THE EXTERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN BISON. 511 



on the range indicated above, and also marked out on tbe accompany- 

 ing map, were distributed over that entire area very generally. In Feb- 

 ruary of that year a Fort Benton correspondent of Forest and Stream 

 wrote as follows : " It is truly wonderful how many buffalo are still left. 

 Thousands of Indians and hundreds of white men depend on them for 

 a living. At present nearly all the buffalo in Montana are between 

 Milk River and Bear Paw Mountains. There are only a few small bands 

 between the Missouri and the Yellowstone." There were plenty of buf- 

 falo on the Upper Marias River in October, 1882. In November and 

 December there were thousands between the Missouri and the Yellow- 

 stone Rivers. South of the Northern Pacific Railway the range during 

 the hunting season of 1882-'83 was thus defined by a hunter who has 

 since written out the "Confessions of a Buffalo Butcher" for Forest 

 and Stream (vol. xxiv, p. 489): " Then [October, 1882] the western limit 

 was defined in a general way by Powder River, and extending eastward 

 well toward the Missouri and south to within fiO or 70 miles of the Black 

 Hills. It embraces the valleys of all tributaries to Powder River from 

 the east, all of the valleys of Beaver Creek, O'Fallon Creek, and the Lit- 

 tle Missouri and Moreau Rivers, and both forks of the Cannon Ball for 

 almost half their length. This immense territory, lying almost equally 

 in Montana and Dakota, had been occupied during the winters by many 

 thousands of buffaloes from time immemorial, and many of the cows 

 remained during the summer and brought forth their young undis- 

 turbed." 



The three hunters composing the party whose record is narrated in 

 the interesting sketch referred to, went out from Miles City on October 

 23, 1882, due east to the bad lauds between the Powder River and 

 O'Fallon Creek, and were on the range all winter. They found com- 

 paratively few buffaloes, and secured only two hundred and eighty-six 

 robes, which they sold at an average price of $2.20 each. They saved 

 and marketed a large quantity of meat, for which they obtained 3 cents 

 per pound. They found the whole region in which they hunted fairly 

 infested with Indians and half-breeds, all hunting buffalo. 



The hunting season which began in October, 1882, and ended in Feb- 

 ruary, 1883, finished the annihilation of the great northern herd, and left 

 but a few small bauds of stragglers, numbering on^ a very few thousand 

 individuals all told. A noted event of the season was the retreat north- 

 ward across the Yellowstone of the immense herd mentioned by Lieu- 

 tenant Partello as containing seventy-five thousand head; others esti- 

 mated the number at fifty thousand ; and the event is often spoken of 

 to-day by frontiersmen who were in that region at the time. Many 

 think that the whole great body went north into British territory, and 

 that there is still a goodly remnant of it in some remote region between 

 the Peace River and the Saskatchewan, or somewhere there, which will 

 yet return to the United States. Nothing could be more illusory than 

 this belief. In the first place, the herd never reached the British line ? 



