THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 485 



ble to be killed for food, and for a long period he looked to the wild 

 animals of the forest and the prairie for his daily supply of meat. The 

 time was when no one stopped to think of the important part our game 

 animals played in the settlement of this country, and even now no one 

 has attempted to calculate the lessened degree of rapidity with which 

 the star of empire would have taken its westward way without the 

 bison, deer, elk, and antelope. The Western States and Territories 

 pay little heed to the wanton slaughter of deer and elk now going on 

 in their forests, but the time will soon come when the "grangers" will 

 enter those regions and find the absence of game a very serious matter. 



Although the bison was the first wild species to disappear before the 

 advance of civilization, he served a good purpose at a highly critical 

 period. His huge bulk of toothsome flesh fed many a hungry family, 

 and his ample robe did good service in the settler's cabin and sleigh in 

 winter weather. By the time game animals had become scarce, domes- 

 tic herds and flocks had taken their place, and hunting became a pas- 

 time instead of a necessity. 



As might be expected, from the time the bison was first seen by 

 white men he has always been a conspicuous prize, and being the larg- 

 est of the land quadrupeds, was naturally the first to disappear. Every 

 man's hand has been against him. While his disappearance from the 

 eastern United States was, in the main, due to the settler who killed 

 game as a means of subsistence, there were a few who made the killing 

 of those animals a regular business. This occurred almost exclusively 

 in the immediate vicinity of salt springs, around which the bison con- 

 gregated in great numbers, and made their wholesale slaughter of easy 

 accomplishment. Mr. Thomas Ashe* has recorded some very interest- 

 ing tacts and observations on this point. In speaking of an old man 

 who in the latter part of the last century built a log house for himself 

 "on the immediate borders of a salt spring," in western Pennsylvania, 

 for the purpose of killing buffaloes out of the immense droves which 

 frequented that spot, Mr. Ashe says: 



u In the first and second years this old man, with some companions, 

 killed from six to seven hundred of these noble creatures merely for 

 the sake of their skins, which to them were worth only 2 shillings each; 

 and after this 'work of death' they were obliged to leave the place till 

 the following season, or till the wolves, bears, panthers, eagles, rooks, 

 ravens, etc., had devoured the carcasses and abandoned the place for 

 other prey. In the two following years the same persons killed great 

 numbers out of the first droves that arrived, skinned them, and left 

 their bodies exposed to the sun and air; but they soon had reason to 

 repent of this, for the remaining droves, as they came up in succession, 

 stopped, gazed on the mangled and putrid bodies, sorrowfully moaned 

 or furiously lowed aloud, and returned instantly to the wilderness in an 

 unusual run, without tasting their favorite spring or licking the l'm- 



* Travels in America in 1806. London, 1808. 



