504 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



or, let ns say, 1870, there were about four million buffaloes south of the 

 Platte River, and probably about one million and a half north of it. I 

 am aware that the estimate of the number of buffaloes in the great 

 northern herd is usually much higher than this, but I can see no good 

 grounds for making it so. To my mind, the evidence is conclusive that, 

 although the northern herd ranged over such an immense area, it was 

 numerically less than half the size of the overwhelming multitude which 

 actually crowded the southern range, and at times so completely con- 

 sumed the herbage of the plains that detachments of the United States 

 Army found it difficult to find sufficient grass for their mules and 

 horses.* 



The various influences which ultimately led to the complete blotting 

 out of the great northern herd were exerted about as follows : 



In the British Possessions, where the country was immense and game 

 of all kinds except buffalo very scarce indeed; where, in the language 

 of Professor Kenaston, the explorer, " there was a great deal of country 

 around every wild animal," the buffalo constituted the main dependence 

 of the Indians, who would not cultivate the soil at all, and of the half- 

 breeds, who would not so long as they could find buffalo. Under such 

 circumstances the buffaloes of the British Possessions were hunted 

 much more vigorously and persistently than those of the United States, 

 where there was such an abundant supply of deer, elk, antelope, and 

 other game for the Indians to feed upon, and a paternal government to 

 support them with annuities besides. Quite contrary to the prevailing 

 idea of the people of the United States, via., that there were great herds 

 of buffaloes in existence in the Saskatchewan country long after ours 

 had all been destroyed, the herds of British America had been almost 

 totally exterminated by the time the final slaughter of our northern 

 herd was inaugurated by the opening of the Northern Pacific Railway 

 in 1880. The Canadian Pacific Railway played no part whatever in 

 the extermination of the bison in the British Possessions, for it had 

 already taken place. The half-breeds of Manitoba, the Plains Crees of 

 Qu'Appelle, and the Blackfeet of the South Saskatchewan country 

 swept bare a great belt of country stretching east and west between 

 the Rocky Mountains and Manitoba. The Canadian Pacific Railway 

 found only bleaching bones in the country through which it passed. 

 The buffalo had disappeared from that entire region before 1879 and 

 left the Blackfeet Indians on the verge of starvation. A few thou- 

 sand buffaloes still remained in the country around the headwaters of 

 the Battle River, between the North and South Saskatchewan, but they 

 were surrounded and attacked from all sides, and their numbers dimin- 

 ished very rapidly until all were killed. 



* As an instance of this, see Forest and Stnam, vol. II, p. 184: "Horace Jones, 

 the interpreter here [Fort Sill], says that on his first trip along the line of the one 

 hundredth meridian, in 1^59, accompanying Major Thomas — since our noble old gen- 

 eral — they passed continuous herds for over GO miles, which left so little grass behind 

 them that Major Thomas was seriously troubled about his horses." 



