512 REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM,. 1887. 



and, if it had, it would have been promptly annihilated by the hungry 

 Blackfeet and Oree Indians, who were declared to be in a half- starved 

 condition, through the disappearance of the buffalo, as early as 1879. 



The great herd that "went north" was utterly extinguished by the 

 white hunters along the Missouri River and the Indians living north of 

 it. The only vestige of it that remained was a band of about two hun- 

 dred individuals that took refuge in the labyrinth of ravines and creek 

 bottoms that lie west of the Musselshell betweeu Flat Willow and Box 

 Elder Creeks, and another band of about seventy-live which settled in 

 the bad lands between the head of the Big Dry and Big Porcupine 

 Creeks, where a few survivors were found by the writer in 188G. 



South of the Northern Pacific Railway, a baud of about three hundred 

 settled permanently in and around the Yellowstoue National Park, but 

 in a very short time every animal outside of the protected limits of the 

 park was killed, and whenever any of the park buffaloes strayed be- 

 yound the boundary they too were promptly killed for their heads and 

 hides. At present the number remaining in the park is believed by 

 Captain Harris, the superintendent, to be about two hundred; about 

 one-third of which is due to breeding in the protected territory. 



In the southeast the fate of that portion of the herd is well known. 

 The herd which at the beginning of the hunting season of 1883 was 

 known to contain about ten thousand head, and ranged in western Da- 

 kota, about half way between the Black Hills and Bismarck, between 

 the Moreau and Grand Rivers, was speedily reduced to about one 

 thousand head. Yic. Smith, who was "in at the death," says there were 

 eleven hundred, others say twelve hundred. Just at this juncture 

 (October, 1883) Sitting Bull and bis whole band of nearly one thousand 

 braves arrived from the Standing Rock Agency, and in two days' time 

 slaughtered the entire herd. Vic. Smith and a host of white hunters 

 took part in the killing of this last ten thousand, and he declares that 

 " when we got through the hunt there was not a hoof left. That wound 

 up the buffalo in the Far West, only a stray bull being seen here and 

 there afterwards." 



Curiously enough, not even the buffalo hunters themselves were at the 

 time aware of the fact that the end of the hunting season of 1882-'83 

 was also the end of the buffalo, at least as an inhabitant of the plains 

 and a source of revenue. In the autumn of 1883 they nearly all out- 

 fitted as usual, often at an expense ot many hundreds of dollars, and 

 blithely sought "the range" that had up to that time been so prolific 

 in robes. The end was in nearly every case the same— total failure and 

 bankruptcy. It was indeed hard to believe that not only the millions, 

 but also the thousands, had actually gone, and forever. 



I have found it impossible to ascertain definitely the number of robes 

 and hides shipped from the northern range during the last years of the 

 slaughter, and the only reliable estimate I have obtained was made for 

 me, after much consideration and reflection, by Mr. J. N. Davis, of Min- 



