S92 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
fMAY 20, 1905. 
the army in which to settle the Indian question, was to 
kill off the Indian's commissary. To me this was very 
disappointing, as I had somewhat relied on him as an 
old friend to take my view of the matter. It then first 
came to my mind like a flash that the Indian's wild 
life on the plains was near its end. Heretofore I had 
not heartily entered into the purchasing of buffalo hides 
from the skin hunter, but after reviewing the situation 
as a matter of trade, I felt it my duty to my firm to 
use every legitimate means at my command to further 
their interests, and to buy all the hides that I could. 
As time passed, close observation led me to believe 
that the limit to the buffalo's, existence might be reached 
at any time, and for the benefit of the future I thought 
that I would invest in some buffalo calves, if I could 
get any gathered and delivered to me. 
In the spring of 1883 I entered into a contract with 
an old Red River hunter by the name of Gabriel 
D'Israeli to deliver one hundred head of buffalo calves 
at any point upon the Missouri River where a steam- 
boat could land on the down trip, which I would in- 
struct the captain to take from him and deliver to me 
at Wolf Point, that being my headquarters. The con- 
tract price was $6 a head delivered on board the boat. 
The old man and his boys were good horsemen, and 
after carefully talking over the matter of the handling 
of the buffalo calves after they were captured so as to 
prevent loss and injury, and hearing my conditions, they 
quickly entered into the contract. The first delivery 
they made was of seven head to the steamer Helena, 
commanded by Captain Joe Flecto. Joe being quite 
a lover of buffalo himself, as are all French Canadians, 
was greatly pleased to deliver me the first buffalo under 
my contract. The calves when they reached Wolf Point 
were still pretty frisky and wild, and one jumped off 
the gang plank and, hanging over the boat, broke his 
back against the bank. Taking the rest home, I put 
them with the milch cows in the corral. They did not 
greatly like their new comrades and went to hooking and 
fighting them, and I had to take them out. However, 
they gradually became used to the cows, and I em- 
ployed a herder to herd them with the cows. In order 
to distinguish them from the wild buffalo, I tied a 
piece of red flannel about the neck of each. The herder 
remained with them all day, and came back with them in 
the evening. One day, however, he proved careless in 
his work, and left the bunch, and some northern Cree 
Indians coming in from the far north and finding my 
buffalo calves, killed three of them. Various accidents 
' happened to the rest, by which I lost them all. 
In the meantime Mr. D'Israeli came in and informed 
me that the buffalo were all leaving the country. Upon 
inquiry I found that instead of making their usual mi- 
gration to the north, where they would perhaps have 
received the protection of the Canadian government, in 
much the same manner as Sitting Bull and his 
people had received protection from the Canadian of- 
ficials, they had gone south. This was suicide for the 
buffalo, for on the west end of that herd of buffalo 
were some 1,500 families of Red River half-breeds; and 
along the Missouri River were the Sioux Indians, and 
on the south there must have been 1,500 white men 
directly or indirectly engaged in the slaughter of the 
buffalo. 
The white buffalo hunter was a picked man among 
all the game hunters of the West. The manner of 
hunting the buffalo was not by the usual method of the 
frontier hunters. To the wonder and surprise of all 
the Indians who inhabited that part of the country and 
of the Red River half-breeds who were perhaps the 
best horseback hunters of the frontier, it was now 
found that the white hunter far excelled them by going 
out on foot and hunting the buffalo. The cartridges 
that he used carried each 120 grains of powder, and his 
gun, weighing as much as the average crowbar, was 
a very formidable weapon. The expert buffalo hunter 
taking the lead of his party cautiously approached the 
buffalo Avhen lying down or feeding, and killed the 
leader with perhaps the first shot at a range of any- 
where from 800 to 1,200 yards. If the buffalo were 
bedded down, the next one that rose and acted as a 
leader was shot down. The buffalo finally became so 
confused that they made no attempt to get away, and 
ultimately the whole bunch, numbering anywhere" from 
20 to 80 head, would be wiped out at one killing, pro- 
vided the buffalo hunters' cartridges did not give out. 
As soon as the slaughter was complete, the hunter 
would signal to his companions to come up and skin 
them. An expert buffalo hunter was followed by from 
three to five skinners. The manner of skinning the 
buft'alo was peculiar. They rarely took the head part, 
but cut off the hide close to the shoulder, making a 
so-called short-trimmed hide, and skinning up the 
legs, attached a horse to the hide and pulled it off. 
It was then, for the present, simply left spread out on 
the ground to freeze. When the weather was very 
cold only enough were killed so that the skinners could 
take the hides off, for when the body was frozen it was 
very difficult to skin. Nothing escaped the hide hunter's 
gun. The old buffalo, the cows, yearlings and the 
calves were all slaughtered alike. 
The buffalo being so hard pressed — so completely 
surrounded by the white men on the south, the Red 
River half-breeds on the west and the Sioux nation 
on the north, with a continuous line of Indians along 
the Missouri River on the northeast side — had no place 
to rest. They were driven from their usual trails, or 
road of migration, as it were, to the north end and ap- 
peared completely lost and bewildered. The pursuit 
was kept up day after day, and getting no rest they were 
crowded and driven and pushed south to the Standing 
Rock Agency, which at that time was under the charge 
of Major McLaughlin. He made several seizures of 
the white hunters and their outfits for trespassing on 
his reservation in their pursuits of buffalo. Finally on 
the Cannonball River, on the border land of Dakota, 
the buffalo, like the Sioux, made their last stand, and 
the Indian hunters, eager to get meat for their families 
and thinking that this would be the last of- the buffalo, 
made the most of it. The white hunter was fully im- 
pressed with the same idea, and did the same. 
It soon became apparent to every one that the buf- 
falo was no more; but this idea dawned very slowly 
on the mind of the Indian. He could not give up the 
belief that they were merely gone on a visit somewhere 
and would return again. 
When I became fully aware of the situation and had 
made up my mind as to the future welfare of the 
Indian and those engaged in trade with them, I had a 
talk with the Sioux, at which council were present 
among others Skin of the Heart, Long Tree, Stabs in 
Plenty, Yellow Moon, Big Snake, Running Elk, Red 
Stone, The Skunk, Red Dog and Two Bellies. I 
thought it was due to them to explain the condition 
in which they found themselves and their families; and 
to try and show to them that their occupation as 
hunters was now_ gone, and to impress upon them the 
necessity of looking out for some other avocation for 
the future. After a long talk, in which I explained the 
situation — for the prairie Indian lived almost wholly 
upon the buffalo — Skin of the Heart arose and in a 
very impressive manner asked his people to listen to 
and consider what I had said. After he had said a 
few words — for he was not much of a talker — Long 
Tree, who was quite an orator, arose in his turn to 
speak. He told his people, that while,_my story looked 
plausible, it was his firm belief which all the Indian 
people shared that the buffalo had merely gone away 
to a distant land, possibly to the far north, in the 
country where the Old Man lived and roamed; that at 
the next Medicine Lodge, which he and his people 
would hold, they would take offerings of horses and 
other property of value to the Great Spirit to inter- 
cede for them ^and induce the buffalo to come back 
again; that while many things were possible to the 
white man, it was not possible that he could have killed 
all the buffalo; that he didn't doubt that the buffalo in 
their anger at being so hotly pursued and continually 
hunted had gone to the Old Man's country and dis- 
appeared in a great hole that he tried to describe to 
them. "They are tired," he said, "with much running. 
They have had no rest. They have been chased and 
chased over the rocks and grave of the prairie and 
their feet are sore, worn down, like those of a tender- 
footed horse. When the buffalo have rested and their 
feet have grown out again, they will return to us in 
larger numbers, stronger, with better robes and fatter 
than they ever were." 
As time went on, the older and thinking Indians, 
such as Red Stone and Skin of the Heart, came to 
realize the actual conditions, and to see that their offers 
of gifts to the Old Man were not inducements enough 
to bring the buffalo back to them. They came to me 
and again asked me my opinion, and if I still held to 
what I told them. I could only tell that they had seen 
that what I said to them had come true, for I had seen 
them day after day eat their horses and their dogs to 
keep themselves and their children from starving. If 
the Old Man and the buffalo loved them, as Long 
Tree haid said, they would not have left them to suffer 
as long as this. 
I now desired to wind up the affairs of the company 
I was engaged with, for I had considered the matter and 
could see no reason to remain in the trade with the 
Indians, for they had nothing to trade. I therefore 
explained to them that there was now nothing for them 
to do and so no inducement for me to remain, for 
their occupation as hunters was forever gone. Then 
Skin of the Heart begged me to remain with them, 
telling me that his tribe would give me a selection of 
any land that I might want to take — embracirig land not 
by the acre, but by the mile in extent — if I would remain 
and help them to earn a living in their new way. I 
thanked them cordially for their good will and for their 
offer, but informed them that my family and myself 
had come from the mountains, and that we desired to 
return to them, where I had spent the better part of my 
life. 
When they found that I would not recede from my 
position. Red Stone arose and briefly addressed his 
people and saying: "When this white man came here 
I called him the Trader Chief; I have tried to persuade 
him to stay with us and help us, for he has been a good 
man for me and my people, but he is going away. 
When he goes, what shall we do? We will starve." 
Chas. Aubrey. 
Browning, Mont. 
1 J^^^'Va 
The May Wild Flowers— IL 
BY CLARENCE M. WEED. 
Perhaps no flower is more truly a universal favorite 
than is the Violet. It is one of the first blossoms of 
spring and continues in bloom through the golden weeks 
of that happy season. In its various species it is widely 
distributed over the surface of the earth, and for a long 
period it has been cultivated by florists and gardeners. 
Yet with the exception of the double sorts, it has lost 
little of its charm through cultivation. Its colors are 
modest and pleasing, its odor delightful, and its form is 
charming. So it is not strange that all who care for 
flowers have a special liking for the Violets. 
In America we are especially fortunate in the abun- 
dance and variety of our wild Violets. Scores of species 
are found throughout the greater part of the IJnited 
States and Canada, occurring in all sorts of situations 
and often carpeting the fields with their blossoms. In 
general the type of flower structure is the same in all 
and may readily be understood from the accompanying 
engraving. On the outside, at the base of the flower, are 
the small green sepals which, when spoken of together, 
are called the calyx. These sepals cover the blossom 
when it is a bud. The chief showy part of the flower is 
made up of the five irregular petals, which taken together 
form the corolla. Witliin the bases of the petals are the 
curiously joined stamens which develop the pollen of the 
flower. Each of the two lower stamens has projecting 
from its back end a large nectary which produces nectar 
that drops into the nectar spur formed by the projecting 
end of the lower petal. In the middle of the united 
stamens is the seed-producing pistil, which has on the 
outer end, projecting beyond the stamens, the stigma 
adapted to receive the pollen that fertilizes the ovules. 
This whole complicated structure of the Violet serves 
admirably to bring about the cross-pollination of the 
flowers by means of many species of small bees that visit 
the blossoms for nectar and pollen. Many of these bees 
flight head downward upon the flowers, the curious hairs 
of the so-called bearded Violets serving to give them a 
foothold in this somewhat precarious position. 
In addition to these showy flowers many species of 
Violets produce at the surface of the ground another set 
of flowers which never receive the visits of insects but 
which develop great numbers of seeds. These so-called 
closed flowers have received a great deal of attention 
from botanists, one of Darwin's most interesting books 
being entitled "Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of 
the_Same Species." It is generally believed that the plant 
derives an advantage from having the closed flowers to 
produce an abundance of seed and the showy flowers to 
bring about occasional cross-pollination. 
The easiest classification of our Violets is by the color 
of the flowers, although this has little botanical signifi- 
cance. The next easiest is by the mode of growth — 
whether it is a stemless or a stemmed species. In the 
former the leaves and flowers are borne on stalks that 
seem to rise from the crown of the plant; in the latter 
the leaves and flower stalks arise from branches that ex- 
tend upward from the crown. The third point of separa- 
tion is the presence or absence of a fringe of hairs to- 
ward the base of the petals; these are present in the so- 
called bearded Violets and absent in the beardless ones. 
The Sweet White Violet is one of the most attractive 
species. It belongs to the group of stemless Violets and 
is found in moist situations over a wide range of terri- 
tory. _ The smooth and shiny leaves and delicate odor 
are distinctive characteristics of this plant, which is al- 
rnost certain to occur along slowly running brooks or 
the margins of swamps. 
The Kidney-leaved Violet is a somewhat similar species 
found in the Northern States. It is distinguished by its 
hairy leaves and stems. The Lance-leaved Violet is at once 
recognized by the lance-like leaves that accompany the 
white flowers. It is found throughout the greater part - 
of the United States. The only other common white sort 
is the Primrose-leaved Violet which has oval or ovate 
leaves. 
There are three Yellow Violets which the amateur 
flower lover may hope to find. The Round-leaved Yellow 
Violet is a stemless sort that is very readily distinguished, 
while the Hairy or Downy Yelloy Violet is a stemmed 
species which is common over a wide area. The Smooth- 
ish Yellow Violet, also a stemmed species, is much less 
abundant. 
When we pass to the Blue Violet their name is legion. 
And the botanists have been subdividing species to such 
an extent lately that one can only keep up with them by 
subscribing for the botanical magazines. The latest 
books are far behind the times. Fortunately, however, 
we can appreciate the flowers in ignorance of the latest 
dictum of the scientist concerning its specific standing. 
And we can follow Gray and the more conservative folk 
in broad distinctions which answer our purpose very 
well. 
Among the stemless blue sorts the Bird's Foot Violet is 
one of the most interesting and attractive species. The 
name is derived from the lobes of the divided leaf which 
are suggestive of a bird's foot. On rocky hillsides this 
species is often very abundant. 
Another violet which has received an appropriate com- 
mon name is the Arrow-leaved Violet. In many parts of 
the country this is an abundant species in wet meadows 
and along the borders of marshes. It is somewhat simi- 
lar to the Ovate-leaved Violet which grows in drier situa- 
tions and has shorter petioles, the flower stalks being as 
long as the leaf and its petiole. Both of these species 
belong to the group of stemless bearded Violets of which 
perhaps the most generally abundant form is the common 
Blue Violet, often called the Meadow Violet. It is found 
abundantly in a great variety of situations, especially 
where there is considerable moisture. In dry woods the 
Early Blue Violet occurs very generally. The first spring 
leaves of this form are likely to be heart-shaped resemb- 
ling those of the Meadow Violet, but the later leaves have 
their margins divided into many lobes, on this account 
the species is often called the Palmate-leaved Violet. 
The flowers of the stemmed Blue Violets are generally 
smaller and less attractive than those of the stemless spe- 
cies. The Canada Violet and the American Dog Violet are 
two of the most abundant forms in this group. The 
