully 

 macerated, and bleached by a skilled osteologist. 



The opening cuts having been made, the broad-pointed "skinning- 

 knife" was duly sharpened, and with it the operator fell to work to de- 

 tach the skin from the body in the shortest possible time. The tail was 

 always skinned and left on the hide. As soon as the skin was taken 

 off it was spread out on a clean, smooth, and level spot of ground, and 

 stretched toits fullest extent, inside uppermost. On the northern range, 

 very few skins were "pegged out," i. e., stretched thoroughly and held 

 by means of wooden pegs driven through the edges of the skin into the 

 earth. It was practiced to a limited extent on the southern range dur- 

 ing the latter part of the great slaughter, when buffaloes were scarce 

 and time abundant. Ordinarily, however, there was no time for peg- 

 ging, nor were pegs available on the range to do the work with. A 

 warm skin stretched on the curly buffalo-grass, hair side down, sticks 

 to the ground of itself until it has ample time to harden. On the north- 

 ern range the skinner always cut the initials of his outfit in the thin 

 subcutaneous muscle which was always found adhering to the skin on 

 each side, and which made a permanent and very plain mark of owner- 

 ship. 



In the south, the traders who bought buffalo robes on the range 

 sometimes rigged up a rude press, with four upright posts and a huge 

 lever, in which robes that had been folded into a convenient size were 

 pressed into bales, like bales of cotton. These could be transported 

 by wagon much more economically than could loose robes. An illus- 

 tration of this process is given in an article by Theodore R. Davis, en- 

 titled "The Buffalo Range," in Harper's Magazine for January, 18G9, 

 Vol. xxxviii, p. 163. The author describes the process as follows: 



"As the robes are secured, the trader has them arranged in lots of ten 

 each, with but little regard for quality other than some care that par- 

 ticularly fine robes do not go too many in one lot. These piles are then 

 pressed into a compact bale by means of a rudely constructed affair 

 composed of saplings and a chain." 



On the northern rauge, skins were not folded until the time came to 

 haul them in. Then the hunter repaired to the scene of his winter's 

 work, with a wagon surmounted by a hay-rack (or something like it), 

 usually drawn by four horses. As the skins were gathered up they 

 were folded once, lengthwise down the middle, with the hair inside. 

 Sometimes as many as 100 skins were hauled at one load by four horses. 



On one portion of the northern rauge the classification of buffalo pelt- 

 ries was substantially as follows: Under the head of robes was included 

 all cow skins taken during the proper season, from one year old upward, 



