18 
from place to place, killed at all seasons of the year (the preference 
being given to the cows and calves), driven into pounds, or over 
])recipices, slaughtered in the snow, or on the ice, whole herds 
destroyed from sheer love of destruction, this useful animal, 
to which the natives looked for the food they ate, the rohes they 
wore, and the tent which sheltered them, as well as for their 
simple implements of domestic use, and even the very fuel which in 
the treeless prairie supplied their camp fires — thus persecuted, this 
noble beast decreased in numbers with fearful rapidity, till in the 
year 1849, the area over which it W'as to he found had been reduced 
to a narrow tract of country, extending continuously along the base 
of the Eocky Mountains, from the Eio Grand, in longitude 32°, to 
the j^lains of the Saskatchewan, and nca’thward to the wooded 
regions of the Athabasca and Peace Eivers. But about this time 
the great stream of overland immigration, following the Kansas 
and Platte Eivers, and thence westward by the South Pass over 
the Eocky Mountains into California, exterminated the Bison 
along its route, and broke the sad remnant up into two herds, one 
north, the other south of the line of march. The completion of the 
Union Pacific Eailroad has increased the separation, and the two 
herds are retiring year by year farther and farther from their 
persecutors.* That the disappearance of the Bison from such an 
enormous tract of countiy in so short a period is the result of 
reckless and cruel j)ersecution in every form there cannot he the 
least doubt, and should the present wasteful destruction he con- 
tinued the species will soon be exterminated. 
Catlin, in his letters on the Korth American Indians, Avritten 
hetAveen the years 1832 and 1839, gives most interesting par- 
ticidars of the habits and distribution of this animal, as AA^ell as of 
the mode pursued in those days for its destruction, and expresses 
himself as certain, from the profligate Avaste of the life of these 
noble and useful creatures, Avhich Avere killed in large numbers 
merely for the sake of their tongues, that their extinction Avas near 
at hand. Tie mentions one instance in Avhich, in May, 1832, a 
* Allen, loc. cit. 
